Big news out of
Yen Press today: Yen Plus, its manga anthology which has featured some of its top imports as well as popular OEL titles, is no longer going to be printed start in July 2010-- it will
instead go online.
This is perhaps not surprising: print is considerably more expensive, especially with shipping, and it's probably been rather tough to get the anthology into bookstores. Going digital surely cuts down on the production costs and time. This may even have been the plan all along, with the print version existing to get a bigger splash-- I couldn't tell you.
That said, it's a little sad because that means that physical swag-- like Spice and Wolf slipcovers and whatnot --probably won't be as frequent, but we'll just have to see. On the other hand it may make subscription stuff a lot easier-- I've seen plenty of reports from people who had a lot of trouble dealing with the subscriber service that Yen went through for Y+. On the other hand, they've hinted that they might be able to do some stuff with light novels-- which would be really awesome.
If you currently have a subscription to Yen Plus that extends past July 2010, it looks like you'll get a refund-- you will NOT be automatically subscribed to the digital version, which is probably nice for people not interested in the digital version and probably a hassle for anyone who wants it online.
I also wonder what this will mean in terms of things like space constraint-- can they offer more series now? And how long will users have access to the issues? I've sent an e-mail out to some Yen folks with these questions and more, so I'll let you know as soon as I know more.
I'm not sure how an anthology would translate on the web, but it is a legit way to read many popular manga and probably will appeal to more people. I personally don't like reading on a screen, but if it's the only way of accessing these titles I will (aside from waiting for their release in book form). If they expand the number of titles they have, it would be neat to be able to choose which manga/light novels you want to subscribe to monthly--kinda like making your own Yen Plus.
I do wonder about how long the chapters will be available. That's one nice thing about the print form. I may be reading Black Butler now, but I can always go back and pick up say Night School from the beginning. I don't like the idea of not being able to access all the manga chapters in the past or paying extra to have continued access. One reasonable set fee is how I roll.
Absent print...there's very little reason other than conscience and maybe a bent toward proper translation keeping people from just going to scanlations. They're faster, pretty accurate for most titles, and free. Plus, you don't have to hassle with logins and subscriptions. Especially given the speed aspect, Y+ has just made their value proposition really unappealing to a large portion of the manga audience (especially the younger bunch). We're used to reading things on screens, but Japan has anthologies, and that's a really novel idea in America. I think for many readers in addition to myself, that was why you'd want something like Yen+, and now that reasoning is void. It sucks, but I think they're done.
P.S. ...unless it now costs NO money to keep it afloat, in which case it'll keep going, but vastly fewer people will read it. Any funds to sustain their volume prints help I guess, but they're effectively killing it.