SNS for manga artists from Futabasha Press

Manga publisher Futabasha recently established an SNS community for would-be manga artists. “Manga Yomou!” (“Let’s read manga!”) allows members to post their own original work on the site with the aim of getting a readership and feedback from peers. However there is more to this basic Myspace for manga concept, the editor of Futabasha’s monthly comic magazine Comic High will have a presence on the site, offering evaluations of select works and even picking some up for publication in the magazine.

The site, billed as “Social Networking for Comics,” is organized into sections for user-made “indies comics” and illustrations displayed by ranking, plus space for reviews of new published series, member blogs, and a BBS.

With mobile phone novels like Koizora (which started out as a user generated story on the mobile phone homepage portal site Maho no iRando) becoming best-sellers in print, publishers have done well to take notice of this reader trend. In fact, it was Futabasha that published the highly successful manga series of Koizora last year.

While it might seem odd to buy a hard version of something you’ve already read for free online, sales figures prove otherwise. One reason for this is that readers have been said to want a souvenir of the work in the form of a printed version because they felt part of its discovery and success. Through Manga Yomou, Futabasha dangles the carrot of published success to draw members, who will then become an established readership for whatever the publisher chooses to bring to print.