I am preparing for a trip to Panama and Nicaragua later this week and, to prep, I decided to stock up on some digital manga.
…Which leads me to a small conundrum. All the manga apps on my iPad have become somewhat stagnant. To begin with, there aren’t too many titles I want to buy. I’ve already bought all the volumes of series I’m collecting digitally and there don’t seem to be too many new additions to any of the apps. There are, however, a lot of manga that I’m already collecting.
These fall into two categories: manga where I’ve bought volume 1, but haven’t bought more if because I’ve been saving my money for other titles; and manga I’ve been collecting for quite a number of volumes.
It seems to me that if I’m having trouble keeping up with these titles, perhaps getting them digitally would help. That way I could get two for the price of one print volume, not to mention, not have to worry so much about space in my apartment. This seems particularly plausible for series like Story of Saiunkoku, Saturn Apartments and Cross Game, where I just keep forgetting to pick up volume 2. But what about series like Otomen, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Oishinbo and Grand Guignol Orchestra? (Yeah, so far this only applies to Viz series.) Am I just supposed to have half of a completed series on my shelves? Do I really care that much about having every print volume of a series I’ve already started in print?
BAH! SO CONFUSING!
Which leads me to ask: What would you do in this situation?
I think I might go ahead and start digital collections of manga where I only have one volume, it’s less of a issue there. But I’m still hung up over series where I’ve bought more than one print volume.
This is probably part of my own brand of crazy, but I would never, ever continue in digital what I already started to own in print. I don’t even like that some of my manga don’t match because logos or companies change. The idea of starting digital when you only have one volume, though… that sounds better. Of course, still being crazy, I would rebuy the first volume digitally and then either sell or donate the print volume, so it wouldn’t be alone on the shelf and things could still match.
I tend to prefer digital these days for space reasons. But, I find the pricing to be not much better than print – sometimes I can find it in print (brand-new) for less than the digital copy costs. At least, for the yaoi mangas that I’ve been buying. I would definitely be snapping up even more digital copies if the costs were lowered to something more reasonable.
That’s certainly not the case with the digital manga I’ve bought (or thought about buying) so far. Then again, I haven’t bought anything from DMP or Yen Press because I can’t get myself to justify the purchases. :< So I can totally see why the yaoi you're probably picking up isn't worth it.
It depends on the series. For example, having some digital, some print volumes of Oishinbo would not bother me because it’s not a continuous series anyway (in fact, I deliberately bought certain volumes of Oishinbo and not others – of course, as a vegan, there were certain volumes which I obviously did not want). But for the opposite kind of manga – where not only is there a continuing storyline, but it’s a tight storyline (not episodic) – I would insist on having it all in one edition unless impossible.
Traveling to Panama? I was in Panama last month.. so have fun. The thing about digital vs. print.. really in my estimation to save space.. and sometimes save money. I would probably say start going into digital.. but the only issue with digital is DRM-locked… sooo.. there’s that can of worms there.
I’ve already returned! It was fun though. We did a partial crossing of the Panama Canal.