I saw the story in Publisher’s Weekly, which was little more than the text of a press release. My first thought was “Cool! Manga on the Fire and Paperwhite.” Then I dug a little deeper and discovered the story wasn’t quite as impressive as it first seemed.

Turns out that Viz manga were available on the Kindle Fire, using the Viz Media app, which is available in the Amazon app store. So it’s not quite as new and cool as it first sounded. But if you’re a manga fan, it’s still worth paying attention. Why? Because the Kindle versions are readable on the Paperwhite. If any readers have tried them, I’d like to hear your impressions. Do they look good? Is navigation smooth?

The other interesting point is that many of the manga I checked are less expensive in the Kindle store than purchased through the Viz Media app. For example, each [easyazon-link asin=”B00F3HG5MC” locale=”us”]Bleach[/easyazon-link] volume is $6.99 in the Viz store and $5.59 in the Kindle store. There’s a trade-off, though. If purchased through the Viz app, you can read them on any iOS or Android device. If you purchase the Kindle version, you can only read them on Kindle.

Finally, the selection isn’t yet as good as through the app. My favorite manga, Yu-Gi-Oh!, is not available on Kindle.

So, there’s trade-offs, but it’s still interesting news for Kindle lovers. By the way, manga do look good on tablets. I tried out the Viz app on my Nexus 7 and iPad, and they look good. Navigation is smooth. I might have to get back into reading manga.

4 COMMENTS

  1. In case this gets lost in the spam bucket. I can’t seem to type today.
    “I picked up Dragon Ball v1 from Kobo as a test and it works great on my iPad. It was only $4.99. The only odd thing is the page flips are reversed just like a regular manga. I’ll probably get the rest eventually.”

    • The first one did get lost in the spam bucket, so I deleted it. Glad you did get a comment through. I’ll have to check out Kobo. $4.99 is the best price I’ve found for DBZ.

      I got caught by the page flip direction on the first one I tried too.

  2. DBZ is $5.79 at Kobo right now. Everything except DB v1 looks like it’s $5.79 (discount from $6.99). It won’t tell me the current DB v1 price since I bought it 9/15 so prices may have changed since then.

  3. One problem with these is the lack of backup. There seems to be no way to download the files to a computer. I’m hesitant to spend $250 ($6 x 42) on a series when they can be taken away at the whim of a corporation.

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.