I think this is a wonderful plan! There are a growing number of manga that are not republished or licensed for translation due to their age which is a sad state in my opinion. Just as there are classics that gets republished when it comes to books, so too there should be for classic graphic novels. Love Hina and Negima! creator Akamatsu is striving just for that with his new J-Comi website that will publish out-of-print manga for free and being supported by advertisements.
It is his and like-minded manga creator’s way of dealing with manga being scanlated and posted in the net without authorization from the publishers and creators. Advertising profits will be split among the creators and manga will be distributed via PDF using digital rights management (DRM). I suspect it will be much like borrowing digital works from the library which has been becoming the norm these days.
A beta version of the site will open on Black Friday on November 26 to test out the business model using Akamatsu’s Love Hina series and will officially open on Janaury 10, 2011. So far it looks as if this will be Japanese only but I hope an English version will be in their sights in the future.
