UPDATE: There is a Global Kindle now. People in Australia can also read Kindle books on their computers!!
A somewhat infamous Australian customer recently bought a Kindle. I say infamous because every online yaoi shop will know who I'm talking about. She's the girl who buys $400+ worth of books twice a month or so. She buys multiple copies of the same title showing that she's selling the books in her native Australia.
A convention vendor did a show in Australia to sell dojinshi. He did terrible. This made me think there may not be a market for yaoi in Australia. Well, of course that's not true. Japanese language dojinshi have to be more easily accessed by Australians than English language manga. The demand there is for the translated stuff. That demand is not being met.
Our distribution to Australia has always been poor. The transportation costs of the books just add too much to the cover price to make retailers feel it's worth stocking.
They're wrong.
I see from this Australian girl's cottage industry that even when she's buying yaoi at American retail prices, adding the cost of shipping, and adding a tidy mark-up above that, she's able to sell the books by the box full. I've seen some of her sales listings. She has no problem getting the equivalent of $30 USD for a copy of Crimson Spell.
Still, it's not an ideal situation. We know how tight budgets can get. In the USA fans don't have enough money to buy all the yaoi they want. Imagine how that is for Australian fans? They don't have their own yaoi manga publishers there. It's all imports from the USA.
Enter the Kindle. My Australian friend saw Digital Manga's Kindle web site. She emailed Maria at our store
everythingyaoi.com and asked what the heck a Kindle was. Her next email told us she'd bought one.
Digital distribution is the answer for countries like Australia. Shipping and customs costs make import of niche manga just too expensive. The Kindle would be a Godsend. Take away the customs costs. Take away the shipping costs. Even get it at a discount over USA retail prices. There would finally be an alternative to online piracy for them.
I hope Australians reading this didn't stop at the paragraph above and run out to buy a Kindle. If you did you'll find that you have to hunt for a reseller who ships to Australia. Then, once you get a power adaptor to charge the thing in an Australian outlet, you'll find that you can't download the Kindle ebooks. There's a region block. Even if one of your USA buddies lets you use their address to register it you won't be able to download the Kindle ebooks in Australia.
1. Dear Amazon - Make the Kindle work 100% in Australia! That would be such a boon to Yaoi Press and other niche publishers who have insurmountable hurdles exporting books there. It's better for the environment and cheaper for all concerned.
2. Dear Australians, for now, don't buy a Kindle unless you use it strictly as a PDF ebook viewer. You won't be able to download the Kindle ebooks unless you do what our friend did.
What did our friend do? She mailed Maria her Kindle with a shopping list. Right now it consists of every book DMP has offered via the Kindle. She's also going to get several Yaoi Press Kindle books for free. Although we're not live on the Kindle yet we have submitted the first couple of titles as of last week.
All Yaoi Press books will be available on the Kindle before the end of the year.
Maria has turned over this Kindle to me to put the Yaoi Press titles on it. We told our friend that we would do this.
I know I should have my own Kindle since this is a new platform for our books. (I also know I should have my own iPhone since our books are going up on iTunes). But I don't want one. As a consumer I have almost no need for one. I'd rather spend $300 to pay an artist to draw something for Yaoi Press. 'Borrowing' a Kindle like this is a great opportunity. I want to see what our books look like on the Kindle screen (as well as our friend publisher's books).
I'm not certain of the legality of doing this favor for my friend. From my perspective I see Kindle being most useful outside the USA. I resent that there's blocks in place. Yaoi Press books have universal English rights (we make most of our titles from scratch). Other companies don't have world-wide rights, and need to assure their license partners that they aren't overstepping their boundaries. That said, no one seems to be licensing yaoi in Australia. It's silly when there are already English language versions of the books out there.
There should be a way for Australians to be able to access those books without the enormous costs they face right now.
