I buy quite a few light novels (and some manga), especially if I love the art. But unfortunately, I don’t have space for all the books I would want to read. I do often check things out from the library, but I also want to own some series.

Ownership in digital media is a funny concept (see all the laws about how digital goods are only “licensed”), but I would say that I’m pretty comfortable with paying for ebooks when they’re novels. To me, the words on the pages are equally valuable whether on my ereader or printed. In fact, I find reading much more comfortable on an ereader, since they’re lighter and more portable than paper books. To me, ebooks retain the most important part of books, the novel itself.

I wish I could feel the same about digital manga. Don’t get me wrong, the majority of the manga I read is digital, from Manga Plus to fan translations. 90% of the manga I consume is digital. But when it comes to buying volumes, I’ve been hesitant to switch.

When you buy a manga volume, you are buying something in print that was printed at a high DPI. The art retains the majority of the intended detail, even when it’s printed in a small format like bunkobon. North American manga volumes are actually larger than their Japanese tankobon counterparts. I pay money, I get art. Simple.

But it’s not the same for digital manga!! I pay money, but I don’t get what I paid for! I’m not expecting print quality! Well, maybe I should but that’s another matter… I just want to see the art clearly! Why the hell is it normalized to pay for digital manga and receive a BLURRY, BARELY READABLE PRODUCT?? Amazon downsizes files and has the gall to charge delivery fees to the publisher/author. Rakuten Kobo serves at 300 dpi, but many publishers do not upload at that dpi, and you can tell.

There’s not another industry where this is the case. Movies and music, you get what you buy in a quality that the medium can handle. BluRay DVDs and Music CDs contain their content in whatever size is appropriate. But digital manga publishers purposefully limit manga file quality to avoid Amazon’s bullshit “delivery” fees.

Often times, scanlators that use Japanese scanned raws have better quality than the official release. It’s maddening that the industry has gone this direction. We’re just punishing legitimate customers.

Therefore, I’ve been extremely hesitant to buy digital manga at full price. But the fact of the matter is, my bookshelf is beyond full and I do NOT have the space for more series, and probably won’t for the foreseeable future. There are manga series that I’m interested in that I would love to support, and digital is my only realistic way of doing due to the lack of space.

I even bought a new eink tablet just to appreciate manga better. It’s time for publishers to step up.