This is a follow-up article to the previous one I wrote about manga e-anthologies (PLEASE read it before you read this one), which spoke about the success of the iPod and iTunes store in terms of selling their wares. The article didn’t really clarify my position on iTunes, so here is a more in-depth explanation into what I think about iTunes, both from an e-commerce perspective and that of manga e-anthologies.

People Paying For Things They Can Get For Free
Some people have complained that the iTunes system rips off artists, and that it’s only breaking even, but then that’s not why the iTunes system is of interest. It’s of interest because for most of the music you can buy off iTunes, you can probably get it off the internet for free. I don’t know where I can get a particular song/movie off the internet for free, but like most people, I know someone who does. In fact, I can send out an SOS right now on my mailing list, and someone within a few hours will reply with the website/irc channel/ftp server/bittorent where I can download to my heart’s content. But if iTunes have it, I’ll pay money for it, because it’s easier.

iTunes is successful not because record companies make money, not because it sells alot of iPods, not because it barely breaks even, but because it manages to get people to pay for things they can otherwise get for free. When I talk about its success, I don’t mean dodgy corporate practices, but its Business Model. If musicians aren’t being paid enough, it’s the fault of the people who negotiates these contracts, not the fault of the business model. If Western manga anthologies don’t work because the artists drop out after a few issues, it’s not the fault of the anthology concept model, but the fault of the related parties that orbit the creation of an anthology. Definately related, but separate. (I’ll bet like all things, it’s related to how much someone is being paid)

The second point I want to clarify is that while I talked about e-delivery systems in the last essay, I don’t think that digital media is where it all ends. I DON’T think that just because people are using iTunes, they’ll all stop buying CDs. Not at all. In fact, people will continue buying CDs, just less of them, for the same reason I pointed out in the last essay – because nothing beats having the real thing in your hands. But what if I only have a “passing interest in”, but not “love for”, the work of a certain musician?

The Buck Does Not Stop At Digital Media
When I advocated the downloading of e-books onto iPod-like machines using iTunes as a model, I was advocating the ease and success of the e-delivery system. I’m not at all suggesting e-manga should be the new way we all get our manga. In fact, in terms of e-manga, what I’m REALLY advocating is e-anthologies, a cheap, accessible way for consumers to sample manga. The buck does NOT stop at e-anthologies (or digital media). Instead, you’re hoping that reading e-anthologies will eventually cause your readers to go real-shopping, and BUY the actual printed collected volumes.

Besides, a system for this kind of thing already exists. Manga Scanslations. If scanslations have proven anything, it’s that a free digital copy of something still causes people to buy the printed version of the work. Naruto still manages to be the #1-selling manga despite sites like NarutoFan.com. Ofcourse, not ALL readers will buy the collected version, but scanslations have the added benefit of exposing readers to manga they would otherwise not have not known about. If there was a e-anthology equivalent of such a thing, sold off a system like iTunes, it will make the cost of an anthology feasible, while drawing in new casual fans (Seeing I’m only a casual reader of Naruto, I’ll also feel less guilty about downloading Naruto for free, if I can pay to read a digital version of it cheaply).

It’s a system that benefits, most of all, all the middling, average-quality works of manga out there – manga who’s collected volumes aren’t flying off the shelves because blogs aren’t swooning over them. Not every manga series can be like Naruto, though people still want fluff entertainment. There is an ever-expanding library of manga, but the amount of buzz available is still the same, since we still have (a) only $40 to spend on manga each month, and (b) only 24 hours in a day. In theory, the ever-expanding library of manga on the bookshelves is meant to draw in new fans, who add more money to the consumer spending pool. But you’ll be wrong if you think that these fans will spend their money on the more obscure titles. Thanks to the Internet connecting us all, new arrivals to manga are more likely to gravitate towards blogs and message boards, to find out what’s hot. New fans to manga will likely increase the sales of already top-selling manga, or the manga with the most internet buzz. It’s not going to lift the entire industry into higher-selling figures so much as it is going to make the best-selling ones sell even better, and this ICv2 article just proves my point. $15 a pop is a big investment for an untested single book that’s likely to be a 20-volume series.

More About Consumer Psychology
1) People WILL pay for something they can get for free – they’re just not willing to pay alot, especially if it’s something non-tangible, like digital media.
2) Because the amount they’re willing to pay is so small, it becomes a matter of cost VS effort.
3) I’m only willing to pay $2 for an e-anthology.
4) I’m also willing to spend 20 minutes looking for free manga to download from the Internet.
5) I CAN buy an e-anthology for $2, and I’m willing to, but it requires more effort than a single button-click. I have to use my credit card, or I can’t get the program to work, or just some other complication.
6) Is the $2 cost worth the effort to get my credit card, or to get this manga viewer program working? Nah. I’m going to spend 20 minutes looking for free manga to download instead.

Now, spending 20 minutes net-surfing to find free manga takes more effort than what $2 is worth, but you can bet that it doesn’t feel that way to your typical consumer. Human beings are horders by nature. I have no time to read most of the manga I’ve downloaded, but I’ll keep on downloading them because it’s FREE. From a commercial point of view, you’re standing on disadvantaged grounds whenever you’re up against anything that’s available for free. The only way you can make people pay for something they is to leverage their guilt-feelings, and make things so easy and cheap for them that they’ll just go click, click, click and buy, buy, buy – because otherwise they’ll suffer the guilt of not buying something that’s so cheap and easy to get. Hence, the iTunes model.

The holy grail of e-marketing is not capturing the money of the obsessed fans. It’s capturing the money of the vaguely interested people, in the hope that for a little money, they’ll find something that can convert them into paying fans. Because in the Internet age, if that “cheap alternative” isn’t available to people, they’ll just download it for free.

In Conclusion
The challenge for e-commerce in the 21st Century is not only the delivery system for digital media, but how to present material to the potential customer in an increasingly noisy and crowded world. The reason why this anthology discussion started in the first place was because people felt there were too many manga being released a month, and not enough time or money to sample most of them. An anthology represents a cheap, centralised way of paying for fluff that you can enjoy, but which isn’t going to make you fly out of your chair to buy the real-world version of.

It is these vaguely interested people whose money you want to capture – people who will download stuff for free until a centralised, easy-to-use system convinces them they ought to pay. If you can find a way to get cheap, accessible e-material into the hands of people who otherwise don’t care enough to get out of their houses, then this is the way to do it.