Crunchyroll’s CEO On Monetizing Online Manga

By Ishaan . September 4, 2010 . 3:00pm

Crunchyrolls CEO On Monetizing Online Manga

In an interview with About.com, Crunchyroll CEO, Kun Gao, discusses the company’s future goals with regard to distribution of manga online. Crunchyroll, he says, will be not a publishing partner, but a technology partner to manga publishers.

 

“Let me clarify exactly what it is we’re trying to do. As you may know, we received a small strategic investment from Bitway about a month or so ago, totaling about $750,000. The reason Bitway is working with Crunchyroll is because we are an Internet company – our core strength is technology. So, we really are working with Bitway not to distribute manga, but to figure out a way to build a platform to enable monetization of manga online.

 

So what I mean by that is, we’re trying to figure out a distribution platform, to build a platform enabling the digitization, distribution, and monetization of manga. We want to provide these tools to existing local distributors in each region, leverage and use those tools and use the platform to create and enable others to create a business online.”

 

You can read the full interview at the link above. It’s a little lengthy, but worth checking out. It really is quite amazing what a long way Crunchyroll have come from their inception.


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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Aarachnid-Malik-Davolcanese/1548060424 Aarachnid Malik Davolcanese

    I trust CrunchyRoll to design a good program. Technology-wise, they have a good system. But I do think it’d explain better what they’re doing if this paragraph was added into the above article.

    “Crunchyroll is not licensing manga for distribution on our site. What we’re doing is we’re building the actual tools for readers, that is, the online manga viewer, as well as the systems for readers to subscribe to read this content, as well as how to manage online advertising; in other words, monetization mechanisms to enable other publishers, local distributors to add these features into their business by turning a key.”

    I think it’d clear things up for readers who don’t want to actually click the link and find out what’s going on. Of course, maybe I’m just a noob, and other people know what’s going on when reading the above excerpt and don’t need additional details :P

  • Anonymous

    nevermind

  • Yousuke Fullbuster Uzumaki

    Well it will be interesting to check out. I doubt the big new series will ever move to online, but it is a good idea to look into for helping companies in the future. Though it seems online stuff will be pretty fragmented for monetizing properties, with square enix holding their own series (from that mangazine on their own site), yen press having their own yen plus thing going on, some company is using zinio I believe.

    Fragmentation

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