Digital Manga Publishing, the parent company of eManga, is offering new--and only new--customers the chance to have a 795 point credit (roughly 8 dollars) if they sign up for an account with eManga and provide proof that they've bought e-books elsewhere, with Amazon's Kindle Store and the Barnes and Noble Nook Store name-checked in the promotional materials. The receipt must be "verified" which makes me wonder a bit about whether a receipt from, say, Weightless Books would be accepted.
It's an interesting idea to draw readers towards your own in-house service rather than use Comixology or the Kindle Store or other places where DMP would have to share a cut of the profits. They're banking that once the customer buys a volume one from them for free, they're more likely to come back for volume two on the same platform, as switching between different applications is a pain. (Or perhaps I'm just projecting. I use Comixology almost exclusively because I hate going back and forth.)
In addition to the deal, there's two other factors that could lure folks in. The first is downloadable content, which is important to some segments of the digital reading population (though not me personally). They also note in the release that some of their titles are censored and unavailable from the "big guns" so anyone who is big into hentai or the steamier side of yaoi can get their fill without the gatekeepers.
DMP covers Digital Manga Publishing, JUNE, 801, Project-H, and also has some Western comics on their site as well.
I've fallen away from them as I started reading less manga, found reading on my netbook hard to do, and was unable to access my titles that I had on my account from my iPad when the app launched. (That may have changed since then, but after that experience, I didn't try and moved on to other publishers.) However, if you have an interest in some really good yaoi manga and don't have an account yet, this might be a good time to check them out and see what you think. They have plenty of good manga in other genres, too, but I think it's in their yaoi choices where they really shine.
The complete details on the September Switch deal is here.
