This guide is intended to help you decide where to purchase your digital manga depending on your needs.
It WILL focus on:
- official English digital volumes
- popular ebook platforms
- DRM-free indie publishers & platforms
- ease of acquiring a DRM-free copy
It WILL NOT focus on:
- "chapters as a service" platforms
- methods of circumventing DRM
If you're interested in creating DRM-free backups of your manga purchases, this other gist of mine might be a good starting point.
I will use quality as a general term below. It will mostly be referring to the page dimensions (or resolution). There are additional factors that impact image quality. In the interest of keeping things simple, they won't be covered here.
Commonly used shorthand:
- #x = width in pixels (e.g. 1500x for 1500x2250)
- x# = height in pixels (e.g. x2250 for 1500x2250)
| Store | DRM-FREE |
|---|---|
| Amazon | ✗ |
| Apple Books | ✗ |
| BookWalker Global | ✗ |
| Dark Horse | ✗ |
| DENPA | ✓ |
| FAKKU! | ✓ |
| Fanatical | ✓ |
| Glacier Bay Books | ✓ |
| Google Play Books | ✗ |
| Humble Bundle | ✓ |
| Irodori Comics | ✓ |
| J-Novel Club | ✓ |
| Kaiten Books | ✓ |
| Kodansha | ✗ |
| Kobo | ✗ |
| Nook (B&N) | ✗ |
| Star Fruit Books | ✓ |
| VIZ | ✗ |
- Quality varies by publisher, platform, and sometimes by book
- If you're not able to obtain a DRM-free copy you could lose access to your books if the platform closes
- Convenience of platform apps varies, consider testing them if you plan to read without removing DRM
- DRM-free does not always mean "free from identifiable info"
- Easy to circumvent DRM with some searching
- Caps out at x1920, anything that would be above that elsewhere is downscaled
- Not recommended other than for exclusives
- Easy to circumvent DRM with some searching
- Often has the highest quality for several publishers
- Recommended for quality, frequent DRM changes may impact the ease of DRM removal
- Medium difficulty circumventing DRM
- Standard quality
- Not recommended other than for exclusives or discounts
- Medium difficulty circumventing DRM
- Standard quality
- Not recommended other than for exclusives or discounts
- Easy to circumvent DRM
- Standard quality
- Recommended
- Completely DRM-free
- Limited time bundles
- Often the highest available quality (exporting PDFs)
- Recommended
- Easy to circumvent DRM with some searching
- Standard quality
- Recommended
- Very high quality on Comixology (~x3000+), haven't checked books released after Kindle HD changes
- High quality on their store (1800x)
- Decent quality elsewhere (x2048)
- Quality varies, usually decent to high
- Buy from their store when available
- DRM-free
- Hentai
- Very high quality (x3200)
- Buy from their store
- DRM-free
- Quality varies
- Buy from their store
- DRM-free
- Hentai (Irodori Aqua is their non-hentai imprint)
- Very high quality (x3200)
- Buy from their store or FAKKU!
- DRM-free
- Extremely high quality (x3840)
- Buy from their store
- DRM-free
- The most badass rockstar publisher (REAL)
- Quality varies, usually decent to high
- Buy from their store
- DRM-free
- Extremely high quality on Humble Bundle when available
- High to extremely high quality on Kindle HD (x2700+)
- Decent quality elsewhere (~x2278)
- Images are extremely compressed on their own store
- Shit quality everywhere
- Do not buy
- Older books are very to extremely high quality on Kindle HD (~x3000+)
- Recent books are decent quality on Kindle HD (x2565)
- Decent quality elsewhere (x2000)
- Basically the same no matter where you buy
- Decent quality (x2240)
- Quality varies
- Buy from their store
- DRM-free
- Basically the same no matter where you buy
- Decent quality for most modern titles (x2300)
- Low quality for most older titles (x1600)
- Decent quality for modern releases (~x2250)
- Extremely low quality on most platforms for older releases
- Apple Books currently offers the highest quality
- Upscaled on Comixology, haven't checked books released after Kindle HD changes
- Decent quality elsewhere (x2100-x2475)
- Basically the same no matter where you buy
- Low quality (x1350)
A similar gist I just came across.