In a major deal for the large and growing audience of American manga fans, Kodansha USA Publishing has announced a deal to make its massive catalog available to libraries and schools through LibraryPass’s Comics Plus.
“With increased interest in manga around the world we’re proud to be able to offer an expanding catalog of our digital manga to libraries and their customers,” said Yae Sahashi, v-p of sales & marketing at Kodansha USA Publishing, a subsidiary of Japan’s largest publishing company. “We see this partnership with LibraryPass as an amazing way to engender and grow manga readership in libraries, schools, and beyond.”
Kodansha USA Publishing is the English-language publisher of some of the world’s most recognizable manga properties, including Attack on Titan and Fire Force, and also publishes Japan-based fiction and nonfiction books. Under the deal, more than 200 titles are available now in Comics Plus, including popular series like Chi’s Sweet Home, FAIRY TAIL, and Battle Angel Alita, with the collection set to grow to more than 1,000 titles over the summer.
Through Comics Plus, library readers can borrow thousands of digital comics, graphic novels, and manga from their school or library—with unlimited simultaneous access for online and offline reading.
In conjunction with Kodansha’s signing, Comics Plus has added new manga-specific categories like Kodomomuke, Shonen, Shoujo, Seinen, Josei, and Yaoi/Yuri, to help manga fans to dive deeper into the collection and discover new titles.
“Manga is by far the most requested category from our customers, so we’re thrilled to partner with one of the largest manga publishers in the world to make their titles available to libraries and schools with unlimited, simultaneous access for readers,” said Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, LibraryPass’ chief content officer, in a release. “Kodansha has an impressively diverse catalog of titles for every age range and interest, and we’ll have nearly doubled our manga collection to approximately 3,000 titles by the end of the summer.”
