Where to BUY manga!
I’m an art collector and a hoarder. I love owning the physical manga books. The sight of full bookshelves makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. If you’re interested in purchasing manga, there are many options. For stuff licensed and published in English, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any of the other usual online retailers are a good bet. Rightstuf.com also has a lot of good sales. If you live outside of the US, I hear that bookdepository.com; ships internationally. For Digital manga releases, check out Comixology I especially love all the KodanshaUSA shoujo manga on there!
If you’re interested in purchasing manga in Japanese, there are also a lot of good options.
- Kinokuniya Book Web: If you’re ordering manga online, this, I think, is your best option. They have free shipping on orders over $50. If you’re looking for a series I talk about on this site, try plugging in the ISBN# that I list on my summaries into their Japanese book search box. If you get no results, try removing teh hyphens and searching again. If the book is not out of print, they should be able to get it for you. Even if the site lists it as out of stock in their US stores, they can special order it from Japan. The nice thing is that the free shipping includes these things, so you aren’t paying for shipping from Japan.
- Amazon Japan (japanese): Yeah, the Amazon JP site is in Japanese, but the ISBN search works here too, so you should be able to find things. And they have an option to switch to English on the display pages and checkout process, so it’s possible to order here even if you don’t know Japanese. Their individual book prices are better than at Kinokuniya, but the shipping cost makes up the difference.
- Honto (formerly known as BK1) (japanese)
- Jahoo (Yahoo Japan Auctions – Japanese): This can be tricky because a lot of sellers won’t ship overseas. You may need to use an Auction Deputy Service like Tenso.
- Mandarake
- Rightstuf
Places to Read Manga Online
Most of the comments I get on this site ask where to read the series I talk about. Well, I have to admit, I’m not much help there. All of the manga I talk about here are books in Japanese that I physically own. I’m pretty big on supporting artists and creators. This means buying actual physical copies of books or reading manga online from legal sources, not bootleg scanlation aggregator sites based in China or pirate manga apps.
If you’re in the U.S., there ARE some places where you can legally read manga online! Some of them for free even! Totally legit and given the stamp of approval from Japan and everything.
The best list of Legal Manga sites is at Yatta-tachi. They are fantastic at keeping up with what sites are out there. I would check there first.
This is my original small list. Yatta-tachi has a much better list.