I’ve been a tad swamped by my to-do list recently so updates have been a little sparce, aside from my reviews, this past week. What does that mean? It means an end of the week random round-up of course! I’ve got a few things I’m putting together for posting so expect some fresh material and, of course, lots more reviews for books both amazing and not-so-much! But for now let’s get to the rounding shall we?
ComiPress has added a new website to their Backstage project, Yaoi Suki! I helped put together some of the information for this addition and really enjoyed going back through the short but sweet times Yaoi Suki had on the web and reexploring all the little crevices of it. Jen also mentioned my humble little site as a good source for boys’ love news! I think I’m still blushing a tad. Definately means I have to keep myself in gear around here doesn’t it? I’ve been gettin’ lazy on you recently! I highly recommend reading through the interview, it’s got a lot of interesting, fun and useful information for Yaoi Suki fans, missers, well-wishers, yaoi fans and website runners in general.
Speaking of boys’ love, I’m sure by now most of you have heard about the Youka Nitta plagirism issue after she was outed for tracing various advertisements and photographs for her art. I’ve been sitting on my thoughts about this for a while so expect a solo post about it in the near future. In the meantime, Gia kept on top of the issue with the general scoop, resulting effect and an amusing follow-up from one of the advertising companies whose photos were copied.
Remaining on the yaoi train, Yaoi Press has had a few notable updates in the past week with their convenient Twitter feed on their new blog. They’re still seeking submissions for their upcoming artbook, announced that some of their books have been picked up by Borders, and started up a mailing list newsletter. For Yaoi Press fans I definately recommend signing up for the newsletter as it’s chock full of information for readers, contributer hopefuls and the generally curious.
And finally for the boys-loving-boys of the day: For those who can’t get enough of ’em, Manga Jouhou has some reviews I’ve written for them posted: Invisible Boy (Vol. 02), Red, Love Lesson, Love Circumstances, and one of my absolute favourites in recent reading, A Strange and Mystifying Story (Vol. 01).
Tokyopop has put up a Beta version of their new site (via MangaBlog). Call me too-picky, but I don’t think it’s taken many steps in the right direction. I like that finding the manga section is tad easier (even if most of the links go to the wrong place right now), but it’s all still completely overshadowed by the slow loading time, cluttered community content and now endless lists of YouTube vids. I hold to my earlier thoughts that TP should seperate the manga information from this community set-up and allow their readers and consumers a simplier and more effecient way to find what they’re looking for. But this is only Beta afterall so who knows, things could still come together a little nicer. Check it out and share your thoughts on it!
And lastly, making this post’s header image relevant, a plug over to the Animaritime 2009 website where pre-registration is now open. If you’re in the east-coast of Canada March of next year then definately come check it out. You know you’d go just to meet me, right? It’s a great, comfortably sized convention that grows more and more every year and I know I for one am already looking forward to another fun year!
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TBH i find the TP beta site worse than the original. This one has to much wasted sapcem and yucktube for crying out loud!!
THeir site is still a pain to navigate, and they still seem to have this thing for flashy over useability
[…] Ferguson and Lissa Pattillo weigh in on Tokyopop’s beta website. General consensus is that it’s better than the […]
@Tiamat: I agree with you for the most part. When I read they had a new Beta version up I was excited for something really different (and improved), but certainly didn't get that. While they may have trimmed down the visual mess of the page and made the Manga/Comics button easier to find (instead of Shop like before), it's still a big clunky, slow-loading, mess with far too much difficulty finding anything about anything.
When Tokyopop announced the restructing and the split into two parts, I had hoped their website would do the same: one for manga and the other for… whatever the heck they're going for with the other stuff. Much disappointment in this regard it seems.