BookWalker is an ebook store that offers online reading through the web, has an iOS application (which also allows you to pay for purchases using Apple’s in-app-purchasing mechanism), and lets you do your account creation in English (through the English language ‘global’ storefront.) I like it, although I haven’t used much else.
Like many ebook stores it offers free books from time to time - these tend to fall into two categories:
期間限定価格: limited time pricing, which includes limited time discounts to zero yen; and
期間限定 無料 お試し版: limited time free trial versions, which are eventually removed from your account.
At any one time there are hundreds of zero yen 期間限定価格 on BookWalker, far too many for me to make sense of here.
I have written a python script that crawls BookWalker, and compares its findings with a (different) crawl of MangaUpdates to fuzzily match series titles that are tagged as “Award-Winning” or that enjoy user ratings of 7.5 or higher.
I will try to post here weekly. The MangaUpdates data will get updated about once a month, or as I remember.
I would welcome feedback on whether this format works well or whether this should just be an online spreadsheet.
Here’s a search query that lists all free books while trying to eliminate as many bite-sized preview editions as possible.
Buying stuff with coins itself generates coins.
Using coupons may deactivate promotions that raise coin percentages.
If you spot a nice deal (or even just a book you like), chances are there may be more where that came from if you click the links under 作品情報 like of course シリーズ and 著者 but also レーベル and 出版社.
(So far, at least) Bookwalker is surprisingly unrestrictive about taking screenshots.
New users should get +50% coins on their first purchase.
I know there are not many using BookLive but they usually have the same books for free. So the list should mostly be accurate for BookLive, too!
At least I just recently “bought” Chihayafuru 1-3 and Flying Witch 1-2 (when it was available a few months backs and it’s also available for free at the moment) on BookLive for free. I’m also putting Mushishi 1-3 in my cart right this moment, thanks for the list!
It’s quite baffling how close BookLive and BookWalker look to one another, even though they seem to be backed by entirely different companies. Are those Tsutaya points it rewards for purchases??
Thanks also for posting this - I signed up and they gave me a 50% off coupon I used to finally buy the omnibus edition of 日本人の知らない日本語, and it seems like they’re willing to sell me なぜ?どうして?科学のお話 2年生, which on BookWalker is limited to domestic sales only. Yay!
And probaby every other major site. I just looked up about 15 random currently free mangas from BookWalker and chcked Honto, eBookJapan and Amazon and they all had them for free, too. As well as those on the list in the OP.
Thank you, I really appreciate this. I get the emails from Bookwalker but usually don’t have the time to trawl through them. It’s a lot easier just looking at your list!
135 new items today (mostly 分冊版, or separated volumes - the Kiss manga label seems to call these プチキス, or “petite kisses”), but not much that I or the database of adapted titles recognised.
88 new items. Today we have a lot of work celebrating the life of mangaka Shotaro Ishinomori (active 1954-1998, Tezuka student, Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, Cyborg 009, etc) - but not a lot else.
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The lunar new year brings many free volumes themed around funerals and disability (including charming guide dog manga Happy!) but not much that I otherwise recognised.
In case anyone is wondering what else I’ve been working on lately, I’ve recently finished a program that takes the stroke order data from KanjiVG and uses it to generate custom handwriting worksheets. generator.py 道 犬 察 spits out an SVG ready for printing:
A large amount of Crayon Shin-Chan available today, which should be nostalgic for anyone who learned their first grammar points from Wayne Lammers’ Japanese the Manga Way book.
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