Lately I’ve been reading magazines a lot more, and have been pondering where/how I should keep track of things like:
When does the next magazine come out?
I should check back on this series in x months, for a new volume
Chapters read that are not yet in 単行本 format
Which series am I reading in which magazines again?
I’m not concerned about Natively tracking. If a volume gets published, I’ll mark it when the book’s out… But just want somewhere to keep track of all this information. So wondering how everyone else does this
I don’t know of any apps or sites specifically for tracking magazine data, but you can use something like myanimelist or anilist to track which chapters you have read. Myanimelist also shows where each series is published.
You’ll still have to know the schedule for each individual magazine/series though. For that you could probably set up a simple spreadsheet and check it whenever you need to.
If you don’t want to track when new chapters come out yourself, you could use something like mangadex. It’s a manga scanlation site, but the important part for us is that, IIRC (it’s been a while since I’ve used it), they send out notifications when a new chapter of a series you’re reading comes out. You could use that as a notification for when to pick up a magazine again.
Note that the notification would be for the fan translated chapters, so the original chapters may have been out for some time already (Or may not be out yet if they translated from leaked chapters).
It’s not a perfect system, but Myanimelist for tracking chapters read + Mangadex for notification of new chapters might be good enough for you. There’s probably a better system, but I don’t have the time to go searching for it right now.
I’ve also come across something called “Whakoom” that is supposedly able to tell you the release date of magazines, but I don’t know if it’s for manga magazines, western magazines, or what. And I can’t access the site because it is giving me an error. It might be worth checking out to see if it works for you though.
You can get notifications from Book walker for release. Both Tankoubon and magazines. Also Authors. If you buy from there, it automatically notifies about the series you have bought. But I think you can also follow manually without buying anything.
Obviously a bit of a hack to use a shop like that. If something like natively or myanimelist would notify you, that would probably be cooler.
MAL also has no concept of how many chapters are out tho, which is frustrating. Maybe it’s a good idea tho, since I use it for anime already anyway
Didn’t realize Anilist has that ability too
I have a feeling this is gonna be my general answer
Mangadex isn’t ideal, cuz like you said it’s oriented around scanlations… And I dislike their UI… But maybe worth trying.
I can find manga magazines on there, and it lists the publication date, so I can at least get the info easily from that. Will have to check more. Thx!
Hmmm I’ll have to play around with that. It seems like they don’t email those notifications? But maybe I just turned that off at some point, bc too many emails…
It would certainly be great for tankoubon. I’ve definitely inadvertently dropped series while waiting for the next volume
I started giving MAL a try. I think I will use it going forward. Just need to fix my short term problem of catching up with each individual series (which all have different months they started, and different chapters they’re on)… Spreadsheets probably my only hope there.
Bookwalker’s notifications were almost useful, except you can only follow publisher or authors, and not series afaict… Which for magazine purposes - especially Yurihime (which lists different authors every month) - is not useful (you can auto-subscribe to pay for new magazines tho, so maybe they notify you like that?)
It looks like Kindle store has a follow feature tho, so giving that a try
Though I only later noticed how much it’s lacking in terms of keeping track of updates and what chapters I did or didn’t read (will probably edit it in manually later )
Do you use MAL only for magazines?
Because if they have a way to create my own entries for web comics (pixiv and etc) that will be a blessing
MAL doesn’t do magazines themselves btw, just individual series. Tho it has pages like this to see what’s been in each magazine, overall
While it has entries for manhwa like you’d find on say the webtoons app, I’m not sure if pixiv series would make it there, unless it’s something larger. There isn’t any sort of user-specific custom entry, but it’s probably possible to add new series to the site overall
Side note: MAL won’t let you mark something Completed, if it’s officially still Publishing. So something like Log Horizon (which is clearly never getting another release) can only be Reading, On Hold, or Dropped. And like I said it has no sense of volumes or chapters released for most series (only the completed ones).
Tbh I tend to forget pixiv exists… so the upside is I don’t feel the need to track anything on it (also can never remember what’s on pixiv vs pixiv comics, or what the difference even is)
)
(also can never remember what’s on pixiv vs pixiv comics, or what the difference even is)