Currently I'm looking for two particular out of print series that have no RAWs available anywhere and the shop where I usually buy my raw manga from doesn't have them (they tend to only have relatively recently released manga in stock anyway).

I've seen the series sold on Amazon.jp, but they have horrendous shipping costs to any place outside of japan.

I've also seen a company that will order things for you from japanese shops, but they add handling fee of 15% of the ordered price. If the handling fee is less than 15$, they make it 15$ and they don't name the shipping cost (which one you have to pay separately).

Anyone knows cheaper alternatives to those two?

no raws available usualy means you just did not look hard enough

dont use fancy transportation if you dont like it to cost
have it shipped by boat or something

you could see if mandarake have what you are looking for...and if they are cheaper
http://ekizo.mandarake.co.jp/shop/en/

I do look hard for RAWs, but I was still unable to find them. If you know a better way of finding them, I wouldn't mind hearing about it, but I'm quite sure this (downloading stuff) is something that is not allowed to be discussing here.

In case of amazon you cannot chose the type of transportation.

I've checked them and I didn't find the manga in question nor even a few more recent volumes that I was unable to buy at my usual shop.

Normally I use YesAsia to get my raw manga volumes. They have a little bit high prices for volumes (comparable to what you get on amazon if you include handling fees), but the shipping is free. It takes a month for your ordered items to reach you though.

I've used From Japan for a few years and they are great. They can order off of Yahoo Japan Auctions which has almost everything if you don't mind picking up used books.

You can pick cheaper shipping methods and they have a shipping fee calculator to let you know how much you're looking at. But it is still going to be pretty expensive, their commission is low (200yen per item) but the shipping usually hits you for $40-50 USD.

But I kinda agree with TaoPaiPai, what manga are you looking for that you can't find raws for? I usually don't have trouble finding them unless it's a really obscure or old manga.

Thanks for this site. Their calculator shown that ordering the whole series (5 volumes, used, cheap shipping included) would cost me roughly 30$ which is acceptable I guess. I've got to give them a try tomorrow and they say they accept PayPal.

One of the manga is somewhat obscure, had RAWs on the internet for one volume (out of 2), but those are practically unavailable now. Ordering this one (on it's own) would end up being too expensive to be worth the hassle. The other one has RAWs available, but only for the first volume (out of 5). Not all interesting series get scanned.

Someone once posted a site but I can't find it, basically it was a Japanese site where you could buy digital copies of manga in Japanese. You might try one of those sites.

Try BK1, it's probably the cheapest book store that ships directly from Japan.

Here's an English guide to ordering from them.

Even with the guide honto isn't that easy to use and if I remember right some things are not 100% clear, like:
- the whole shop is in japanese (including all the shipment info etc.)
- when you register you have to provide a japanese address (the system won't accept a non japanese one); you can provide a non japanese address later on though
- *if I remember right, to pay you have to provide your credit card information and you will be charged when they send you the item, however you will only know the real cost after they charge you (they don't guarantee that the shipping price will be as written on the shipment info site); and no paypal

*unless I'm confusing them with another shop

The expensive proxy for importing stuff from japan that I was mentioning earlier is called White Rabbit Express. From Japan seems to be cheaper.

Last edited by jahu at 3:53 pm, Apr 5 2014

Update:
My order from From Japan came a few days ago. The deal wasn't bad, but when you buy something for 300yen and end up paying 3000yen (including the product price and internal shipping) to have it shipped to you, it feels wrong somehow. The waiting time was long too (about a month), but I got used to it from using YesAsia.

In the end the whole thing (5 volumes of out of print manga with no RAWs on the net) took around 25-30$

I guess I'll be making more orders. The first one was for testing purpose, though I actually wanted the manga

Glad to hear you liked the service. I agree it is expensive but it's the best option I've found to buy out of print manga. And you found 5 volumes for 300 yen? What a steal!

The great thing about From Japan is that you get points for being a frequent shopper. It's not that amazing, but it feels good to knock off 500 yen from the shipping fee.

Here is a small update on the shops I used.

YesAsia:
They increased minimal order price from 25$ to 40$ if you want to get free shipping. If you combine this with their poor product availability, it makes it hard to make an order that qualifies for free shipping (which you generally want to get). So when I finally order something, I end up ordering some manga that I don't really wanted to buy to reach the free shipping threshold...

FromJapan:
It works best when you order a whole series from a Yahoo auction (you can buy a whole series for next to nothing and FromJapan will only charge you the 200yen provision fee once, regardless of the amount of volumes).

If you buy from one of the shops that offer used manga, you might end up paying half the price of a new one (especially if you made sure to order them from one place). Unfortunately it's also possible to pay much more if you buy each item from a different shop (because you'll be paying for shipping from each of the stores and don't forget the 200yen provision for each item you buy using FromJapan). For some reason Rakuten (one of main shops that you can buy stuff from using FromJapan), starting today, started blocking me from viewing their products, which makes it difficult to verify them when you order them through FromJapan. Using a japanese proxy does seem to help. I suspect that Rakuten is trying to force non-japanese people to use their newly opened international service, which currently kind of sucks (poor item selection and expensive shipment).

When you buy stuff from Rakuten using FromJapan, make sure you actually buy them from one shop (or as few as possible). Rakuten might be a single service, but there are many shops within it.

Also make sure not to order (or pack as one shipment) to many manga volumes. If your package goes above 2kg (about 10 volumes of manga), you won't be able to use the cheapest shipment methods. You will be only able to chose surface mail (30$+ and shipment might take 3 months) or another shipment method (at this point they all cost above 50$, some of them still take a month to reach you and the ones that get to you faster, cost even more). The cheap shipment that is available for packages below 2kg costs about 15$ (note that this includes the internal shipment fee which may vary, the price for sending the items to you alone is around 10$) and takes a month to reach you.

If you miscalculate your order or shipment size, you won't be able to change anything in it easily. If you decide to change something at this point, FromJapan will charge you an extra 20$. They also make it easy for you to miscalculate something as they provide next to no information about the size and weight of the items in your order (usually the shops you buy the items from don't provide much information about those either). FromJapan also reserves themselves the right to charge you extra 5$ for repacking your shipment into a new box (I haven't encountered that yet).

My first order from FromJapan took over month to reach me (nearly 2 weeks for internal shipment and about a month for international one), the second came to me in less than 2 weeks (the international shipment took just a week). I'm still waiting for my third order that weighted above 2kg and was suppose to spend 3 months in shipment...

Starting with April the consumption tax in Japan increased from 5% to 8%, so manga prices will probably increase too (if they haven't already).

Last edited by jahu at 1:56 am, Apr 6 2014

I've bought my fair share (Probably over 600 now) of books over the years, but the best way is to have a contact in Japan buy the books for you & ship them. Save for that, I use:

http://www.aclimatesolution.com/

You tell 'em what you want, they get it for you & ship it. Simple enough.

________________
-GGpX

I run Illuminati-Manga. You're welcome.

I tested buying from http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/ and they appear to be similar in terms of price to YesAsia, but their prices (when you include shipping) are wee bit cheaper and they process and ship orders much faster than YesAsia.