The Renta! Experience

On a rare occasion when somebody uses the contact form on my blog, they sent an email about an affiliate link for Renta!. This email reminded me of my own Renta account which I haven’t visited for half a year.

But first…

What is Renta!?

Yes, the exclamation point is included. 😛

Renta! is an ebook store from the Japanese company Papyless.

Taken from their website:

• Read all content online instantly, without the need to install any programs.

• All content can be previewed.

• Prices start from $1.

• We translate manga, so we have a lot of exclusive content.

• Users can choose to rent titles for 48 hours or an unlimited period.

• Users have the choice to pay for things directly by card, or to first buy “points”, which they can then use to read e-books.

• We handle translation, lettering, proofreading and E-pub distribution in-house.

• We sell e-book content via PCs, smartphones, and tablets, based on commission.

• We only accept content from legally-recognized publishers or agencies.

• We currently do not accept self-published works.

Renta! is available in both English and Japanese. You have to register for both websites. Joining one doesn’t automatically mean a member of the other site.

So if you want to practice your Japanese language skills, you can head over to the second link. But for the sake of this post, I’ll be talking about the English website only, as I don’t have experience with the Japanese one.

In the past, I rented about 4 books. I chose the unlimited renting because I felt like I’ll re-read them (which never happened like with my physical books lol). Mind you, there’s a lot of hesitation on my part before I decided to make an account. I weighed in a couple of things before I joined.

1. Renting

I wasn’t really into the idea of “renting”. It’s just so temporary. Even if I paid for unlimited renting, once the company takes the series down or if anything happens to the site, it would disappear along with my money.

But thinking about it now, it’s not much different from other apps where you pay to read a series. It would still disappear, one way or another, someday, somehow.

Then again, I conditioned myself about the problems of digital products when I embraced ebooks. So it’s not much of a problem for me. But might be for others.

 2. Pricing

I’m a big fan of digital reads mostly because of the price.

The Japanese ebooks I buy usually cost me around $3-4. A lot of times, I buy from Rakuten Kobo. If they have a campaign, I can get the volumes for free or if I have a coupon (which Rakuten Kobo generously gives) I can get even more books at a lower price.

When I checked the prices for Renta!, each book costs about $7 or $1-2 per chapter, depending on how long you’re going to rent it. Beware though, Renta! uses the term volume even if it’s actually a chapter. For example, in this series

It says volume 6 when it’s actually chapter 6. So you might be thinking that you’re getting 6 entire books, which looks really cheap but get just one book instead.

Going back to the price, one book is equivalent to a translated physical book. This actually made me think twice. I chose Japanese ebooks over physical books, translated or not, because they are half the price of English books.

3. Availability

While Renta! claims that their titles are available for PC, smartphones, and tablets, it’s only available on PC for me. The thing is, the Renta! app is not available on my phone. Such a shame. I tried many times, but it’s still the same.

I accessed that page using the Google Play Store website on my browser. My friend tried it on the Play Store app and got the not available in your country message.

I’m not really a fan of reading on my computer. I already spent so much time on it that I’d rather have my free time/leisure reading using other gadgets.

I guess it’s not their fault. But it still feels like I’m being limited compared with other manga reading apps.

4. Available titles

Just going to the website you can probably guess the titles offered. There are four most popular categories.

Don’t ask me what’s the “Love” category. I’m guessing that’s Renta’s term for smut. Also, when you use the dropdown menu, Harlequin is replaced by “Romance”. Confusing much haha.

There are also Seinen and Shounen titles. But the Seinen category is littered with smut. For shounen, other than Black Jack and Mythical Detective Loki, I don’t know the rest.

So, it’s safe to assume that Renta! focuses more on romance and smutty manga.

Having said all that,

Why did I rent books and still considering renting more?

For guilty pleasure. 😂

I mentioned above that they mostly have romance, BL, and PWP manga.

And that’s just right up my alley. 😏

Renta! has lots of BL titles. They release fast too! I love how they don’t just release the works of the big names from BL world, but also from lesser known authors. A lot of times, I’m surprised they have certain titles which would probably take years to have a translated physical copy.

The translations are on point too. Well, I’m not really picky about translations as long as they are not as horrible as this.

Do I recommend this site?

Yes, if you want to support reading manga legally. I also want to recommend this for BL readers who want to broaden their horizon and read other authors. While Renta! seems to have more smutty manga, I assure you, I’ve seen some titles containing heavy plot too. Again, I can only speak for the BL titles.

But if you’re mostly reading certain authors, the likes of Takarai Rihito, then Renta is not for you. Better look for other sites like June, maybe. (Though Renta! have Yoneda Kou, you might want to check out Twittering Birds Never Fly if you haven’t /wink)

About the affiliate link, I decided to give it a shot. There’s no harm in trying so why not. I already went ahead and placed a Renta! banner on the sidebar.

Rest assured that my posts won’t be affected. If I don’t like a certain series, I’ll be honest and say so through my posts. I won’t say otherwise just so I could lure you and buy from Renta!.

I’ll be adding links on the manga available from them too. Using my link to sign up and buy, I’ll get a commission. The funds will go into maintaining the site and perhaps, to a cup of milk tea to keep me awake lol.

If you want to check out Renta!, I recommend two of my favorite manga available on their website. These are the links to my posts to help you decide.

• Ichimai Goshi Fetish (Bodysuit Fetish)
• Joukyouju no Hatsukoi Case Study (First-love Case-study)

Have fun reading!