Interesting. (Recurring topic.)
Japanese, U.S. Manga Publishers Unite To Fight Scanlations
“Go back 2 years and track these sites and you’ll find an inverse relationship between the rise of traffic on these scanlation sites and the decline in U.S. manga sales,” said Kurt Hassler, publishing director of Yen Press and a former graphic novel and manga buyer for Borders Books and Music. Hassler points out that early fan-driven scanlation sites were aimed at making manga available overseas at a time when English translations of manga were rare. Indeed these fan scanlators would remove their online translations when the books were licensed for the English-language market.
That’s no longer the case, said Hassler. “These sites are run as businesses and include direct scans of licensed English-language manga editions. Some even include our copyright notices. We don’t want to have to do this but publishers are now focused on this problem.”
Besides the fact that the last (quoted) paragraph doesn't talk about scanlations, I can see where both sides are coming from.
I'm someone who both reads and buys, not all, but a lot of the available stuff. If I'd depend on the huge lags between officially translated, published Manga here, I guess the next time I'd buy a book would be in over a year? Quite possibly I'll be busier with other things by then, while I get immensely invested emotionally with a lot of manga, I quickly go through stages of waiting patiently (days to a week), craving (days to a week, depending on the story), hoping and waiting (two weeks plus) and resignating (>a month between chapters).
To me, non-profit(!!!) scanlations are gifts that promote new Manga to me, excellent works I'd never have found otherwise. A lot of less popular Manga will never get published here, and it makes me sad to think that there will be more and more beautiful things I don't know about.
The saddest part is that I'm someone who imports/buys japanese Manga that I can't read, because the graphics are more stunning and the books feel great, but I only do it when I've at least read scanlations beforehand. I do not understand anything of the written japanese, and for that price I'm not going to buy a book I don't understand a word of. Or rather, I have priorities and can't afford "useless" luxury when I know my family needs to live and feed.
...
Actually, right now I think one good solution might be if the japanese publishers would hire some of the scanlation groups (regardless of their respective countries, in the times of the www it's not necessary for them to live in the same town or even the same country, as we see), to do their originally non-profit work for a salary. In return the publishers could present these manga online and create an access for overseas customers. For example pay per view as in "subscriptions" to one manga each for the whole year, and "test subscriptions" or "snoop previews" for let's say five chapters of anything, a mixed bag to tst out new stuff. Prices could be oriented at the fees for buying mp3s online or be set up in a similar way. I would still buy at least the prints I'm buying as of now.
I'm working and could afford that. It would be a solution that might be a good compromise, and actually give some people new jobs. I don't believe the decline in sold books is proportional to the presence of online sources. Bad management, loveless translations, long time lags and bad images of international publishers are in my opinion also responsible for a big part of the decline in overall sales.
“Go back 2 years and track these sites and you’ll find an inverse relationship between the rise of traffic on these scanlation sites and the decline in U.S. manga sales,” said Kurt Hassler, publishing director of Yen Press and a former graphic novel and manga buyer for Borders Books and Music. Hassler points out that early fan-driven scanlation sites were aimed at making manga available overseas at a time when English translations of manga were rare. Indeed these fan scanlators would remove their online translations when the books were licensed for the English-language market.
That’s no longer the case, said Hassler. “These sites are run as businesses and include direct scans of licensed English-language manga editions. Some even include our copyright notices. We don’t want to have to do this but publishers are now focused on this problem.”
Besides the fact that the last (quoted) paragraph doesn't talk about scanlations, I can see where both sides are coming from.
I'm someone who both reads and buys, not all, but a lot of the available stuff. If I'd depend on the huge lags between officially translated, published Manga here, I guess the next time I'd buy a book would be in over a year? Quite possibly I'll be busier with other things by then, while I get immensely invested emotionally with a lot of manga, I quickly go through stages of waiting patiently (days to a week), craving (days to a week, depending on the story), hoping and waiting (two weeks plus) and resignating (>a month between chapters).
To me, non-profit(!!!) scanlations are gifts that promote new Manga to me, excellent works I'd never have found otherwise. A lot of less popular Manga will never get published here, and it makes me sad to think that there will be more and more beautiful things I don't know about.
The saddest part is that I'm someone who imports/buys japanese Manga that I can't read, because the graphics are more stunning and the books feel great, but I only do it when I've at least read scanlations beforehand. I do not understand anything of the written japanese, and for that price I'm not going to buy a book I don't understand a word of. Or rather, I have priorities and can't afford "useless" luxury when I know my family needs to live and feed.
...
Actually, right now I think one good solution might be if the japanese publishers would hire some of the scanlation groups (regardless of their respective countries, in the times of the www it's not necessary for them to live in the same town or even the same country, as we see), to do their originally non-profit work for a salary. In return the publishers could present these manga online and create an access for overseas customers. For example pay per view as in "subscriptions" to one manga each for the whole year, and "test subscriptions" or "snoop previews" for let's say five chapters of anything, a mixed bag to tst out new stuff. Prices could be oriented at the fees for buying mp3s online or be set up in a similar way. I would still buy at least the prints I'm buying as of now.
I'm working and could afford that. It would be a solution that might be a good compromise, and actually give some people new jobs. I don't believe the decline in sold books is proportional to the presence of online sources. Bad management, loveless translations, long time lags and bad images of international publishers are in my opinion also responsible for a big part of the decline in overall sales.