Spotlight: The Beauty of Licensing, the Evils of Scanlating

[Eclipse]

An article from riseabove77 who talks about manga publishers, scanlations, and everything in between:


The Beauty of Licensing, the Evils of Scanlating

The scanlating of licensed manga is running rampant. Publishing companies even send a network of spies to leech on IRC. You have to be either stupid or naive to think that they are unaware of our existence. I happen to know for a fact that they are aware of us, though I cannot divulge my sources. There have been featured articles on scanlating in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle and The New York Times. Guess what, guys: our dirty little secret is out.

Suffice it to say that scanlating is a surefire way to get a publisher's attention. When you think about it, we provide them with a clean, translated version of titles in which they may or may not be interested, thereby making their acquisition process much easier. I, for one, scanlate for this very purpose. I want to show people out there that there are hundreds of unlicensed manga that are worthy of their attention.

I work for several scanlation groups and I am always amazed, nay, floored when my fellow staffers are disappointed when something is licensed. As far as I'm concerned, that is the ultimate goal. It's the reason we put our blood, sweat and tears into it. It's the reason we stay up until four in the morning editing or translating. It's the reason why we're so devoted to our task. But something recently has come to light. And that is that I, of course, am in the minority. I have come to the sad yet true conclusion that other people do not have as altruistic a goal as I and a select few do. A good friend of mine runs a scanlation group. She was telling me how crushed she was at the leecher response to her dropping a project which had recently been licensed by Viz. The group was criticized bitterly. You know what I say to those leechers? Stop being cheap bastards. I happen to know that Amazon ships everywhere in the world and the shipping fees are not that prohibitive. And your whining and complaining does nothing but strengthen our resolve to continue to scanlate quality manga, so long as it remains unlicensed. Not one of us is here to waste time, and scanlating licensed manga is surely a waste of time. Why do work that has already been done, and probably better?

I work in publishing myself, so I know what goes into the publishing of the book. I also know all too well how small the advances are on most books. So how does an author make money? Foreign rights, otherwise known as subsidiary rights. What does that mean, you might ask. Well, in this case, licensing. See, the authors take home roughly fifty percent of what foreign publishers pay for subsidiary rights and they make money on royalties (I say roughly, because it really depends on the contract. Some bigger authors may take home sixty, some may take home forty). But an author doesn’t actually earn any money on their work until their advance has earned out. This can take some time, which is why a lot of authors live hand-to-mouth. Not everyone can be a Rumiko Takahashi, you know.

So, basically, what I’m saying is very simple: when you scanlate licensed manga, you deprive manga-ka of their royalties. So do us all a favor: don’t scanlate licensed manga. And when the published version comes out in your country, support the author by purchasing the book. It’s the very least we can do.

Written by: riseabove77
Proofed by: RainyFrog
Edited by: Firedog