I might be wrong but I don't think that they meant it that way. I think it's more like they'll be like the publishers who would only provide the venue where the creators would meet the scanlators and see if the creator would like to work with the said scanlator. Creator do the work, find scanlators to translate their work and approve them and the result would be a free online reading for the fans. How the creator would earn their way of living from this? I don't really know since they never specified any method of revenue. Donations? I think the creators would get more from a reliable source with their current publishers. Maybe MH would delve into creating merchandise for the creators?.. But that is also being done by their current publisher.

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Avatar made by Chocolatychip.

theres no incentive for publishing houses to agree to this plan. theres no incentive for any established mangaka to agree with this plan. most leechers wont donate a cent, and most non-WSJ mangaka really dont care about their fans outside of japan because most of their merchandise revenue comes from inside japan. Not to mention that for a site like Openmanga to turn a profit, they would eagerly sell out other manga sites like onemanga, mangafox, or maybe even this one.

it seems as though the people who support this idea the most are wishing and pining to make their manga hobby a their dream job, problem is that for their dream to come true they dont mind destroying the rest of the scanning community.

Ha! That's not true! I know mangatraders and some scanlation sites survive off of donations from fans to pay for their bandwidth, so it's not true that the average person isn't willing to donate to keep something good afloat.

from what i read OpenManga is somewhat like an online publisher. mangaka can send in their work to be published there. i doubt we will ever see any title that been published in magazine like JUMP will be there. So no One Piece,Bleach,Naruto etc...

Most probably only original series will be available..till OpenManga proven itself to be a good platform for mangaka to earn some income, my guess is most manga will be at doujinshi level.

It's a great idea, but sadly, I don't see this going anywhere. None of the big publishers will use it, because they're too busy doing their own thing, stuck in the rut of traditional publishing. It'd be awesome to see something like this take off, but Japanese publishers have never seemed interested in foreign markets unless there's up-front money for a license, or they're actively losing money (which, as the complaint is recently, due to rampant piracy, which is related to scanlation, but that's really only a side effect of it).

Until traditional media outlets realize that in today's market, digital distribution is the only viable, long-term option, we're going to have this chasm between what fans want, and what publishers provide. And sadly, everyone loses in the end.

Didn't they also have ads to help them with that? Correct me if I'm wrong but I think bandwidth expenses are very, very different from utility bills, food expenses, mangaka's materials expenses etc...

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Smells fishy and I highly doubt it'd work.

They need to work on their executive summary writing skills if they are going to keep trying to pitch business plans.

R.I.P. MangaHelpers.

I think this is a step in the right direction - but for it to be of any success, us manga fans will have to support it. Mainstream or not, a good story is a good story. If this project is seen to have some success, maybe we will have more mainstream writers signing up to gain exposure.

Pfft, this project is dead in the water. For it to succeed they'd need the support of PUBLISHERS, not artists and they already stated that's not going to happen. At least it's good that they're leaving translations up, other than that RIP MH.

First they tried to sell out now they are trying to jump ship at (most likely) the scanlators expense. i'm guessing they're only going to allow certain works from certain authors, who will have control over the scanlators. I used to do it for a few years, and would be willing to listen to the mangaka's wishes if he contacted us however i dont really want to have to follow the rules set by a group acting as a middle man between the two of us.

You can't really control scanlators. What we do is illegal now, and if we don't like what they try to make us do then we just go back to releasing illegally underground if necessary.

This whole thing sounds like the self publishing at the Lulu.com site. They have a feature where an independent author can publish ebooks to sell and offer the option of readers buying a hard copy (which is ridiculously expensive b/c it's published on order) of their work. Some independent authors even have their own merchandise line through cafe press. Openmanga sounds like a combination of both sites and plans to offer the digital media for free with translations. I don't know how well it will work, but I agree with the rest that we won't have big name mangaka from Japan on the site. It'll be more like wanna be mangakas looking to get noticed by a publishing company hoping the new site will be their big break.

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Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am)

The way I see it is that it will work only for the following:

1. Out of print manga that American and Japanese publishers think is unprofitable to reprint just because some lonely fan wants to read it.
2. Doujinshi. These are often times art for art's sake made by mangaka's. American publishers definitely will not even bat an eye to publish it and aging female american translators will piss on their panties from the unimaginable obscenities contained in them.
3. Start-up mangakas. They need the advertising to make them popular. I know that there are sites where self-published comic ( even music ) artist freely put their work over the internet to garner interest.
4. One shots. American publishers are only interested in serialized ones with a predictable stream of revenues. It does not makes sense to publish a oneshot without the fiscal data in Japan to support it.
5. Unlicensed manga. There are many mangas, especially the smutty ones that are not within the radar of american publishers.

I think it's a good idea but under certain conditions. Also, like pharmaceutical drugs, I think Manga and any other literature should have an expiration-date like patent. It's content is free after X years.

Also, I really hate it when GREEDY American Publishers just cash in on a japanese artist's work. They're just overhead cost. Rather, I would have the Japanese publisher translate the work, setup shop in the us, print it and tie-up with barnes and noble, amazon or some other bookstore for distribution. That way, revenues get sent to the japanese without some cocky american publishing mogul throwing a tantrum over scanlators providing faster and even better translation of a work.