Quote from cmertb
But manga typesetting is still somewhat harder per line than its anime counterpart -- subtitle timing. Ditto for cleaning versus encoding. Now consider this in terms of revenue per staff hour spent. Given how many people will look at an anime episode compared to a manga chapter (even if we assume ~5 weekly manga chapters [100 pages] = 1 anime ep), you see a problem, right? Now consider the competition (i.e. fansubbers vs scanlators): you can read any scanlated manga on an online aggregator within 60 seconds of you deciding to try it. Finding fansubs you want is a bit more challenging, not to mention the time it takes to dl them. I suppose CR is actually easier in terms of effort alone, without even considering money, than getting fansubs. Completely the opposite seems to be true of scanlation. Even if a legit manga publisher decided to give manga away for free with whatever half-baked DRM scheme they come up with (like a Flash reader), fans would still more likely go to current aggregator sites where there's more choice and no DRM.
I don't know how much CR is making, but if they're barely breaking even, for example, a CR-like scanlator would be deeply in the red.
I'm more and more convinced that given the current scanlation scene, legit manga translation can't hope to compete. Only crowd funding seems to be a viable option to me (something like estimate the cost of translation beforehand, get money from fans to do the work in advance, and then count any additional sales as profit). And even that is doubtful without some ruthless C&D'ing, i.e. first you gotta remove a scanlator before the fans will pay up to continue a title.
I don't know how much CR is making, but if they're barely breaking even, for example, a CR-like scanlator would be deeply in the red.
I'm more and more convinced that given the current scanlation scene, legit manga translation can't hope to compete. Only crowd funding seems to be a viable option to me (something like estimate the cost of translation beforehand, get money from fans to do the work in advance, and then count any additional sales as profit). And even that is doubtful without some ruthless C&D'ing, i.e. first you gotta remove a scanlator before the fans will pay up to continue a title.
You couldn't have said it any better.
On a side question, don't anime studios provide companies like Crunchyroll with the raws and the scripts together? Would remove the need for translating on-the-fly from the raw.
Last edited by Sayori x3 at 10:23 pm, Mar 17 2013
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