Yes, I've made the same topic on batoto xD The initial costs are on me, but I'm moving to increase the base capital searching for investors and taking part in startup competitions. But I haven't much expectation on that xD If this seems go well but I will not have enough money, I will probably go for a loan; it shouldn't be necessary though.
However I plan to cover the bigger costs (employing professional translators for the QA team and all the others key figures) through the crowdfunding

I think you came to the right place to talk about your project. Because here roams people who love manga a lot and are very addicted to it.
Personally I've been thinking about doing something similar to this for years. So I understand your feelings about the situation.
I think you've heard this before but life is cruel. What I mean is, it's next to impossible to ever satisfy e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e needs. Seriously, don't try it.
I would suggest you to do more investigation on this subject and explore more deeply the needs and capacities of these two parties. Your ideas have a lot of ground for improvement. And there are goals you need to give up.


1. If you charge money per view, you won't get the same amount of people to read hence destroying the main motive for scanlators to work for.
2.Translators should rarely be hired.
3.Maybe if you do some research on Korean Webtoons translated to English Officially allowed you'll see how the reactions would be like.

Well good luck. This is also a dream of mine not matter what. So if there's something I can help with, I will

Last edited by frodfy at 8:56 pm, Jun 9 2016

That's true xD I'm receiving much more good answers here than on others forums xD


I know I can't make everyone happy, my aim is to make everyone involved in the project happy xD It is really important that the two partners will be in harmony or it will quickly crumble.
They can't get all they want (eg: lots of control for Publishers; access to all the manga for Scangroups; everything free for Users), but I can provide a nice common ground that I'm sure will satisfy them ^^ And if I'm wrong about it, well... it just fails! But I'm confident xD
But yes, I know the project can be enhanced, that's why I'm talking about this since now even if there's not much concrete yet xD I want to make this as perfect as I can and discussions with other fans & scangroups sure help


It's not exactly per view, but per chap. Once you buy a chap, you can read it whenever you want and even download it! But yes, the total amount users could be less, but I think they will be enough ^^
I don't agree with the scanlators motive though. In my humble opinion, they scanlate to share their passion with others AND let the manga thrive! I'm confident that if there is a legal way to do so, one that not damage the mangaka at all, they will choose this one instead of the usual gray area. The majority of them have strong ethics and remove licensed contents right away. It will be basically the same thing
To all scangroups' members who read this, please correct me if I'm wrong!


I agree and that's why I will not hire them xD They will be partners and collaborators as much as the Publishers and will be granted total freedom, so they can let it be a simple hobby. I think I wrote this on the first post, but I understand passion and know how easily spoiled it can be. My first priority is to keep scanlating fun and rewarding!


The only site I know is LINE/Webtoons, but its focus is on self-publishing and there isn't any publisher involved. They are the main publisher xD Much easier :'(
Could you please point me to some resource? ^^


It's refreshing to find other people with the same dream, that's great! xD And sure, anyone can help the project, you can talk about it with your friends and perhaps invite them to join the discussion ^^ Another big help will be PM me a list of scangroups you like, if you can include some way to contact them in it will be great! I will contact them right away and try to take them on board, or you can do this yourself if you want to help really a lot XD
You can also PM me your email, so that when the first prototype of the site come online, I can notify you directly -w-
Plus anything else you can come up with xD
For example, do you ever tried to contact some publishers and the likes? Have you done some past research that you think could aid the project? Do you see any problems that I haven't tackled yet? Do you have a better solution than the one I've proposed?
I'm greedy for information, anything will help!

I'll tell you what, if you're willing to click the link in my signature and find my email you can count me as on board. I'm guessing the "start date" would be whenever you somehow get professional translators.

________________
The best translator around: @Koru_tan for updates

To be honest, I've already stalkered your blog and found the mail (nice one lol), but I prefer this way
That's said, thank you very much for your collaboration! Do you think you can spread the word to the Raven Scans too, please? :3
_________________________________________________ ___________

I have two questions for you all: what is the most annoying thing of the today online reader? And what is the most annoying thing of scanlating? :3

Last edited by iazeru at 3:44 pm, Jun 10 2016

I can already tell this isn't going to go well on the basis Quality Assurance relies on the user to report, and most users for this kind of service do not have knowledge of the Japanese language or artistic integrity of the editing process itself, much less care to report a few spelling errors. Commending your effort but i suggest you prepare a better plan for your staff.

________________
I wish our profiles had a description section.

Do you think you can pay for your team through crowdfunding for a decent amount of time? Even if you're able to cover the initial costs, sustaining a team of translators, someone who manages legal aspects of your business, promotion, QA, and so on, is not something you'll be able to keep up only through crowdfunding. Like I said, and as far as I know, decent professional translators don't come cheap. (And if you did happen to think of crowdsourcing translators for instance, you'll be confronted with absolute garbage, you can trust me on that.)

I want you to succeed though, that's not it. I mean, you idea sounds fantastic if it were to be realized, but it just doesn't seem that easy to do so. But if you ever do get it off the groud, and you are looking for dependable translators, or someone with experience to help on your communication with companies and the like, feel free to contact me. If work happens to be slow at the time, I'm sure I could be a great help.



This link exactly proves you SHOULD hire translators you can trust, who have a decent record, reputation... and not waste good money on some shady company, because you want to save a few bucks. This guy probably contacted some crowdsourcing company that severely underpay "translators" (read: housewives, students, etc.) to translate to a language they're hardly even proficient at.

Uhm, I think the upfront quality check + revision of the firsts couple of chaps for each scangroups should be enough to ensure the overall quality. However, I will be very glad to listen to a better idea or even just an intuition on the matter ^^



Sorry, but I feel like you misunderstand the project ^^" Only the initial phase will be sustained by a crowdfunding (this also has a strategic value), after that the business will go on thanks to its own revenues When an user buy a chap, the profit is shared among the publisher, the scangroup and my company. And yes, this is an hell of a project and come up with lots of costs and complexities, but I think it is sustainable and, more importantly, will be great to have as an user!
I also aim to employee the best people I can find, so yes, the team will probably eat a big chunk of revenues and another big chunk will go to marketing xD

********************************************************************* ******************

So, anyone who feel like answering to the questions? xD

What is the most annoying thing of the today online reader? And what is the most annoying thing of scanlating? :3

Last edited by iazeru at 5:10 pm, Jun 11 2016

First, my mail is a no-brainer, user at gmail.Though a PM will usually work faster.


I believe dreams are meant to fight for them. So don't think about failure, think of yet to be successful.


1.No 2.No 3.Rather than not tackled, more like not conquered.4.No, clearly if someone had a solution, the problem would not exist.

Sorry for the short answers and late reply but I'm pretty "lazy" when it comes to writing. More like, I reread and reread, only to end up deleting to write yet again the same line with different wording. It's the same either on my mother tongue or in any other. I envy people who just read then answer back.
Though I really want to try to answer the other questions, it will take way too long to write so I'll answer them sometime in the (most likely distant) future, unless I feel others have answered them.

Thank you, I'll go with the PM then xD


Me too! But it is also important to recognize risks and account for them. Very, very, very rarely things go as you expected it to xD :'(
I'm a perfectionist and I've learned this the hard way! I think the "most perfect" system isn't one that can never be wrong (impossible to achieve), but one that has the ability to recognize and swiftly solve problems and errors.


No problem, but I will love to have an answer, I think it could make the whole project better! So, please, give it your best! xD

The most annoying thing to me personally is when I have to click to get to the next page. I'd rather have a vertical scroll system where the whole chapter is just loaded all at once (or at least some pages in advance). Mavo has a system like this without any special unnecessary extras, and it works perfectly, also on mobile.

What I dislike about amateur scanlation is that in my experience, since you are not a proper business, people aren't forced to stick to deadlines, communicate properly, report their activities... This is also its charm of course, because you're left with a lot of freedom, but too much freedom really causes a lot of frustration at times when you have no idea what's going on, or people aren't thorough enough about QA, and whatnot. Briefly put, scanlation often lacks the most basic of professionalism (which is to be expected of course).


By the way, I have some experience contacting publishers, and I've found them to always answer any of my questions in a swift and courteous manner. I've only ever asked them about general information, though, so don't ask me how they would respond to random business deals. Japanese companies tend to be very cautious and almost anal when it comes to doing business. Expect a LOT of back and forths.

Interesting. I personally don't like to have to scroll down each time (tried it on LINE/Webtoons) and prefer to use arrow keys, but if others like it, why not? xD
I was also thinking on a system that change page automatically. The timer could be set manually and also tailor made to the user, based on its history for a specific manga... But this is a big WIP. However, would you like it? (I'm lazy as hell sometimes lol)


I hope QA would not be a problem anymore. I too found some bad scangroups with bad translations, but there are lots of very competent scangroups too, and these are the ones I want to work with :3


Yes, I know they could be slow and not so inclined for something like this... I'm mentally preparing for the worse from the very beginning XD That's why I'm trying so hard to build a network of good scangroups and a sense of community around the project right from the start xD

Hey again!
Ahah, yeah, that was my first forum post, I'm in this website just to update my scanlation teams' releases but the title of your topic called my attention, I read it and I said what I thought about it.
Well, technically I'm in four teams of one project each. Sadly, I'm pretty sure my workmates in 3 of those teams wouldn't care about this but I'm sure almost every single member of my other team would join me in this, I'll definitely talk to them about this. And I'm interested in helping out as a scanlator.

________________
Compulsive scanlator and manga reader.
Currently scanlating for Bloody Scans, Zweilt Partners Scans, Imey-chan's Makai Ouji, Vectorcest's Splatoon and only member of Caramel Parfait.

I suppose being able to choose between to ways would attract the most amount of users. I don't think many people would actually use an automatic scroll function, though, and if it's that much of a WIP, I don't think it would be an efficient use of your resources, especially not in the beginning.



I wouldn't say they're slow or unwilling, in fact, prompt replies to mails and inquiries are something are much required in a country like Japan I've noticed. It's just that they are cautious, vague and require a lot of meeting and saying the same thing over and over again until you can seal a deal. That's why you ought to present your business as professionally as possible, even if it isn't. Looks and first impressions count for a lot more here in Japan than elsewhere I feel.


Last edited by ckrit at 5:47 pm, Jun 13 2016

I don't think it's going to work, unless the reader gain free access to the manga. Sort of like what LINE does with webtoon. But then again, LINE is a massive group that could invest heavily in advertisement.

Good luck finding a series that hasn't been licensed in english language.