Yeah, sure why not. Some doujins and Retarded OEL stuff. It's not really... Anything to do with the actual things being put out by the professional authors from Japan.

I'm not sure about this, but is it true MangaHelpers is going to remove all scanlation and online viewers because of this?

I'll say this is interesting to say the least. To be perfectly honest, before I read this I thought: "We have 2 options, 1. We move the underground Manga Translations even further underground. 2 We confidently and Arrogantly Keep on keepin' on, or 3 Start fighting back with ARMS!" I'm glad this might just end peacefully.

That being said, I thought this should have been the next logical step, because let's be honest, The Internet is pretty unstable in terms of content. The minute you have something online, It'll stay online, and the more Publisher's and Their respective Artist refuse to see that it'll be their downfall. Don't fight it, but join it, is what I say.
The guys at MangaHelpers deserve a big round of applause. *Clap clap clap clap clap*
I approve of this plan!

The main idea that i got from the article is that we can read manga freely but legally (CMIIW)
But the main problem come from the idea itself :
1/ How will the income for the site, mangakas, and others involved in this project gathered?
is it donation, membership, or some new sistems?
But well this first problem maybe already thought carefully by their team, so i don't really disturbed by this one

2/ They have contacted some mangakas and all of them (70 with the data at mangahelpers) are appreciate this idea...
Then, all of us know, there are such tremendous number of mangaka out there. Not only from Japan but also from Korea and China. Can they get approval from most of them? Some mangakas who don't sell really well maybe not really that hard to be invited, because they don;t really have a constant income, so this one can be viewed as something profitable. But for mangakas who sell million copies of tankobon may see this as threat. And some others may have other reasons for saying no. And in the end the fans will still search for a free scanlation that labeled as "illegal" (i really hate to say this).

there are still something that bother me but i guess this two example can at least express my worry about OpenManga. Though i still want to see the realization of this project and see wether it will become a "solution" or a "disaster"

Hmm. Not a bad idea. But it feels like it won't work unless they get some of the more popular manga authors/artists to cooperate. And seeing as though most of those series are licensed in English, I'm not sure how the English publishers would react. But regardless of that, I definitely support this idea as long as they also find a way to properly communicate with the scanlating groups to figure out which translations they intend to use, etc. So, yeah. Not a bad idea at all.

They'd have the backing of a good chunk of the scanlators. I mean really, who doesn't want to support their mangaka when given the chance?

hmm i think the mangaka has no rights for the manga? when it got published?

Just asking... Aren't mangakas under some kind of contract with their current publishers? All they said was 70 artists, not mangaka. Or is it that "artists" is a better word to use in this case instead of "mangakas"?

Interesting? no.

You know were the money is on manga? volume sales, license fees and merchandising ... this give nothing, go ask Kubo were he gets the money from ... you can be sure its not from the WSJ sales.

It seems after their plan failed (not "too many walls" but "impossible to work") they come with this one, on one hand its not Tazmo II but in the other hand its pretty damn clear they are really just trying to make a buck.

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.

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.

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.

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.