What's gonna happen to quality? D=

I think most people agree that English publishers' quality can quite often be inferior to scanlators' quality. Most of the best quality scanlations are created by people who enjoy what they're doing, who will do the best that they could in the parts they contribute to.

When money comes in, I doubt quality will be the same. Oh, wait, how silly of me. Why would companies care about anything other than their revenue?

Overall I share Grumpy's opinion.

However I went a bit further and actually applied. I worked for a scanlation group for quite a while but at the end I had simply had no time for university+work+scanlation. Guess which ones I had to pick. So if I could get paid for legal work on mangas it would be awesome.

It's true that this model still seems to be pretty vague but why shouldn't I (or others) give it at least a try? I don't think that I have much too loose except for my free time at the moment. And its not like those ppl are actually asking if I did scanlations before. You don't have to send them your work or anything. They will give you a test, where you can show your skill.

I think it's really awesome! I might consider making an account. (:
Although, I do agree with blazing_ice on the quality issue though.
The fact that the fans are scanlating manga for other fans is the best.

Im really excited too! I made an account at eManga.. But Im not good enough to apply for any of the positions.. lol

I think the quality would be good if they are truly drawing (editors etc) from the current scanlating groups. It will still be the fans are going to be the ones signing up for it right? And if they have a wide range of applicants there would be a chance at having the better scanlators.. I dont think the money incentive is a bad thing since it will encourage more good scanlators to help.


if the editors are actually being ranked/scored this means there will probably be pretty good quality(as long as atleast some good quality editors apply, of course)

What I want to know is how the online viewing works.. How do you pay, do you get to 'keep' the manga you buy etc?

Alot of the manga seems to be either 200 points or 400 points to rent.. (ie around $2.2 to $4.4 dollars).. And if you wanted to own it you just pay double that.. The 200 points manga are radically cheaper than store bought manga here so I wouldnt mind buying/renting.. They have Tokyopop manga for just 599 which is just over 5 dollars to keep(not for rent).. Im not sure whether the 400 point manga is worth it.. Why is the 400 point manga more expensive than Tokyopop? O.o If you buy more points in bulk it would be a bit cheaper than the prices I listed above(I have not done the math).. Might as well buy an actual copy at that price if you can get it shipped from somewhere..


@whoever said to bypass the publishers and go straight to the artist.. I found this.. http://https://secure.emanga.com/submissions/ Apparently they are asking for artists/series..

And they seem to have some/many manga already scanlated..


^ from the interview someone posted..
Wow.. Rock on! lol That was quite an interview!

Last edited by VanGirl at 7:48 pm, Nov 16 2010

________________

people saying

DMG is doing nothing is stupid, negotiating is much harder and takes way more resources than trans and edit.

if DMG really wanted to they could even get volunteers to do it cause it's not hard.

This idea won't take off, because they have to work with all publishers not just stand by itself.

this won't work, not because this is a bad idea, it's badly planned and carried out.

________________
Starter of Controversy.

this is what you get in FAQ:
Q. What genres will be offered?
A. Currently we are planning to start off with mainly yaoi titles, but eventually we will add more mainstream genres like shoujo and shounen.

*cough* sorry but it's not my thing

________________
its cold down here fam ~

My interest about DMG was eliminated when I found out about this.

________________

I read about them about a month ago, wasn't interested then and not interested now. If they're so confident the project will be a success, I'd rather they paid me a fair price up front instead of a "cut" of the "potential" profits. How do we judge the profits anyway, at some point they'll tell you "So-and-so manga made $10, here's $3", but how do you know if it really did make $10? Will you have access to the books? Etc, etc. No thanks. I'd rather take $250 and walk away cleanly.

.

Last edited by krytorii at 1:36 pm, Jan 24 2021

I'm rather skeptical of this whole idea, and in the unlikely event that it is legit I can't see it lasting more than the first quarter.

There just isn't a large enough of an international market for yaoi manga to warrant localizing the thousand or so titles into the multitude of languages they are planning.

The whole "pay when there is profit" structure also seems like it is open to exploitation as well. How are you or I going to know how many titles this company sells and how much money we are entitled to?

Many people are hoping for some sort of contractual payment plan, paying per scanlation, but it is unlikely that will ever happen. The rather small niche market that is yaoi manga makes it extremely difficult to forecast any sorts of sales data on an international level. The amount of sales would likely be far too insignificant anyways and if they paid people before hand they would likely be bankrupt within the first year.

I can also envision the pay structure being something like 60% of the profits to DMG for marketing the product, 39% to the mangaka (and directly related individuals), then about 1% to the "localizers". This means you are going to be receiving fractions of a cent on a product that will likely only sell ten or so copies a year. It is almost like those Rapidshare (and related filesharing hosts) that promised to pay x amount of money for however many thousands of downloads your uploads produce. People seldom make any money with these types of ventures.

The website is also rather bare bones (usually a red flag for me) and I couldn't find links to their associated publishers or a Japanese version of the site. How can we even be sure that they are legit and aren't just stealing the manga themselves and claiming they have the rights to it?

It almost seems like a ploy just to get names of scantalation groups and related individuals for whatever evil purpose they have planned.

I applied as a translator on their site. It looks like most of the work will be shoujo manga. Meh. But I've never been one to turn down easy money...

However, as others have said, I'm still a little skeptic about DMG, as there's very little specific info on their site. The same goes for Openmanga, which I was really excited about at first, but am now disappointed at the lack of updates. When Openmanga was announced some months back I e-mailed them a few times expressing my support and asking for more information on their business model, but I've received no replies since.

The ideas can't hurt, but I just don't see how this is financially viable in a world where fan scanlation and digital piracy is so rampant and popular.

It's not shoujo, it's boy love/yaoi.

This idea won't go far.
If it wants to suceed, it needs to contribute its resources to OpenManga.org!

OpenManga has a fanbase of its own.