I have been thinking about this for a while now, after realising that Korean webtoon sites make enough money to fund their authors from the advertisement revenue they get. If the manga reader sites out there are making the same amount of money per view as those korean webtoon sites, then considering that they target people from the whole world instead of only the koreans, they must be making more money than those Korean webtoon sites.
So, instead of having some anonymous person making all that money off the other people's work, wouldn't it be right for that money to go back to it's legitimate owner, aka. the mangaka and translator?

I thought that a solution to this would be to make a manga reader website that resembles to the other popular ones out there that people like to use, with an additional feature that has the purpose of giving the ad revenue back to the author. It would be just a view counter that would allow to estimate the amount of ad revenue that a manga generated for the site, and a way for the original author to authenticate and claim their money.

There are a few problems that I thought might be an issue and I would like to ask if it will actually be a big problem or there is a simple solution to that :

1. legal issue : Even though I think this is a good way to sponsor authors to get their legitimate income, I would still be doing it without asking their consent beforehand, and this is technically illegal. I am not sure how all the other manga reader sites out there are functionning despite that they are obviously hosting copy righted materials. In my understanding, either the authors are too lazy to sue them because another one would replace them anyway, or the sites are avoiding the issue from being hosted from a far away country that laws are harder to apply.
Even though I think they should not be suing the website since it's purpose is to benefit them with the worldwide distribution of mangas that they can not control, I would like to know what can happen in case there are legal issues.

2. finding the real author and paying them : Basically, the author would have to come to the site and submit some "proof" that they are the real author of the manga. I have an idea of how it would work out for Korean webtoon artists, but I have no idea what proofs would be necessary to proove that the person is the legitimate owner of the manga for those from other countries (mostly Japan). This might end up being a quite simple issue though, but I would like to know that if there are gona be risks of scams (impersonating and collecting money). As for the payment, something like paypal should do.

3. The actual revenue from the website : Of course, the website would have to be quite popular to make a significant amount to pay back to the author, and I was thinking about encouraging people to not use ad blocker by empathizing that they are helping the author etc. I also did some rough estimates about how much the manga reader sites out there are making right now based on their traffic and page views, but someone should have a better estimation on how much they are making, and it would be helpful if someone could tell me about this.

For instance, I would really like to know why nobody ever made such a site, maybe because the amount of money concerned would be insignificant? (I doubt it is the case unless someone enlightens me) Because it would get shut down by legal issues? (But then, how are all the other manga reader sites are alive out there?) Or maybe, because nobody cares? If this is the case, I would be interested in making one.

Please let me know if you have an answer to anything that I asked or have an idea/comment or anything with something I missed.

Last edited by kyangi at 1:59 pm, Mar 31 2016

Mostly because the mangas are licensed and their rights belong to a certain publisher. See Viz for example who publish popular titles. Some mangas are supported through paid subscription from websites like crunchyroll.



________________

I had been wondering about the same problem for some time...
If you dont know it there is a nice site estimating revenue from adds based on traffic etc.
I posted it here just yesterday - did not notice your post before ☺
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=52470&pa ge=1#post678609

As to similar things
There is Manga Reborn -http://www.mangaupdates.com/publishers.html?id=1083
they tried to do an official scanlation site..I dont want to speculate why they had not made it big, but my first impression was that the site had TERRIBLE search page and mess in tags /genres, making it quite difficult to navigate or find anything interesting.

And I think that trying to find the authors of the published materials is not a good approach. Mabe they do not wish to publish at all on your site? They hold the rights to decide. Mabey they have contracts with publishers that represent them and such site would have to contact the publishers for particular works and not the authors themselves? In my opinion, from legal point of view, such site would have to have permission for publishing / translating first before uploading anything at all.

Sorry for being a little chaotic ☺




Last edited by rangda2 at 12:56 am, Apr 12 2016

I see, the estimation about the ad revenue seems to be around what I thought it would be.

The most legitimate way of creating a website like this would be indeed getting the rights to publish first, but the website would be then hosting only a limited number of series. Since readers are mostly attracted to bigger sites which are much more convenient and easier to find, it does not seem to be a good solution.

So, even though the purpose is that the ad revenue goes to the its legitimate owner, the website would be publishing mangas without the owner's consent. I figured that there could be different reasons why they would not want to host it there (even though there are other sites where a random person is making money out of them), especially from the original publisher of the manga. But at the same time, they don't have more reason to force to take down their manga from our website, when they are also being hosted in other websites. That's why I asked about how are the legal issues on the manga reader websites. Like, what actually happens when the original owner comes, and asks to take down their copyrighted material from the website? I saw mangafox had to take down a lot of licenced materials, but then why didn't this happen with other x or y site? is it because the process for it is too complicated? What about scanlators groups, since they are basically stealing their works as well, are there cases of them having legal issues with the author/publisher?

Hi folks,
It's a problem that many rights owners and creators are concerned about.

In fact, we're one such group that have come together to approach this, starting with Korean webtoons and manhwa. We founded a legit company, building out a service/app/web. We're very committed to try moving things forward for the benefit of both readers and creators.

Our direction has been getting official licenses, permission from the creators or original publishers. And building up relationships on both sides, including reaching some scanlators.

There are other similar-minded people or companies out there tackling the issue in many different ways. But with everything regarding copyrights, legal issues as well as global internet stuff, it's not a problem that can be solved overnight or in a single way. Let alone the concerns for fans, readers and yes, sharing .

We don't have all the answers about this, so we'd love to talk, be available, give the help we can and receive help from the community as well.

Thanks for your thoughts.
from TappyToon.

________________
TappyToon
• Official, exclusive and licensed Manhwa & Webtoons in English, fresh from Korea
• get the TappyToon app now for iOS Apple & Google Play
• read now at https://TappyToon.com

Is it supposed to be a non-profit site? Then it will run like crap, like most volunteer projects.

If it is a for profit site (after paying the mangaka or rights owner), then why would scanlators work for it for free?

If it also pays scanlators, then it becomes non-viable as a business model since ad revenue alone won't be enough, and readers won't pay either (our leechers are quite used to getting stuff for free these days).

Thus, I am extremely doubtful something like that is feasible currently.

(There are actually even more obstacles, but I'll leave my post at this.)

________________
Active translations list
Completed translations list
Dropped translations

Hi! I've also had a similar idea and trying to start-up it, I hope you will like it xD

The problems with your projects are:

1. Legal issues: mangaka have only the author's copyright, while the distribution rights is owned by Japanese publishers. That's mean that if you want to distribute the manga in another language you have to contact them and not the mangaka. You can't distribute it legally without their consent.
The other aggregators you see are illegal, but aren't sued because they either don't know of their existence or aren't worth it (sue someone costs money). However in the last years, publishers are a lot more active battling piracy (eg: Manga-Anime Guardian institution) and many site ceased activity (eg: OneManga)

2. They can't really accept illegal money, it would be... illegal xD

3. Revenues are also a problem. A website that can sustain millions of users is an hard thing to manage and have costs, both for the teams who have to build it, innovate and keep it running; and the costs of hardware and bandwidth. You can't really gives all money to mangaka/publishers, it wouldn't be right for the scangroups who do the actual work!

All this points are swiftly solved in my project You can read more about it here:
Bring Harmony between publishers and scanlators

@ TappyToon

Its always nice to hear about indicatives like that! Seems like many people have similar thoughts this days.

one of my thoughts on this topic:
If I wanted to take away people from aggregated readers to official ones - create something offering people additional benefits that cannot be replicated. Dont know - mabe like possibilities to interact with authors? or to influence the plot of ongoing series? I think I heard something like that about some Korean TV dramas - not too sure. People could vote on some alternative developments? Like which alternative think will happen, ships etc, But that possibility would be only for people who are using official "readers".

Wish you luck!

Last edited by rangda2 at 4:20 am, Jun 9 2016