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Lots of info collected here, great to see!

To add to your resources, Comicraft (http://www.comicbookfonts.com) is another great font resource for letterers: their WildWords font is a standard in manga publication (more than Anime Ace, in my experience? I’ve never used that one in my books…) and I like a lot of their other styles too for more specialized uses. FontSquirrel.com is a nice site that rounds up free-for-commercial-use fonts (this is important to note!! much of Dafont’s selection is only free for personal use, not commercial). Google’s free webfonts can also be downloaded and used for commercial publication. Then again, some publishers provide their own font library for letterers to use, while others let you supplement their selection only with free-for-commercial-use fonts, so it may be wise to find out what’s expected from the publisher you’re applying to before you invest a fortune in fonts.

Thank you, lys! The additional resources are much appreciated. I definitely agree, touching base with the publisher first is key when working as a freelancer.

[…] changing face of digital manga. Paige at Organization ASG published a piece which discusses the changes that have swept over the western manga industry, and how companies are […]

Hmm, I shall continue to be the Debbie Downer and say that this interview doesn’t fill me with confidence. It’s great that you were talking to the president (and this isn’t a slight on you at all Justin) but it worries me both that his answers were so short and that this was all in Japanese. I haven’t seen literally any other interviews with the company so I hope they have a strong, English speaking PR department as well (although that’s almost an oxymoron since I still see barely any ads for them).
And that answer for “why we will succeed where JManga failed” isn’t a very encouraging answer either. He addresses one issue but leaves a lot out, I don’t think potential users really care if a place has a lot of titles or not since you only pay for what you want. As a reader I want to know how they’re reaching out to new readers, how they’re interacting, how I can feel like I “own” my titles, etc. In short, the way he answered this made me think “well they still don’t really get the American market”, better hope the workaround I know for downloading Viz titles also works for Bookwalker titles I plan on getting….

Yeah, I have to agree. This interview doesn’t inspire confidence, since it doesn’t address a lot of the issues people have had with Japanese run digital media stores. I don’t think that reflects on the interviewer, just that the venue/time allotted didn’t allow for an interview with lengthy answers and a larger amount of questions.

The biggest challenge they have is leading people to discover them. Getting their face out at NYCC and doing interviews is good progress though. I hope they succeed, because BookWalker is where I read Kaiji! I’ve also been meaning to check out another manga they have about a guy who travels around Japan on trains eating the different boxed lunches they have in each region. I think it’s called Ekiben Hitoritabi.

I was kind of disappointed to read that light novels are what they see growing in the future. I really think the Light Novel market is going to severely undershoot expectations outside of a few outlier titles like SAO. Anyways, I hope they can successful and publish more Nobuyuki Fukumoto manga!

[…] a book walk! Organization ASG published an interview with BookWalker president Yoichi Yasumoto. In the interview, Yasumoto discusses the business side […]

I don’t read scanlations much but I do especially for series that aren’t licensed or don’t have a big chance of getting licensed. I mostly read scanlations for BL manga.

Anyway, I know a lot of people are against it but I don’t think it warrants your fuse to get blown over it. I can understand the publishers’ stance but there will always be people who will continue reading.

The reason I don’t read scanlations much isn’t mainly to support the mangaka and/or publisher but because I don’t like spending a long time in front of the computer reading. So you can say that I’m not with or against. I’m just neutral toward the whole thing. I’m confident that I’m supporting the industry by buying physical copies of manga but I’ll also read scanlations.
I live outside the U.S. and so not all means are available for us here but I’m glad that we’ve Kinokuniya to purchase manga. I also buy manga on kindle.

Publishers are asking people to learn Japanese and buy the Japanese tankoubons to support the mangaka instead of reading scanlations but of course they can’t expect everyone to be able to do that, right? I tried learning some Japanese but I still don’t feel comfortable reading manga in the language.

Honestly, all these arguments over scanlations irritate me. They just make me want to scream and say “Stop it!” to both parties.

I get why you feel comfortable considering scanlations an essential part of your personal experience as a fan, especially since you clearly spend your fair share money on official releases.

It’s not so much attitudes like yours that I personally can’t stand (that was me in high school, rejoicing that all the Arina Tanemura series were getting licensed so I could finally buy them). This is an example of the idealistic argument that piracy=exposure you wouldn’t have had otherwise=better sales for a series actually working, right? But for how many people is this true?

What I hate is the kind of people who say, “Why in the world would you buy it when you can read it for free online?” I remember being completely taken aback the first time someone said that to me, in some forum or other. “Why in the world would you buy something you love when you could steal it???” is basically how it sounded (…and was what they were saying, yeah). Just because it’s all out there, doesn’t mean it’s okay to steal.

All of us break rules. Especially when it’s something that’s considered socially acceptable. You don’t really feel bad about it then, and why would you if everyone else agrees that it’s okay? That’s just human nature. So the problem is that it’s apparently become so acceptable to binge-steal books online that some people–the people who argue until the cows come home that they’re completely entitled to something without paying for it–some people no longer see it as an ethical problem at all.

There used to be “rules” to scanlations, before the aggregate sites started popping up (and they were regularly listed on scanlation group websites from what I remember):
1. Only scanlate series that aren’t licensed.
2. The scanlation group pledges to remove all their files if a series is licensed and asks their readers to not share them.
3. Readers pledge to buy the Japanese release if possible, to support the author. (in most cases it probably wasn’t, but these days it’s reeeeally easy and actually pretty cheap if you get ebooks)
4. Readers pledge to buy the manga in their language if/when it comes out in their country, to support the author.

This acknowledged that scanlation wasn’t the ideal, that it would be ethically wrong to continue either producing or reading scanlations once the scanlations were no longer “needed.” Since it wasn’t acceptable in the community to just read scanlations of everything and never buy manga, I hope that people followed those rules more often than not (but I guess there’s no way to know).

I’m not saying that stealing was okay back then either, but that you did feel some guilt for doing it, you know? Like, you were told up front that it was sort of a sketchy thing to do, and that you really should support the author by buying some of their books officially, because it was never meant to be free entertainment. If the authors WANTED it to be free, they’d just have posted their manga as webcomics.

I haven’t read pirated manga in a long time so I can’t say if there are still any groups that keep those rules, but it seems like that’s not the case anymore. Especially on aggregate sites, where you can run into actual scans of English releases, or manga ripped straight from Crunchyroll, or binge read more manga than you could ever reasonably afford to buy, just because you can. Especially when you see people giving excuses not to buy a series they say they’re a fan of and having the gall to complain about it getting licensed instead, when you remember being so grateful when your favorite series got picked up (I don’t want to sound like an old fogey ranting, but that’s how it feels to me. Dammit, I do sound like an old fogey ranting…). Especially when you see doujinshi artists saying that they don’t want their work to be hosted/translated on the internet, but someone does it anyway, even knowing that they’ve been asked not to.

That part of scanlation culture? It’s hard not to hate that.

I think there’s enough people for and against it though. But chances are we’re gonna be talking about this until a superior official service exists, so scanlations will never die…or something. I just decided to say my piece though.

Whenever I hear the “Why in the world would you buy it when you can read it for free online?” It just comes down to two things for me:

1) maybe manga is just not that valuable to them. Harsh, yeah, but not even throwing a bone to an official release? That just sucks.
2) yeah, but, the official services out there are bad. This is true. I mean, it took a long time for a digital alternative to even pop up, and one of them shut down. They may be getting better, but it’s hard to tell at the moment.

There’s definitely a lot of feelings when it comes to supporting official releases. Also a lot to try and understand about the industry too. It’s tough. It does come down to figuring out a way to make it easier for people to support an official release, I think.

[…] direct from the editors! Organization ASG returned with a new edition of their annual Advice on Manga Editing, From Manga Editors feature. This time around, a trio of editors deliver their commentary on challenges, […]

I’m really surprised to learn that Freezing was done by the same duo that did Kurokami. I’ve only seen the anime for Freezing (And season 1 at that) but man… Its such a different show. I really loved Kurokami for a long while, and read a fair bit of it back in the day, so I was thinking about actually giving the Freezing manga a chance. The Kurokami anime was a far cry from the manga afterall.

Having said that, based on your review, I think I’ll take a look at it. Nudity and shocking stuff doesn’t bother me, so given its at least as good as Kurokami, I’m bound to like it.

After this review I am going to have to check it out.

Welp, I guess we’ll see, but I don’t think Kurokami and Freezing are the same. I say that knowing I haven’t watched or read Kurokami…but hey, sure, can always have some other people check Freezing out against their better wishes!!!

Please do RJames! And uh, come back again when I check out the omnibus version in September or October haha

Hey Justin,

Great article, but I cannot stress enough what you said about DMG “giving creators with no experience opportunity to work on licensed manga”. The opportunity that they provide while at times may seem slow or un-organized is bar non THE BEST that you will find in the business (if not the only). It is near impossible for the average manga enthusiast to work for any of the other localizing publishers out there. Just try and find an email or submission procedure for how to work for any publisher and it’s like searching for ghosts in the machine. The only one I’ve received tryouts for is Seven Seas, and that has taken years of emails and updating my portfolio. I’ve determined the only way to work otherwise in the industry for $$$ is to simply be in the right place at the right time, luck of the draw. Waiting for an editor to “go fish” for a new letterer in a sea of submissions.

DMG’s guidelines and procedures are clear and concise enough for anyone to understand. And if a new localizer needs advice on “how to” it is readily available, especially among peer groups. But when it comes down to it, if you need a crutch for approval for every process in localizing, then you’re not doing your homework by studying the trade you have chosen to learn. Its up to you to figure it out and move on. But DMG is eager and more than happy to help. Their guidelines for localizing are improving greatly and concise enough for any new localizer to easily learn.

Let’s face it, localizing is allot of hard work. For both the publisher and the localizer. I lettered well over 3,500 pages in 2013-14 and finally made a “substantial” paycheck. But it took allot of hard work and dedication to the cause. I also publish 200-300+ page books outside of DMG on my own and running prepress can be an absolute nightmare formatting for each different distributor’s requirements. And I only have 5 distributors I work with. Imagine the cast of distributors and # of titles DMG deals with…

So give DMG a break, they’re doing the best they can with what they have, just like the rest of us. They’re doing something amazing for aspiring artists that would NEVER legally get the opportunity elsewhere. And refining all of this to a profitable takes time. They will figure it out eventually. Patience reaps great rewards…

My only real complaint about DMG is that their price points are much too high for digital books. I feel they would sell to a much larger fan base if their prices were lower for digital books. More fans paying less by far outweighs just a few paying premium prices (the Walmart model). And their free samplers could be more than the first 2-3 story pages, it’s a 200 page book for Pete’s sake, 5 pages isn’t enough to get past the credits. Give us 8-10% to see if we like it. Heck, give us a free book once in a while, they have thousands… Imagine the potential for follow up sales if they just gave us a few #1’s to get us interested…

Thanks again,
–Mike

Well yeah. Most other companies have standards. And, as far as I can tell, have limits too. When you have a list of upcoming titles in the DMG queue, it shouldn’t take 2, 3 years for a good portion of them to come out. They really should work on what they can work on, and also they should probably take down the list too. It’s not needed.

That said, it certainly is not easy to break into the field for other publishers.

I agree with the comment about Blue Spring Ride, I would have bet money too on that being licensed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Shojo Beat, but I supposed I’ll bet on that being announced at NYCC then. I also noticed that the market seems to be wide open in terms of licenses, I didn’t dare to dream that Shogakukan would actually let Yen Press license Oregairu, such good news.

My manga licensing wishlist:
Silver Spoon – Hiromu Arakawa (please Viz please)
Oyasumi Punpun – Inio Asano (is there anybody who doesn’t want this series licensed?)
Sweep Over the Ballroom (Ballroom E Youkoso)

NOBODY wants Oyasami Punpun licensed considering no one’s licensed it yet. NOBODY *makes sad face*

Totally counting on Yen Press to destroy their translators by licensing Silver Spoon. Completely out of nowhere too, as usual!

[…] An updated version was posted on Organization Anti-Social […]

The microwave story is the best! Break room?!

Poor break room microwave!

I’m 95% sure that microwaving the tankoubon is how a lot of scanlators do it these days still (since it’s cheaper to buy the bound releases than to have a magazine subscription).

Well, maybe. How else do they do weekly stuff?

But you’d think a manga company would have it easier though…

[…] Via Organization Anti-Social Geniuses […]

[…] Manga | Translator Amanda Haley discusses her work, which includes GTO: Paradise Lost and The Heroic Legend of Arslan (by Fullmetal Alchemist creator Hiromu Arakawa), and the comic site Book Walker, a Japanese ebook site that has some English content but is not well known at the moment. [Organization Anti-Social Geniuses] […]

[…] Stroman talks to MangaBlog’s own Kate Dacey at Organization Anti-Social Geniuses. Learn how Kate got her start as a manga blogger, why she took […]

[…] Over at the Organization Anti-Social Geniuses, EiC Justin sat down with Kate the Manga Critic blog for a chat about manga and her return to the blo…. […]