Quote:
Originally Posted by ILOVEJAPAN
You must be missing something typing...Not that I know anything about this subject, but I do know that really popular manga artists have become extremley rich and made millions. Take Rumiko Takahashi for example. She's what? A multi-millionair? She's one of the richest women in Japan. Infact, I thought I read somwhere that she has waverd in and out of being the richest woman. There are other examples of millionair manga-ka like her (Kazuo Umezu being one) so popularity does have to factor in somwhere. I assume the companies reallypopular artists work uder must pay them much higher.
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Oh yea,
The Otaku market is worth about 1.7 billion dollers in Japan alone, if you're a top artists you're looking at cornering in 10-20% of that all to yourself (Maybe even more) that about $340,000,000 every year, as a contract artist of your own work you'll be getting contracts fo 50% royalties and still a few hundred thousand dollers for work.
So someone like Rumiko Takahashi, who is not only getting the Japan market but the north american one as well probably earns somewhere around 10 million every year. (I do believe she get's taxed about a million dollers every year so that looks about right)
However it's getting popular that's the hard part...
I mean consider the numbers, how many people live in Japan? 127,708,050 is the number I've found.
let's say 0.1% want to become comic book artists.
thats 127,708 people.
Now take into account America
33,218,878 (canada)
281,421,906 (USA)
lets assume because comic popularity here isn't the same as in Japan and it's even harder to get into the market that only 0.01% want to become comic artists. thats 31,464.
so thats, north america and Japan alone, 159,172 people trying to make millions in comic books.
Top north american comics? Marvel and DC (X-men, Spiderman, Batman, Superman)
Japan has more top comics, enough so there are schools that are run just for aspireing manga-ka's, we assume that there are 100 popular titles every year, that no artists get repeat popularity (I mean Akira had Dr. Slump, all the dragon balls and games associated, Rumiko had Ranma, Inuyasha and a bunch of others and the animation team that does the current starlet "Haruhi Suzuyama" is also responsable for another big title "Lucky Star" so 100 top NEW artists, since many artists do two or three different comics in a month. The comic market here is FLOODED, when you have an 8 story building and every floor is Manga which changes stock on a monthly basis, you can only imagine the shelf life something that isn't SUPER POPULAR is.)
you're looking at about a .06% chance of becoming a millionare.
Less so if you're hoping to make it in Japan since you are fighting a language, cultural relevence (Things which are normal to you may not make sense to a Japanese person) and general racism.
(I've yet to hear of a Gaijin manga-ka in Japan, you can't even find a "Calvin and Hobbs" here)