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Originally Posted by SSJup81
Interesting way of putting it, but seems that those who do the scanlations don't do it for profit, so they're not really getting much out of it either.
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You raise a good point here, and one worth exploring.
There are essentially three players in this "business plan" but only one of them really gains anything.
1) You have the creators, artists and publishers. They create and publish a title that is meant to be purchased by fans.
2) A scanlator group buys the book, then scans the pages into digital form. They then translate the book, and send it to manga "sharing" site, like One Manga.
3) The manga "sharing" site then makes it available to the public. The site stays alive using advertising.
Groups 1 and 2 basically get screwed. I don't need to explain how the creators and publishers get screwed in this business plan, but I will explain how the scanlator groups basically whore themselves for no gain.
You can imagine One Manga as basically a pimp, and as a scanlator group as a runaway teen on the streets in the big city. The pimp tells the runaway "Yeah, do scans for me and you'll get famous. You will prove you are a good translator for manga and the big (legit) publishers will be hunting you down to hire you to translate for them."
The scanlator groups fall for this BS because they see the site has a lot of big legit advertisers (who may not even know they are advertising on a site that peddles pirated goods) so they put their blood sweat and tears into scanning and translating the latest and most popular titles, or what they think might be the next be thing under the delusion that the legit industry is going to take notice and hire them for money.
The problem is that there are more legit translators then there are projects to do, and publishers HATE manga "sharing" sites and do NOT hire scanlators to do legit jobs. On One Manga's forums now the staff there asks fans of manga to contact the publishers and ask them to form a union and work together. Are they delusional? Maybe...or it is a smart strategy to keep looking legitimate. Make it the publishers' fault for not "working with" the pirates.