Cookie Revolution Scans and Watermarks

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Cookie_Revolution_Scans Your argument is valid, however, may I ask you a question? Do you prioritize the mangaka's support over your watermark, or watermark over support?

Without proper statistics, we can't get a proper analysis and just speculations so we're just gonna have to rely on what we know.

1. Common method (what other scanlators do) raises a large audience, a portion of which realizes that they will want to support the mangaka on their own.
2. CRS method (watermark) has proven to work as well, degree of how well it works compared to traditional method is unknown.
3. CRS method is controversial and people discourage it.

The only way we can do this is by looking at a risk-benefit analysis (@ me if you have more to add).

Common method
Benefits:
-Reliable
-Not controversial
-Is the "normal" standard for most people
Risks:
-Freebies might never support the authors
-The readers become spoiled with quality

CRS method
Benefits:
-Highly encourages readers to buy the original manga
-Proven to work
Risks:
-Plenty of readers are upset for multiple reasons
-The watermark's reader-deterrence might ruin the possibility of more support of the manga



And now for my second argument:

What do you consider "supporting the mangaka" is?

Buying the original manga, is that it?

For me, supporting the mangaka has many things: sending a happy tweet, spreading good words about their works, sharing fanart, creating a fandom for their stories, offering constructive criticism, etc.

It's not all about money.

Unlike money, fan-support is almost universal among fans. Your argument about "if you're really a fan, you will buy the original manga" does not work here because you don't have to "really like the manga" to do fan-support. Even if you're a broke NEET or a selfish weeb who keeps their money for body pillows, you can still tweet about how happy you are after reading the latest volume of your favourite manga.

Now let me update on that risk-benefit analysis from earlier.

Common method
Benefits:
-Raises a large fanbase for easily
Risks:
-Might not buy the manga

CRS method
Benefits:
-Might buy the manga
Risks:
-Smaller audience = less fan-support, not just economically.

That's my argument.

 

[Mili]

Those watermarks are hilarious. Just stopped reading something because it got continued by this group after some chapters

Didn't read all posts but that's really nice shitting over the mangaka's work with this ugly stuff, while at the same time stealing his work and illegaly redistributing it on the internet.
Must be some kid at work who needs to sign his work VERY BIG.
The idea behind that is flawed and hypocritical at best. But whatever floats your egos.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Mili

while at the same time stealing his work and illegaly redistributing it on the internet.

Congratulations, you just described every translator who released their translations on MangaDex. Everyone who earns money here works in a legal grey area.

 

[SushiBentou]

This is a very old argument.

It was summed up as group taggers are wan#kers. If they were really thinking about the author they'd add "support the author" as a tag and add a link to where it can be bought on the info page.

Decades later the argument resurfaces

 

[Teasday]

_{@Cookie_Revolution_Scans posted:}

You can always argue that some may be turned off reading it, thus never discovering the manga, but on the other hand, I might argue just the same that an equal, if not greater amount of people would feel less inclined to purchase an official release if they could get a nice enough version for free (just look at all the people reading tapas comics on aggregator sites instead of heading over to the official site and purchasing the chapters – not even one).

You're free to argue that point, but just asserting it isn't enough. I was careful to qualify my argument as speculation.

_{@Cookie_Revolution_Scans posted:}

I will not publish a list of names of people who bought the Jap version. That’s their choice if they want to tell you or not and I'd never publish their personal info either. We don’t get thousands of request, true. But those we do get, we cherish. I could scramble across our various social media channels and re-read emails and count them all to give you an exact number of how many requests we’ve received. But 1) I’ve got better things to do and 2) I’m not sure what you’re hoping for. Number X equals a good result, number Y a bad one? That’s not how we see it. What % of people who read a scanlation –no matter which or whose- do you think actually purchases the manga (or even a part of a series)?

I certainly wasn't asking you to publish anyone's names. I wasn't really even asking you to make your numbers public, because you're right, my opinion on the statistics doesn't really matter. What I was trying to do is have you consider whether you think the numbers are enough, whether you yourself believe your policy is in fact accomplishing what it exists for. Whether your reason for doing this is actually effective in your own eyes.

You say that's not how you see it, though I'm not really sure what you mean by that. Assuming you mean what I think it means, if you have this policy specifically for one reason but don't actually even really care about to what extent that policy succeeds or not, I have to say I don't see what the point is. If the point is simply to fill your releases with watermarks, fair enough I guess. If the point is to in your own way generate some income for the author, it's possible you may be going at it backwards.

_{@421cookies posted:}

I just noticed clicking on a manga page's demographic tag doesn't resulting search by that filtered demographic. Anyone reported this bug yet?

Oh, sure enough. I'll fix that soonish.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Cookie said that they're not making any money it if the translation so it's for the noble effort, I guess.

 

[Teasday]

I wasn't talking about making money for the group, I said "for the author".

 

[Cookie_Revolution_Scans]

DANDAN_THE_DANDAN “Do you prioritize the mangaka's support over your watermark, or watermark over support?”

In my opinion, both go hand in hand.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that the projects themselves we work on receive less of that non-monetary support you’ve mentioned (which is always on the pro-list of scanlation). When talking about social media shares and whatnot you’ll find that even for a project that we weren’t the only group working on it, images from our version appear more often. Which is sort of contradicting the whole “but group X does it without stamps, so that’s better” argument. I found that the majority of readers would simply not care enough or, in some cases, even prefer our version. If there was a significant deterrence, wouldn’t that mean that everyone waited for the other group’s release to read and share? We’ve also received messages both in public and private thanking us specifically for working on this project. Why? If the watermark was unbearable and generally deterring, that shouldn’t be the case.

Also, non-monetary support has its limits. If everyone just said “Oh, this is nice. Someone else pls buy it!” then mangakas would be more endangered than the vaquita. The Japanese manga culture only ever got so big because people spent real $$$ on it, splurging on both the actual media as well as merch. But in western circles, readers aren’t even willing to spend 25 bucks a year for WSJ…? Heck, in the past I’ve messaged scanlators and asked them where I could buy the original manga/manhua/manhwa they were working on and in a lot of cases I only got an “iono” because they themselves had merely ripped the scans somewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that non-monetary support is also very important. But it’s not the answer to all questions. As it stands, our version is an inconvenience for the average “selfish weeb who keeps their money for body pillows” as you put it, since he’ll actually have to either compromise (“I get a lesser version but have more money to spend on pillow!”) or spend money on the manga. It’s obvious that that wouldn’t endear us to the majority of people since they never like it when they feel like they’re being withheld something they want. For those that find our version unacceptable, it’s just as if it had never been scanlated at all to begin with. And no, I don’t buy into that whole “negative association due to CRS” thing if it ever became officially available later on. If they were interested enough in the story, they’d then follow up with it.

@ Teasday As it is, I’d estimate that about 1% of scanlation readers will buy an original language version and another 3-4% will purchase the comic if it becomes available in English. If, indeed, the standard modus operandi and fan-support were the ultimate way, those numbers should be higher for projects done by “normal” groups. But I don’t believe they are. We’ll never reach 100% any way, that’s a sad truth. Something will have to change with the general readership audience. Even if it means “only” requesting their licensed mangas to become available in their local library so they will buy it. And yes, we have considered our policy at various points in time with regards to its efficiency and found that it was not necessarily lacking behind unstamped releases when it came to readers-to-buyers-ratio or social shares. As previously mentioned, this is a +/- equation. Even if you discount the people who’d be deterred from reading our release – of whom only a minuscule fraction would eventually end up purchasing the manga in the end-, you can add those who’ll buy the original or licensed version because they prefer a cleaner/better version.

But the essence of this discussion is nearly as old as scanlation itself. You could fight over it for days without coming to a definite solution. There are those in favor of scanlation and those against it. We represent something in between that and are thus bound to clash with groups strictly in favor or against scanlation. Seeing how this discussion could go on forever without end, I’ll be excusing myself for now as I won’t have time to log in here and follow up on this the next few days. If indeed someone here wishes to discuss this further, you can PM me and I’ll get back to you when I next have time for it. For now, even if we didn't reach an amicable solution, I’d like to thank those of you who’ve participated in this discussion seriously.

 

[Teasday]

Yeah, I obviously have my own opinions about this, but I've already said what I wanted to say. I'm glad that you've evaluated your policy occasionally, that's what I wanted to hear anyway. If you think your model is working as you expect it to be and you like the results well enough then I don't really have much to argue with except my own preferences.

 

[firelight]

"Our watermark is there to give people a better reason to buy the official version"
Except if someone was never going to buy the manga, your watermark won't change that and they'll just find a better release elsewhere.

This reminds me of special people that include their intro in rom dumps.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@firelight literally what I said in my argument to which Cookie responded "social media shares show that people like our translations even with the watermark"

Although, I would argue that this is the result of biased sampling. I'm taking Zekkou Gakkyu as an example. According to MangaUpdates, CRS is the only group who actively scanlates this manga. If there are no other groups to see which the audience prefer, obviously the only version that is available would be shared, even if it has a large watermark on it.

And as for the "if they really don't like us, then they would either wait for the official translation or another group to pick it up."

Humans are impatient. A case study that I can bring up is the old upload race between /a/nonymous and LHTranslation over at 5Toubun no Hanayome. People were internally struggling between waiting for /a/'s upload (which the comment section seem to agree is the better quality) or picking up on LH since they are faster.

No, they won't wait for another group to pick it up if once they gave it a chance and start enjoying it. Yes, a lot will click away after seeing the watermark without even giving the manga a chance.

I won't @ Cookie tho since they want to be left alone. Feel free to copy paste my argument if you wanna continue it on private with them tho.


And here's my personal opinion. I always want the absolute best quality that I can reach for my first viewing. Anything that covers the art in my opinion is "obstructive" and drastically decreases the quality. That's why I will not read that manga, even if it's made by my favourite mangaka, if it has a big watermark over it.