It's amazing that anyone in Japan would even want to be a manga artist. You have to sweat blood to get enough talent to do it. It doesn't really pay well. You have to put yourself through hell each week/month just to meet your deadlines, you often are forced to change the plotlines and characters according to some vapid readers' poll, and then if your numbers start to dip in the slightest, you are suddenly axed and then have to squash dozens of episodes into three, or maybe even one, assuming that you are given chance to end things "gracefully" at all.
And the sad thing is, with all of the above, it is still a better lifestyle than working as a salaryman or OL at some black company.