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Writing On The Problem of Guilt This Post May Instigate.
By The Dragon Lord
Traditionally, I would buy to support the royalties to the content creators & team, but as many know, most series aren't officially released into English speaking countries & it has historically been thanks to fan sites for the popularization of series so that at conventions reps will get asked, "When are you bringing us…‽" by excited fans & others that we'd start to see demands. Groups could organize if they wanted more releases, but ultimately, it has been dependent upon the available cash.
Many people here report about "available space", which makes me chuckle—😂 isn't that what bookshelves are for‽😂
But, quite seriously, there's an economic reality that seems to be ignored—Gen Y (read: Millennials) and Gen Z are per capita (in the US) absolutely impoverished, so the fact that we even buy luxury items like books or watch anime should be recognized as a miracle given the state of things when many of us are so poor that we've internalized/normalized living paycheck-to-paycheck in insufferable poverty, with little to no hope for practical escape outside of our dreams.
Some have managed this, but they are, quite honestly, the limited, pre-order, collector's edition foil copy that was only available to order at one stall at one convention, assuming you won the raffle that wasn't advertised.
Somebody won, but not the majority, so consequently, not many of us can buy manga like we once could when we lived with our parents in the olden days. As rising costs take our incomes away, we have less to spend upon the book publishing industry.
Many of us try to support artists directly through Patreon and other means because so little of what actually goes into publishing actually goes to the content creation team—a portion could arguably go into our local bookstores or digital sites for distribution & recommendation fees (though even still, how much goes to the employees vs the "venture capitalist"), but more often than not, many of us became artists ourselves because of our love of comics & animation such that the industries were flooded with people.
I don't consider myself a "socialist" because I haven't read enough source materials to know what that label significantly means, but I do know that many of the economic charges levied against so called "capitalist" societies hold true. The majority of the work goes to the capital holders who demand a rediculous share for the paltry amount of work they put in.
Take the Korean comics—the Korean publisher of Line & WebToons in the US, Naver Corporation —whose own history as revealed to the US is limited to what's on Wikipedia and what gets translated outside of Korea, or a few interviews here in the US or in other English speaking nations. What we know is that someone named JunKoo Kim founded "Webtoons" in conjunction with Naver Corporation in Korea—to what extent they were involved & to what extent this person published the content, what we know is that at the end of the day, another ultimately exploitive platform developed whereby the majority of capital (such as with Tapastic/Tapas amongst others) funnels money to artists while simultaneously amassing great fortunes onto themselves.
We can look at how artists like Canadian artist Sakimichan have succeeded in capturing portions of the marketplace and their revenue streams. In so doing, she manages to control the capital onto herself and the results are staggering—just by creating tutorials, she manages to accrue 6 figure incomes annually, over $600,000 in direct deposit, which may not seem like much when compared to the Billionaire Club, but most certainly is when compared to the average person living in Canada or the United States (let alone the rest of the world).
As such, I postulate that part of the lack of support for comics has come out of the economic situation & the continued social stratification of the comics industry.
As for this particular site: I haven't the capital to support buying bulk comics. I purchase as many as I can manage, albeit that it highly limited. The demands for readers is far more than those readers can possibly offer (unfortunately). We simply lack the means, and subscription services ultimately come at the cost of time that few of us have available to us (with limitation). Not to mention how much money we could be spending on other things we might require for our daily sustenance.
I hope that readers do try to support comics (as fanlation community code has dictated since inception), but I also want to address the purpose of this post: Addressing adequate legal feedback/economic incentive to publishers to prevent them from shutting down the site through the realization that fan translation has created the impetus for increased readership.
If a reader is poor and would not be able to afford comics to begin with, are they a lost sale? If they find and artist that they like & thus choose to forgo basic necessities to buy a certain comic, doesn't that mean that that artist managed to create a sale where none previously would have existed? That's how comics work typically for the poor. I watched the creation of subscription services & the pushback from labels/publishers resisting the creation of such services & the demands of readers tired of paying rediculous costs for content that did not justify the expenses.
In the case of online comic publication, there's still the problem of release. Take Naver and Abide in the Wind, which will not be released on Line WebToons due to the publisher's policies, despite how successful it is, and likewise has limited the content of said comic by censoring the artist from expressing her full artistic vision from manifesting. These are just a few, limited examples, but they play out.
We may have the ability to visit the RAWs, but likely few of us could buy them, and if we could, we might as well pay for the fan translation team and then have a royalty for their work be paid to the author and whomever was directly responsible for the work's creation. Of course, that doesn't seem to happen/be possible at the moment. Even with these services—how much of the money we spend actually go to the artist?
By The Dragon Lord
Traditionally, I would buy to support the royalties to the content creators & team, but as many know, most series aren't officially released into English speaking countries & it has historically been thanks to fan sites for the popularization of series so that at conventions reps will get asked, "When are you bringing us…‽" by excited fans & others that we'd start to see demands. Groups could organize if they wanted more releases, but ultimately, it has been dependent upon the available cash.
Many people here report about "available space", which makes me chuckle—😂 isn't that what bookshelves are for‽😂
But, quite seriously, there's an economic reality that seems to be ignored—Gen Y (read: Millennials) and Gen Z are per capita (in the US) absolutely impoverished, so the fact that we even buy luxury items like books or watch anime should be recognized as a miracle given the state of things when many of us are so poor that we've internalized/normalized living paycheck-to-paycheck in insufferable poverty, with little to no hope for practical escape outside of our dreams.
Some have managed this, but they are, quite honestly, the limited, pre-order, collector's edition foil copy that was only available to order at one stall at one convention, assuming you won the raffle that wasn't advertised.
Somebody won, but not the majority, so consequently, not many of us can buy manga like we once could when we lived with our parents in the olden days. As rising costs take our incomes away, we have less to spend upon the book publishing industry.
Many of us try to support artists directly through Patreon and other means because so little of what actually goes into publishing actually goes to the content creation team—a portion could arguably go into our local bookstores or digital sites for distribution & recommendation fees (though even still, how much goes to the employees vs the "venture capitalist"), but more often than not, many of us became artists ourselves because of our love of comics & animation such that the industries were flooded with people.
I don't consider myself a "socialist" because I haven't read enough source materials to know what that label significantly means, but I do know that many of the economic charges levied against so called "capitalist" societies hold true. The majority of the work goes to the capital holders who demand a rediculous share for the paltry amount of work they put in.
Take the Korean comics—the Korean publisher of Line & WebToons in the US, Naver Corporation —whose own history as revealed to the US is limited to what's on Wikipedia and what gets translated outside of Korea, or a few interviews here in the US or in other English speaking nations. What we know is that someone named JunKoo Kim founded "Webtoons" in conjunction with Naver Corporation in Korea—to what extent they were involved & to what extent this person published the content, what we know is that at the end of the day, another ultimately exploitive platform developed whereby the majority of capital (such as with Tapastic/Tapas amongst others) funnels money to artists while simultaneously amassing great fortunes onto themselves.
We can look at how artists like Canadian artist Sakimichan have succeeded in capturing portions of the marketplace and their revenue streams. In so doing, she manages to control the capital onto herself and the results are staggering—just by creating tutorials, she manages to accrue 6 figure incomes annually, over $600,000 in direct deposit, which may not seem like much when compared to the Billionaire Club, but most certainly is when compared to the average person living in Canada or the United States (let alone the rest of the world).
As such, I postulate that part of the lack of support for comics has come out of the economic situation & the continued social stratification of the comics industry.
As for this particular site: I haven't the capital to support buying bulk comics. I purchase as many as I can manage, albeit that it highly limited. The demands for readers is far more than those readers can possibly offer (unfortunately). We simply lack the means, and subscription services ultimately come at the cost of time that few of us have available to us (with limitation). Not to mention how much money we could be spending on other things we might require for our daily sustenance.
I hope that readers do try to support comics (as fanlation community code has dictated since inception), but I also want to address the purpose of this post: Addressing adequate legal feedback/economic incentive to publishers to prevent them from shutting down the site through the realization that fan translation has created the impetus for increased readership.
If a reader is poor and would not be able to afford comics to begin with, are they a lost sale? If they find and artist that they like & thus choose to forgo basic necessities to buy a certain comic, doesn't that mean that that artist managed to create a sale where none previously would have existed? That's how comics work typically for the poor. I watched the creation of subscription services & the pushback from labels/publishers resisting the creation of such services & the demands of readers tired of paying rediculous costs for content that did not justify the expenses.
In the case of online comic publication, there's still the problem of release. Take Naver and Abide in the Wind, which will not be released on Line WebToons due to the publisher's policies, despite how successful it is, and likewise has limited the content of said comic by censoring the artist from expressing her full artistic vision from manifesting. These are just a few, limited examples, but they play out.
We may have the ability to visit the RAWs, but likely few of us could buy them, and if we could, we might as well pay for the fan translation team and then have a royalty for their work be paid to the author and whomever was directly responsible for the work's creation. Of course, that doesn't seem to happen/be possible at the moment. Even with these services—how much of the money we spend actually go to the artist?
