Forum - View topicINTEREST: Manga Creator Criticizes Publishers' Attacks on Piracy Sites
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Black Turtle
 Posts: 110 |
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Really fair point.
That exactly what happened in the west and permitted Netflix existence. Publisher blaming piracy and failing to adress the real problem, people are ok to pay a fee for a large offer, but will only pay the full prices for the series they really like. In the absence of offer for that, they will go to piracy. Netflix learned from that situation, and now every studio want to create its own streaming platform. Except for big titles, the piracy is not a real problem, because people would just not read most of the series they read illegally. The European Commission ordered a study about piracy, and burried it when it came to that conclusion. |
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dark_bozu
 Posts: 208 |
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Yup, he's right - piracy is a service problem. If japanese publishers would unite and create some sort of manga itunes, where you would be able to buy volumes of manga that you're interested in for a fair price, then I'm sure manga piracy would severly decline.
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1052 |
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All I know is "The Almost Got Laid Committee" is an awesome title.
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Snakebit1995
 Posts: 842 |
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Nailed it. People want something that's of sufficient quality as soon as possible. It's like on r/manga when people complain about Translators doing series other translators are doing. Most readers aren't loyal to a translating group, they're loyal to who posts good translations first that's where people will go to check out a scanlation. On another note Pirate sites and scanlations have pretty much become an inherent and necessary part of the manga ecosystem, especially in the west, a lot of people aren't gonna drop 15 bucks on a series if they think they'll be on the fence, but if they can give it a read online and then know they like it, they'll buy the official release. Also knowing how popular a series is on scanlations can help legitimate publisher's know what other markets are interested. Seven Seas does surveys asking what they should try and license, people wouldn't know what to suggest to them without Scanlations and pirates. It's not great but a part of the way the manga world is now. |
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Flip555
Posts: 11 |
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Eh for me, I always buy the original Shonen Jump and Magazine vols as well as the latest vols of manga I like to support the creators and then use the pirate sites for the translations. Its dumb but I love doing it that way. I hope pirate sites dont go away for my sake or else I;ll have to learn Japanese.
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Fluwm
 Posts: 1014 |
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Always nice to see someone in the industry who “gets it.”
I’ll gladly pirate any manga that I can’t buy digitally at a reasonable price. Wanna sell me a cheaply-printed book that’ll likely arrive damaged and (if translated) untranslated, poorly-edited text? Yeah: no thanks. Same for these 120-page ebooks selling for $10 USD or more. It’s unreasonable. And piracy is also really great for older series that are out of print, unavailable digitally, and hard to find. Adachi Mitsuru is my favorite manga artist, hands down, but the overwhelming majority of my collection of his work is pirated. Even his most famous series, Touch, is almost impossible to find a full set of. |
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VanGosroth
 Posts: 299 |
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This. Plus a lot of series just simply wont make it over here for one reason or another. Good luck ever getting series like Tsugumomo released in the US. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6900 Location: Kazune City |
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 " Sure, they could use the legal sites for what they do have, and pirate other stuff, but that's just not "convenient" enough.
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0nsen
 Posts: 256 |
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Online manga sites would have to have basically every manga in existence to justify their existence. Which is pretty much exactly what piracy offers. Like others said, it's a service problem, you just have to be competitive and price really isn't that much of a concern, as long as it is reasonable.
But when I remember the half assed try of the anime industry at a streaming site called Daisuki I wonder if the main problem is really stubbornness or if it is rather outright incompetence. |
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dark_bozu
Posts: 208 |
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Imho, if publishers want to beat piracy, they should do a few steps:
1) Unite and make one service/application, that would be had all your manga - I don't want to download a hundread apps for the sake of reading one or two series that I like; 2) Make a reasonable price - you would sell much more and make people more satisfied if you would charge 1-1.99$ per volume instead of 10$; 3) Let people decide which language they prefer - if there's no french/russian/german etc translation at least let people read an english version. 4) Make a simultaneous releases in different languages (or at least japanese/english). I think that way people would be much more satisfied and most of readers would chose this service instead of piracy sites (and some of them would still buy physical volumes after their publication).
Well, this is a long-term investment. Steam wasn't become big in one day, as well as itunes. This takes time, but the profit is surely would be immense. If those publishers are seeking a quick money, then they're not fit to be a businessmen. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4620 |
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Obviously, there are always going to be pirates who will never be satisfied, but there have been several examples where a change in service made a massive difference. Convincing the production committees to go along with simulcasting put a huge dent in fansubbing. A lot of the fansub groups voluntarily stopped because there was a legal alternative to what they were doing. A lot of people justified pirating music because they didn't want to buy a whole album just to get the one or two songs they liked, and eventually the music industry came around to the idea that customers would buy from them if they gave them a legal option. I've read more than once that people told Gabe Newell it was a stupid idea to bring Steam to Russia because it was a pirate haven, and yet that ended up being profitable because it offered a service that customers wanted there.
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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The problem is that domestically, there's a lot of stagnation in manga and especially LNs, you have to look deep to find anything good anymore with all of the bad LNs being released every week. Manga is a little better, but unless you are sticking to a few publications, you may have a lot of duds to go through, which can be very costly. With the market outside of Japan, you have the issue of everything good staying in Japan while the mediocre and "mainstream" titles are the ones getting licensed for the most part. The former can be solved by having a 1 chapter digital sample of a manga or LN to read on the publisher's website and the latter can only be solved by having a region free Steam or Netflix for manga.
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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There's definitely people pirating rather than paying, however, a scant few decades ago, physical books (and bookstores) were more popular/purchased and actual physical libraries were still relevant. Now BOTH are dying. Libraries offered you completely free access to lots of books, and yet bookstores still managed to earn tidy profits. If the major publishers can get people to their digital product, then they can build a similar ecosystem, the PROBLEM is that the publishers are trying to defend their physical product, which is unfortunately (generally speaking) a dying breed. They're making digital versions equally priced (which is odd since it costs less to produce) and often more difficult to use (to make it harder to "share", but this just causes issues for legit users as software publishers have (sometimes) learned). That's all being done in the effort to "encourage" you to buy the physical copy, but has the negative effect of driving some people from buying ANY copy. (I've bought digital releases of books and movies, but it ALWAYS ticks me off if the book is $10 hardcopy and $10 eCopy, in my case I actually prefer eCopy for shelf space reasons, but I feel I'm being taken advantage of when I'm being charged the same as for a physical product, ESPECIALLY if it's dependent on having access to their platform) |
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Romuska
 Subscriber Posts: 810 |
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Jim Sterling put it best. Ultimately people want to push a button and get the thing. The more you try to prevent that the more people will resist. I for one refuse to pay for censored manga so if I hear about something being edited, why would I pay for that knowing that I can get it unedited for free?
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RedSwirl
 Posts: 344 |
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I don't really know how stuff like Crunchyroll Manga, Amazon Kindle, Comixology, or Shonen Jump Alpha are working, but I think there needs to be a comprehensive subscription service for series people don't really care THAT much about -- stuff a lot of people aren't really willing to own permanently, but will read when it's there. Basically a Netflix of comics/manga.
There's one mobile app I know of that's become so sophisticated it's sometimes hard to even realize its content is all from piracy sites. It does author spotlights, tags, genre collections, and has a system to alert readers whenever there's a new chapter. Even before official digital services appeared it was a lot more efficient than any official stores. Maybe the biggest problem is simply gathering a big enough library. A lot of these piracy sites have absolutely gargantuan libraries with hundreds or thousands of manga that will never be translated into English. |
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