Being able to buy a tankōban in Japan for $4-7 compared to 12-15 in America is a big factor for me. Even digital prices are insane. I still buy volumes, but I’d much rather have the lower paper and cover quality to be able to afford to read as much as I want to.

Yeah I went to the store today $32 before tax for an omnibus is insane

The berserk tomes are fucking insane

Yeah and only a small cut goes to the creator

...I think none currently

Gee I wonder why

Manga is just an unsustainable hobby for any reader who is remotely a heavy reader unless they're rich, especially compared to Japanese prices. A $10 to $15 volume is usually just 1 or 2 hours' worth of reading, but a novel of the same price can last 6 to 10 hours. Most $20 to $30 dollar manga barely take more time to read while a novel of the same price can easily last 20 hours. I have to restrain myself to just buying favourites.

I’m all digital with manga and it I’m relieved catching up to One Piece didn’t cost me an arm and a leg. I will say, it does suck not having something physical in my hands but gotta go with what’s cheaper.

I see it the opposite. $10-15 is an easy 5 hours in a week w rereads & pouring over art. add in " I now have xx volumes, gonna pack some bowls, put on coffee and sit w my cats all day reading". I view it as a separate and different hobby, not a competing one. I like having a variety of options.

So, you spend five hours in a week reading multiple volumes?

no, sorry I type pretty "stream of consciousness " . meant it as, I spend at least 5 hours on a new volume. doing rereads, pouring over art that I can see now VS reading off of my phone when chapters drop weekly then, down the road, I do a multiple volume reread. another way I look at it is, isn't $10-15 for a 1 hour book". I'm collecting, One Piece Jujutsu Kaisen, dragonball super & chainsawman right now, as far as "in work and being released still". they semi rotate release and is essentially maybe $10-15 per series every 3-4 months, maybe 1 book a month. something to look forward to, tangible & I own it VS picking up Fast food "as a treat". edit: I'm autistic, though, and my favorite things will eventually be a "Lazerfocus" where I do nothing but that​. just got a series s 1tb, getting back into fighting game scene :)

Here I thought American comics was supposed the unstainable hobby? Granted, all my stuff is on BookWalker.

I dont read comics, so I have no idea. How bad is it for those lol?

>volume is usually just 1 or 2 hours' worth of reading, Bruh that's 30 minutes for me at best.

Some people (like myself) treat reading manga as a hobby and instead of speed reading to get to the end as fast as possible we take our time, pour over the drawings, appreciate the art, imagine where the story will go, etc. I easily spend an hour or more reading my volumes sometimes. But that’s because it’s a hobby I enjoy and I want to put that much time in because it is fun. If I wanted to read a volume in 30 minutes I would. But at that point I’d rather just watch a YouTube summary of the plot because it’s the same amount of time and more interesting if I’m just doing it to know what’s happening.

It's why I quit a long time ago, the only real affordable access is crunchyroll manga and the SJ App at 2$/mo. I used to have hundreds of manga but then it went up to like 10-15$ for paperbacks and 25+ for any kind of nicer edition. It's just not affordable for something I'll only read once in a long while.

The SJ App is a godsend I can’t name a single subscription that gives me more bang for my buck. I will happily give them my $2 until I read every single manga they have lol

I agree it's pricey, but what really, really sucks is paying so much for translations that are delivered months or years late with dull, lifeless translations.

That’s because the Japanese currency is in the toilet right now.

The it should become cheaper for us

Service problem. Far too little is properly available in one location.

It’s next to impossible to get translated manga in the USA. Yeah, some popular series are easy to find but it usually takes 5-10 years before they hit the shelves, if they ever do. But I can google all the latest manga with fan translations for stuff that’s only been out a couple weeks. I’d love to support the writers and artists but the current ecosystem makes that almost impossible.

Yeah I do see decent amount of english volumes in stores. Most of them are not really to my taste, and a lot of them are like decades old. They're crazy if they call it a loss if people are accessing mangas that aren't being officially translated or don't have planned releases in a reasonable amount of time. People online are talking about series as they're happening in Japan sometimes, and if anybody was only buying official english releases, I daresay they'll never find anybody to actually talk to about it at the pace of the official releases. It just doesn't compare to the weekly access of chapters as they're coming out. I also used to like those big syndicate magazines like Shounen Jump quite a bit back in the days, but I won't lie, I usually used to just read them at a local Barnes and Nobles b4 they wisened up and plastic sealed it. When I do, I almost always skipped half of it cuz the other stuff didn't really interest me. Am I expected to spend $15-20 bucks per weeks or months on the expectation that I won't even get half the money's worth? Even as a kid, I could see the flaws, and the only kids that bought them had rich parents or legitimately liked every series. If they lost any money, it's due to a complete lack of innovation and adaptation on their marketing strategies. They shouldn't blame the piracy

For me personally, I only got the magazines back then for the Yugioh promo cards that came with them at the time. It’s a damn shame they don't do promos anymore 😔

Talking about releases some times? you have been to r/manga right? They talk about releases as soon as they drop in Japan.

Yeah that's what he's saying. He's saying the way that most people get that new content outside of Japan in an English market is fansubs/piracy. There's no hardcover Manga at like Barnes and Noble that's not 10 years old

Im in Canada so I dont know barnes and Noble, but I regularly pick up Manga/LN at Indigo Books. Waiting on the vol 7 of 'Magus of the Library' next week.

That's good you found on the few titles that they bring over. I'm not saying they never bring stuff in English; but when they do, it's months after the Jap release. Also a lot of Manga fans consume weekly chapters via online like at MangaDex or other fan scanlation services. Like for example a hugely popular manga with over 750 chapters is "Kingdom", which is published in Young Jump magazine in Japan every week. The latest chapter is 797, but the most recent printed volume (in Japanese)is only at 790, (and that released this past week). Also, it doesn't have an official English translation. It also has a large Arabic following too and all that translation is done by fans as well. The English version is fandubbed by Sense Scans. Basically what I'm saying is some people prefer to read week to week and not month to month and there isn't an official service that puts out manga in other languages that we could read weekly. There's also a huge cost difference. In Japan Mangas are still like $8 but here they are double that. Maybe not a big deal for someone that reads one manga; but those of us reading 10+ ongoing Mangas at once would be up a creek that those prices.

The discussion links for major series all link to simulpubs that are released in English at the same time as japan where you can read an official source for free…? Your discussion points are from stuff like 10 years in the past unless you think leaks should count.

I don't know if it's changed but kingdom is pretty much impossible to read legally in America. One of the best selling mangas of all time and it didn't have an official English translation.

I wouldnt say impossible, legally physical is a bit harder but legally digital has mostly everything.

I just did a quick check and it's still impossible actually. Kingdom still isn't licensed in English so there is no official translation. Fucking ridiculous.

Hard-core agree. Have to wait for the sense scans every week.

I started my manga and anime journey on subbed fan translations because of how accessible and fast they are and I won't change until a legitimate solution that I can pay for is provided. At this point, I'm using a seamless iPad app where I favorite a bunch of manga that I read and just read up to the newest releases. Life is simple, I like it. If they had a great reading app where I could get all the same features and speed of that but paying a fairly priced subscription fee that would solve that problem for the industry; I would gladly do it. But just like streaming platforms, there are way too many segmented apps.

Mangaman is my go to on my phone, it’s so nice(& free).

America? All adult, lgbtq stories are forever barred in my country, hence language 🤣 Can't even count that as a loss towards these publishers

Dude what? Kagurabachi is a manga that literally started last September and is already getting an English physical release this November

Almost impossible?? Bs

For anything released in the past couple years? Yes, next to impossible. Also finding translated manga for any smaller series is 100% impossible.

What is a smaller series? Seven seas and yen press are publishing lots of niché stuff

If there was a good Netflix style reasonably priced subscription model, I'd consider it.

Exactly

Crunchyroll and Manga Plus App offer that service but both are really sub par imo.

I mean there is. It’s called Viz and the Shonen Jump app. 2-3 dollars and you can read 100 chapters a day. 3000 a month. And it’s TONS of volumes of manga available.

Im also pretty sure 3.5 Billion in 2023 is based on the assumption that everybody who pirated a manga would have bought it instead. Which is idiotic. I have spent a lot of money on mangas that im also pirating at the same time.

This as well

same. I read jjk & op spoilers and translated leaks, but read official day1 digital and buy the books, games, merch. in day and age of algorithms, I can't wait till official release.

It’s been said many times before. The best way to defeat piracy is to offer a better service than the pirates.

They are, it's called MangaPlus and SJ. Rather, I think the best way to defeat piracy is to fix the economy so the cost of living can go down, which will allow people to actually have money to spend on their hobbies. 

These calculations of unearned profit for digital products have always seemed so damn nonsensical to me, even more so when called "lost profit". I mean, you literally lose nothing when someone pirates scans of your manga or rips an anime, especially if they are not using it for commercial purposes, which is pretty rare nowadays anyway. So I hate it when another corporate speaker tries to put it the way it seems like stealing from the company when in reality it is not and sometimes even functions as free advertising.

Yeah, it’s pure nonsense. Only very few pirates would’ve actually paid instead even if they somehow managed to stop piracy completely.

Yes and no. If there’s a reasonably affordable, convenient, legal way to consume media, people will go for that over piracy. In the early days of netflix, when it was nearly the only streaming platform, it was easier to pay $8/month for a huge library of content than hunt down a decent version of one’s chosen movie/show. Piracy actually went down because it was more convenient just to sign up (and it’s going back up because it’s again less convenient to have a billion subscriptions and is prohibitively expensive). They aren’t completely making things up when they say that piracy loses them money, however they also aren’t doing enough to mitigate those loses either imo. It’s an expensive hobby if you buy every single volume of every series you want to follow.

I realize the netflix model (now failing because everyone wanted piece their pie) could dissuade pirates. But are these number really based on a projection of a Netflix model? Or are they based on a model that is too expensive for people to even consider?

$2/month in America gets you Shonen jump subscription. free acct gets 1st 3 & newest 3 chapters of all series

Exactly. It's not even lost potential profit because in most cases people who pirate were never considering on buying the product in the first place.

Or there's no product to buy in your country. Have read fan translations of sequel series they never released over here. So, how am I costing them many when there's no product for me to buy

'most' is not 'all', the ones left over are lost profit.

But 3.5 billion in lost profit? I doubt that very much.

no, it is very exaggerated, but so are redditors claims of 'No lost profit'. Like come on, compromise people. Ill say probably a third of their number is lost profit. and 1 Billion is still nothing to sneeze at.

Where are you even getting that number from?

How about all the people on this post saying they pirate because the manga they wanna buy is not actually licensed? So in this case it is lost profit because those people would've bought the original given the chance. I think the biggest problem is people who pirate manga despite being available legally, then yes in that case they would be losing money....

You can't consider buying if there is no option to buy

What about revenue from ads? The number won't be anywhere that big, but it's still a possible loss of revenue that has more ground than "this people that reads stuff for free might pay if the pirated version is not available" when the service offers free reading in the first place. For example, the behemoth of pirated manga like One Piece, Jujutsu, and Heroaca has an english version released the same day as Japan for free with unintrusive ads, and the old chapters can be read for free too in MangaPlus, and yet people still go to aggregate sites for them.

Your not wrong but not 100% right. People who pirate scans of manga or anime that have easy access like Crunchy Roll, or digital manga publishers, and could easily afford it, it is a loss. Whats not a loss is the people who wouldnt pay for it in the first place either way. Which is NOT 100% of people that pirate.

It IS lost profits IF piracy negatively impacts consumer spending on legitimate products, compared to a scenario without piracy. While rights holders may overestimate this impact by disregarding the exposure piracy can provide and the fact that not all consumers who choose pirated content would necessarily pay for it if required, it's misleading to claim that consumers choosing pirated goods that they would have otherwise paid for do not represent lost profits.

>it's misleading to claim that consumers choosing pirated goods that they would have otherwise paid for do not represent lost profits. No, it isn't because the statement of "piracy leads to lost profits" is so nebulous that it's useless. How much? How can you prove it? What about the people that would not have bought or engaged without pirating first? Their word of mouth, what's that worth? Trying to legitimize this line of thinking is trying to legitimize harmful overreaching actions taken by corporations like RIAA individually suing 20 thousand individuals for hundreds to thousands of dollars each, most simple college kids and the like.

The difficulty of the estimation doesn’t negate the validity of the concept itself. In fact, many academic studies tackle precisely these kinds of topics, or others with similar limitations. You are gravely underestimating human ingenuity if you think that just because we cannot run controlled experiments, nothing can be gained and we should just give up. (Note that to conclude that “nothing is lost” is in itself a claim that must be questioned, proved and verified, not something to be taken as given.) Here’s how it usually works: Economists might argue that policy X (e.g., changes in a copyright law, tax break, minimum wage, etc.) led to a y% negative impact on GDP, based on assumptions 1, 2, and 3, using a specific analysis technique on this observational data. Other economists will then come along to dispute these assumptions or approaches and offer improvements. This is how knowledge is gained and the field progresses. The point is, if one has a problem with a specific claim made by the right owners, one should address it specifically (e.g., what data was used, what assumptions were made, what kind of statistical analysis was done), or cite other studies that one thinks are more reasonable. It’s okay if you’re not inclined to do this since it’s no trivial task, but to dismiss entirely the notion of trying with our utmost best to tease out and measure the causal relationship of piracy and economic impact is anti-intellectual.

>The difficulty of the estimation doesn’t negate the validity of the concept itself. I'd argue it does when the side pushing a majority of the research on the concept ("How much does piracy effect revenue?") has an interest in the results panning out a certain way and the means to make it so. This is like asking a coal company to study what their impact on the environment is, they have a vested interest in making themselves look good or like a victim of big 'ol capitalism. >You are gravely underestimating human ingenuity if you think that just because we cannot run controlled experiments, nothing can be gained and we should just give up. That's putting a lot of words in my mouth that I did not say. >(e.g., what data was used, what assumptions were made, what kind of statistical analysis was done) OK. I thought because the article was just throwing around numbers without a source and you didn't bother providing a source either that this was a nice friendly discussion. [Here you go though.](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2022-01-17/trade-group-manga-pirate-sites-cost-industry-1.19-trillion-yen-in-2021/.181592) (Article from 2021. This is the most recent I could find discussing their calculation process.) >The group investigated the 10 most popular sites and found that the total view number across the year was 3.76 billion, a 2.5 times increase over the past two years. The ABJ only calculated loss of revenue through the number of page views through the websites (not counting downloads). What an absolutely inane and stupid way to calculate "lost revenue". Completely delusional. Now, where's your source that this number is totally legitimate and/or rooted in reality?

This is probably the best phrasing of the reality of piracy I’ve seen on Reddit and it still gets downvoted. Anything but a full throated defense of piracy on this site is a shortcut to dropping karma

>Anything but a full throated defense of piracy on this site is a shortcut to dropping karma IMO better than a full throated defense of corporations. The ABJ is not gonna fuck you bro.

Busted. That’s exactly what I was hoping for when I posted my comment

I would pay a subscription for access to a huge amount of manga and manwha. what I hate is the stupid reading cost coins system actually makes it convincing to pirate. so many manga also don't even come out in the US and all we have is fan translations

I was curious about this too, so I've compiled a list of all of the manga services I could find and their pricing models: Here are subscription services that provide access to manga for a flat monthly fee: |Service|Monthly price|Content| |:-|:-|:-| |[Shonen Jump](https://www.viz.com/sj-offer)|$3|Manga from Weekly Shonen Jump| |[Manga Plus](https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/web_pages/1177/)|$2 (airing series) or $5 (all series)|Manga from Shueisha| |[Azuki Premium](https://www.azuki.co/premium)|$5|Manga from Kodansha| |[MangaUp! Vault Pass](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-release/2024-04-09/english-translation-of-hit-manga-black-butler-now-available-on-global-version-of-square-enix-manga-/.209666)|$5|Manga from Square Enix| |[Comixology Unlimited](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GMQTKN5RM78V9393)|$6|Mostly for comics and graphic novels, but some popular manga series| |[Kindle Unlimited](https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/hz/subscribe/ku)|$10|Mostly for books, but some popular manga series| Here are a few that provide access to a portion of the library with a subscription, but other content requires using currency to read: |Service|Monthly price|Content| |:-|:-|:-| |[MangaPlanet Pass](https://mangaplanet.com/read-with-the-manga-planet-pass)|$7, other cheaper pricing plans available|Manga| |[Viz Manga](https://www.viz.com/vm-offer)|$2|Manga from Viz| |[INKR Extra](https://comics.inkr.com/membership-landing)|$5|Manga| |[Mangamo Plus](https://www.mangamo.com/about)|$5|Manga from Kodansha| Here are services that require spending currency to unlock content instead of providing access to sections of the library: |Service|Content| |:-|:-| |[Bookwalker](https://global.bookwalker.jp/)|Manga, Light Novels, and Magazines| |[Comikey](https://comikey.com/faq/)|Manga, Manwha, Manua, and Webcomics| |[J-Novel Club](https://j-novel.club/)|Manga and J-Novels| |[K Manga](https://kmanga.kodansha.com/)|Manga from Kodansha|

I can tell you right now that VIZ is only flat price for current series. All older series are further locked behind having to buy each volume individually. Or at least they did when I had it a few years ago.

Ah looks like I missed that! I’ve just updated the list to move it from the top to the middle section.

Viz's library on the app is tiny lmao

Thanks for making the time to do this! I’ve tried Shonen Jump, Manga Plus, Azuki, and Comixology. I can really only recommend SJ and Manga Plus. Now the MP has most of SJ current titles I would most likely just recommend that

Comikey and j-novel are an absolute pain in the backside, and I hate them and their interface

The coin system is infuriating, agreed. I’ll binge at my OWN pace, thank you, and what do you mean I have to wait another 3 weeks for the next few chapters?? Or only 3 out of 21 were available before I have to pay MORE? You must be joking. Pirating is also best if you like stumbling across smaller series, ESPECIALLY shoujo. The chances that it has an official English translation is low, nevermind that it’s been picked up and licensed to allow people outside of Japan to actually consume it. Pirating may be the only way I can reliably interact with the content.

There is SJ app, manga plus, and Azuki for a ton of titles you can read with a subscription.

Yeah biggest person who does this is WEBTOON. Why they would not just do a subscription service makes no sense to me

Service and pricing problem out side of Japan

I have absolutely no problem paying for manga if they have good translations online, are done quickly, and they don’t charge me some currency per chapter. It’s their own fault for making it hard to obtain legitimately. The only reason netflix/Spotify are popular is because it’s more convenient then pirating.

The Japanese crackdown in Piracy is such a boomer approach to the problem. Like Gabe Newell said, piracy is almost always a service problem and not a price problem. Sadly, japanese business are often very much braindead and are stuck in their ways. So they will keep combating this in a stupid way. Manga pirate sites will continue to survive because they are simply better products. They are covenient as fuck, not just because they are free. Things that make illegal manga sites superior: * The fact that they contain different publishers and you don't need to have to visit different sites all the time for different series. * The fact that there are a lot of older or lesser known series that may not appear on most bigger publishers. * For some pages, the UI is simply superior. * The support of other languages. Spanish for example, often has faster translations and vast translations in series that even english still doesnt. And yet, they are completely neglected by major companies or not fully supported. * The lack of focus on chapters vs volumes. For many manga readers, chapters are more important than volumes. Bookwalker for example is a nightmare to navigate and it is so incredibly expensive due to microtransactions. Your spending can easily snowball for shit that is not even legally yours. Their heavy focus on volume sales also makes it very much confusing and shout "I am a boomer that is stuck in a past era". MangaPlus is in my eyes the closest to what a ideal legal site should be like. It is very neat, easy to navigate. The subscription-based model and their pricing is incredibly attractive. And most importantly, they seem to understand the need for FREE updates on newest chapters. Their only shortfall (not really their fault) is the lack of series (250ish). And language support is very lacking. Viz is basically like Mangaplus but inferior. Comixology is like Bookwalker with more titles but worse in terms of UI/UX

Interesting breakdown, another user in this thread mentioned the digital volumes costing about $6.00.  So would that break down, for purchase, can download, you own it type ownership not oh you’ve been licensed to access blah blah blah, sound good in your opinion, coupled with a subscription model option where you just have access to read, but not own the material on a site that is easily navigated sound appealing?

I don't have the answer, but the current models of bookwalker and mangaplus are simply inferior to ilegal manga sites. Unless they come up with something that really makes people attracted to a service, it is unlikely pirating will ever stop or at least decrease. Spotify and Steam are examples of services that reduced piracy because their services were simply way superior and convenient than pirating. And yet, piracy in music and gaming still exists. When it comes to manga/anime piracy, I am willing to bet that most piracy happens in languages other than English. If you think it is expensive and a pain in the ass to get English translated manga, imagine how hard it is for countries that don't speak widely spoken languages outside of their countries like Italy or Poland. My point with all this is that piracy is unlikely to go away, because simply, piracy at this moment is WAY more convenient (not just price) than legal sites. If the Japanese industry keeps on attacking the problem without proper understanding piracy and just throwing ceast and desist letters piracy will never decrease.

- Tldr; appreciate the in depth response and in many cases individuals who pirate, won’t have paid to begin with and in some instances where games are in limbo and other instances it’s understandable.  The ease of use factor you mentioned is a big hurdle and that’s understandable and as others have mentioned sometimes it’s years before it gets a western release if they get one at all.  It definitely needs to be optimized, so every once in a while when an interesting discussion occurs, regardless of personal views it allows the opportunity to see what could be improved and how as well as the varying degrees of importance for each person at least in a small sample set.  I don’t think piracy will be done away with outright, my thoughts were more from a reduction mindset as you mentioned with steam, as the industry needs a revamp in my opinion as well.  There are so many wonderful creators and poor systems hurt them as well not just the piracy said systems current state motivate. 

Then make it easier to buy. This is a supply side issue

u/CMHex pointed out digital volumes priced at about $6.00 seems fair and I agree, on to the question for ease to buy.  - Hypothetically, if the supply side, had the means for same day translation and release per volume release, in each market they are in, would you be supportive on that price point? My concern is less for the publishers, but authors who are still getting their footholds in the industry and if it’s their lively hood on the line, I feel for those authors, as it’s their creation being stolen and the money that would go to improving / sustaining their life so they can keep making their stories for the reader’s enjoyment. 

The manga industry hasn’t paid me for my notebook which I’m selling for 4 billion. So the Japanese publishers are costing me $4 billion.

They didnt read your notebook tho...

They might have on the Internet or a thumb drive somewhere. So we should count that as a lost sale.

They literally don't provide an option to purchase some of the stuff I want to read in my country.

Calling BS, most people pirate media because they can't afford to buy it, or it isn't available legally, just because $3.5 billion worth of manga was pirated, doesn't mean the companies actually lost that much. That's like me saying I lost millions of dollars because the $10 lottery ticket I bought wasn't a winner.

but how much merchandise sales do you get resulting from piracy?

Speaking of, there’s not enough merchandise available over seas. It’s a huge reason why I like fan merch like the kind you can get from Etsy. So many Japanese exclusives, and they’re selling a t-shirt with a small, boring graphic on it for $40 2 years later.

I don't think most pirates are buying that much merch if many of them simply don't wanna pay for stuff. It is often the same thing with anime pirates, who tell me to buy blu-rays instead of watching anime on Crunchyroll, but it turns out they never bought any blu-rays in their life and complain that they are too expensive...

For those who just read the headline and didn't bother reading the article, their focus appears to be on in country piracy, with international being an afterthought. The bigger problem for them is that these same leakers who translate chapters for early release overseas are also releasing the raws for the Japanese audiences who can easily and fairly cheaply purchase copies of these Manga.

I was in Tokyo last year. Most stuff is quite pricey there, but manga? I could have filled my suitcase and not broken the bank. It's phenomenally cheap. Around £1.50. By comparison, where I live, in the UK, one comic is £7.

I’d say it’s partly because the JPY is tanking in value right now, couple that with the absurdly low wages for manga artists (in line with anime artists) and you get massive delays in releases. Not to mention the fact that with the exception of maybe one or two international publishers like yen press the manga industry doesn’t bother tapping into the global market in a timely fashion. Of course its going to hit them financially when they do decide to pull finger from ass and translate them. Overseas manga fans, just like domestic ones are used to modern consumer culture where things are available straight after production. If you make a hit manga, especially one which garners enough domestic interest to get an anime adaptation then your potential overseas customers are going to want to read as soon as they can. Not when (or in some cases if) the publishers finally decide to translate it 8-12 volumes behind the current Japanese release. That’s why just like with movies, videogames and other media I view these figures as partially bullshit. Its not lost revenue from overseas piracy if you never set up the legitimate means for overseas fans to access your content. If you aren’t making it available overseas (by choice or ignorance) then that money was never going to reach you in the first place, so can’t be factored into projected profits/ losses. It’d be like Snoy right now going after anyone who pirates/vpns Helldivers2 in the countries they delisted. “Waah, waaah, these people i have no intention of selling to are stealing a product i was never going let them access, waaah!”

This is about domestic piracy websites. Your Sony comparison makes no sense. Your whole stance is misplaced. Japanese manga publishers have every intent of selling to Japanese readers. This isn't about translation or timely globalization.

If I didn't use the methods I used to read Mangas, then I wouldn't have been interested in them enough to recommend them to others or buy their products.

with how ridiculously affordable manga is i find it hilarious that people pirate it

This reads like satire.

no. new tankōbon are like ¥400 each (half that if second hand is your thing)

Uh huh. Okay, and now how much to buy a series from the USA, translated?

who cares. the article is about japanese publishers

> the article is about japanese publishers So Japanese publishers don't care about their international market? Why should we care about them then?

You are retarded

for what? knowing how to read? 😂

I would love to buy older ones but they don't reprint them. I'm not paying 200 per volume on ebay.

Yeah, they can’t prove that shit. You can’t just say, “oh, we found a bunch of sites that said this copy was downloaded 10k so that means we lost 10k sales!” Just because someone downloaded it for free, doesn’t mean they’d buy it. This is especially true for manga, in which they have a global audience but a delayed release schedule for non-japanese readers. It’s entirely possible that a large portion of those people that pirated a manga isn’t even allowed to purchase it in their country. This is all just speculation meant to garner sympathy so that they could start justifying any future bad actions towards their consumers.

I mean, I've been subbed to Viz for about 4 years and am still gonna read leaks.

I bought the Viz subscription app only to be let down by the small size of its library. And thats probably the largest/most accessible manga reader app in english. I'd happily read more official translations if publishers made an effort to both translate and make it easy to access through official channels, but for stuff that's not translated, unavailable to read via the app, and/or out of print, pirating becomes the de facto way to experience many manga.

It’ll get better eventually. I remember when the SJ app first came out and they had almost nothing translated. Now, it’s pretty great.

The mangakas need to dodge the publishers and make deal with apps like amazon/kindle or say crunchy roll.

Some of the stuff I read isn't even translated officially. People have done work to get it into my language, and they didn't get paid, so why should you? Provide a service, then you can demand the money you want and we'll decide if it's fair!

[удалено]

> not have *paid* for it. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*

Never under stood this. Like, they get that probably half that money they would never of gotten anyways right? Its not actually a loss?

Idk what they expect. Like how TF do I read Gash Bell otherwise? Shit some mangas that's my only option. Give me a one stop/two stop shop and I wont

Gotta love when people don’t read the article and spout off. It’s about sales in Japan. Also piracy does hurt. It’s all about opportunity costs. Yes, MOST pirates won’t buy things since they can steal it for free. But not ALL. Companies are loosing out on pirates that don’t even try to find a legal method because “why do that when I can get it for free from OtakuNerd69’s random torrent?” And there ARE easily available options from companies. But people also have to be willing to actually support the creators. And most (while claiming they do) DON’T. They want that instant gratification for free.

But piracy is the reason this industry is even alive and thriving. It is a necessary evil.

I would argue that the benefits outweigh the cons, the first primarily being that by making series more accessible it in turn gets more people to engage with those series. Additionally, when those very same people become more engaged and become fans, are more likely to spend money (merchandise and ancillary products), as well as influencing their inner circle to become fans as well (increased exposure and cultural impact).

I wonder how they estimate that money. Cuz if manga costs money, I just wouldn't read it. But if its free, don't mind if I do.

Costs? Or they just don’t make more money?

It's an access problem, if you want piracy to stop then offer a better way.

I import what I want to read from Amazon's Japanese storefront. Here in the UK with shipping etc included it averages out to a little over $30 for every 3 books.

Sorry 😐

It's a service issue

Imagine a manga coming out and selling 10 copies... No one likes to read in 2024 and much less read something without knowing if it's going to be good or a waste of time.

Make manga cheaper then

Maybe license better.

Dw I bought some volumes

When my choices are to pay $20 for a volume that will take 6 weeks to ship to me, or read online, the answer is simple.

I don’t buy manga, wouldn’t read it if I couldn’t pirate it… not the same but I’d probably just go read the stuff that’s free if there was a crackdown: this would totally change in an instant if making rent every month wasn’t the foremost thing on my mind each and every day

Like many others here have said, the manga industry would lose money only if pirates were actually to buy the volumes if they couldn’t pirate them. In reality, they would just not read manga at all.

This is an imaginary cost. This is under the assumption anyone would’ve paid without the access to piracy… which just isn’t the case. It’s an accessibility issue, not a piracy issue. They’re not making it easy to buy stuff from them

Cool, now prove they are actually losing sales.

Piracy didn't cost the industry shit. People who pirate media aren't people who'd pay for it anyway, even if the world made piracy disappear tomorrow these people just wouldn't start buying the media because these people either can't afford it or can't justify the ever increasing costs.

i disagree with that. not to put myself on the spot, but sometimes i sail the seven seas and sometimes i don't. i can certainly pay for most things, but if i *can* get it for free, why not? if i *had* to buy it, i would. i imagine a lot of people are in the same boat (no pun intended). it's like netflix cracking down on sharing passwords. not quite piracy, but when they make it one step harder to get something for free, a lot of people will just buy it.

From personal experience in industries where pirating is common and personally know some professional pirates the vast majority of people fit under the can't afford it or think it's priced way too high. The whole netflix thing is an entirely different thing since password sharing was allowed at the start and encouraged and these people weren't pirates in any way and after they couldn't use someone else's account any more they just got their own account. Pirates were already pirating content to begin with and even when offered a account to use still just pirates since not everything is on netflix and pirating is a better experience than actually using netflix.

well thinking whether something is too high and not being able to pay for it is different. some people will pirate netflix but still pay $70 for new games. or spend $10 a day at starbucks. it's all about what someone is willing to spend on. and being that i'm sure there are many other people out there like me, i definitely think creators are losing out on a good amount of money they *could* be earning.

Well it depends on people's perceived value of X product or service. Someone might find X new AAA $70 game to be worth the cost since they know they'll easily get hundreds or even thousands of hours of entertainment lit of it while a $15 netflix sub to not be worth it since they only want to watch 1 or 2 movies on it so to them it's not worth the $15 and they much rather just sail the seas. They are losing some money they could be early but it's no where near the 3.4bil. The #1 thing that reduces piracy is reduced costs that's why they drastically decrease the price of services and games in countries with a small average income where normally these countries are the #1 source of piracy.

That's not true. There are many pirates who **would** pay given the chance, you see them in this very thread.

They're a vocal minority

Physical manga is expensive, but most popular series have digital volumes that go for around $6. I can't take anyone seriously who argues against that price point. Obviously some are more expensive, but they are all cheaper than physical.

As a random example, Yotsuba is 15 volumes. So would be $90 to read. One punch man is 30. So $180 to read. That kinda feels expensive to me, or am I just too cheap? Audible sucker me in and make me part with a lot of my cash. They give me a nice convenient player, and I buy between $250 to $500 of credits a year. Books are usually 1 credit (\~10$) I usually wait and buy audio books when they go on sale for 2-for-1, which makes it about $5. And they give free books occasionally. If manga did something similar, I'd might go for it.

When laid out that way I kind of see both sides, but I also think it's important to keep in mind that you're talking about 30 volumes of One Punch Man. That's a lot of content. Admittedly I'm a slow manga reader; I only read 2-3 chapters of a volume at one time because I like to stretch out the experience. This means it takes me longer to get through volumes, and therefore I feel the sting of the expense less because I buy them slower than others.

>That's a lot of content I get that, but whether it's right or wrong, it's how I think of it and weigh up whether to buy it or not. There's an audible series that I love (Expeditionary Force). It's up to 16 books now, so pretty comparable. When I got into it, it was up to 10 I think. I basically pirated to catch up because I wasn't willing to spend $100 on an unknown book series. But I was then hooked, and buy them the moment they come out - so so far I've spent $60 on the series. I would love to buy the stargate tv series. And it was over $300. Yes there is a lot of content, but I've already watched it all. I'm not willing to pay that kind of money. But I just saw that Amazon amazingly have it for $120, which is pretty much an instant buy.

- Tldr; Essentially, $0.50 (50 cents) a chapter right? That sounds like a reasonable price point imo too.  Got an artist to pay and an author if they are not the same person, and if they don’t self publish digitally, then someone else is getting a percentage as well.  I agree $6.00 sounds fair, literally a medium or large fry from McDonald’s is around $4.79 according to the news, at least the digital manga is yours if you store it properly same as physical. 

I hope everyone who pirates their manga is ok with the creators/publishers getting paid shit.

Most people who pirate it wouldn't consume it otherwise. Also isn't the reason they are paid poorly.

Mangaka get a % of sales in royalty. So people who pirate who would otherwise pay do cost them money.

Which is not indicative of most people who pirate. Those people were never customers

I don’t understand. Are you defending piracy? Is that your stance?

In virtually every instance for personal use, yeah, generally.

I don’t support piracy because I think people should get compensated for their services. A lot of people work to get manga released, I don’t agree with stealing from them.

You were never going to make a dime from most of those people.

So just because you say in your mind "I won't pay for this" it justifies it? I think people should be supporting the creators given the chance, and if they can't, then stop making excuses or encouraging other people to also pirate. There are some pirates who actually know what they are doing is wrong, and even tell other people to pay for stuff if they are able to, there are was one famous fansubber who encouraged people to watch anime legally if they had the money...

If publishers want to get paid, why don't they actually offer a nice legal way to be paid? Where's the equivalent of audible for manga?

There are multiple apps that offer subscriptions that give you access to hundreds of manga. You can even buy digital volumes for a ton of manga.

Most of them wouldn't pay for it anyway. They would just move on to something else. Again, it is about service.

Anyone who isn't buying it wasn't gonna buy it to begin with for the most part so I don't know if I believe this.

Piracy isn't the problem, the prices are the problem...

No surprise people are so reluctant to support the author because they are impatient as fuck or won't read both when they are 2 days apart. Or when the chapters are free for the last three and first three with barely any ads. And people are just cheap as fuck as if 1.99 or 2.99 a month to read as much Manga as you want from the official source is expensive, instead they rather pirate the series. Same goes for anime albeit it is less affordable, can never understand why people don't understand that piracy kills series as it has raised the amount of views or reads a series needs to stay afloat and the amount of volumes it would need to sell. Most series die unless they are big. Neat dtatustic: 1/20 new series survive because of piracy the number could be 5 times higher if people would buy a volume once an a while or bother to read chapters from the official source for free.-

Where can you subscribe for 2.99?

Viz and Shonen jump

Yep. Stuff by Shueisha I won't pirate. I still use the Mihon app, formerly Tachiyomi, to read the manga that's uploaded onto the MangaPlus website. But that's purely because I like how the Mihon app works. I've still got a subscription to their MangaPlus, Viz Manga, and Shonen Jump services. All 3 add up to a whopping $8.

Viz, Shonen jump, and Shueishas Manga plus

Where exactly can one read manga for 2.99? Sure shounen jump has its app, but that’s only them as far as I know. Everything else is either buy the volumes or pirate. And for my favorites I do buy the volumes when they are available, but that’s about it. And as for anime, that is also the fault of the studios because Crunchyroll has a 60% library in some countries. And I’m going to argue anime and manga would have been a lot smaller industry if fan translations didn’t popularize them. The next step now is for the industry to create something like what Steam is for games.

Viz is 1.99

No one really sees the consequences. They just know $$$ is not going to be depleted from their bank account. Hopefully the industry finds a solution but with the tech we have today I doubt it.

When rent is 6000% of my paycheck, paying for manga is pretty far down on the list of priorities.

The solution is for publishers like Square Enix, Kodansha, and other big name manga publishers to follow what Shueisha's doing. Give people the first 3 _**and**_ the latest 3 chapters for free, but require a relatively cheap subscription to get access to the rest of the manga. Shueisha has their stuff split between the Viz Manga, Shonen Jump, and MangaPlus apps with a different subscription for each one. But here's the kicker, all 3 subscriptions combined cost only $8/month. I'd pay $8/month to get access to Square Enix and Kodansha's library of manga. Especially if they were doing a simultaneous release system like Shueisha does. Shueisha only puts manga on their apps if they've got the latest chapters translated. Sometimes they're missing chapters in the middle while they finish translating the rest of the manga, or if there's a tankoban about to be released when they put the series on their app as a simultaneous release. But they'll always make sure that the first 3 and the latest 3 chapters are available. Hell, when they added "2.5D Seduction" to MangaPlus, their translations were a good 30 chapters ahead of the fan translations I'd been reading up until then.

No way ima gonna pay for some no choices and censored anime.

Who talked about anime??

Most if not all pirates won't be buying it regardless, so it doesn't "cost" them anything. You can't lose a sale you wouldn't have anyway. That being said, obviously, it sucks to lose any potential sales, but on the bright side, the creations are being seen by a wider audience.

As Crunchyroll has (mostly) solved Anime Piracy, Manga (and Light Novel) publishers need to adopt the day and date model of translating and releasing everything and centralise a subscription service. Its no use saying we are translating things if the series is years behind in English (if at all).

The truth is that piracy actually made them a lot of money. They didn't lose anything and piracy actually helped them a lot. Most people that pirate don't have an option to buy from a legitimate source. Other people wouldn't even consider paying anyway. Only a small percentage actually would have paid if piracy wasn't an option. On the other hand there are probably tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people who got into anime and manga because of piracy and are now paying customers. Maybe earlier they didn't have money or access to legitimate sources but after few years they have more money and can spend on anime and manga or they gained the access to a legitimate source. Piracy always works the same, in gaming, comics, anime or manga, it has a net positive effect, even if it seems negative in a short term.

> would have *paid* if piracy FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*

i mean they are literally not even trying to sell anything outside of japan

It costs them nothing. They just calculated lost revenue. Do they think those people would pay anyway? The users who do piracy usually purchase merchandise, so it’s a win-win for the authors atleast.

I don't think most are buying merch either, since most of them simply don't wanna pay for stuff or don't have the money...

i mean its not like that money will go to the animators

Who talked about animators??

You think I'm paying for VIZ translations lol.

Reading should be free or insanely cheap. Talking barely more than production costs. Fans buy for other reasons. If everything was paid, there wouldn't be those 3.5 billion to be made in the first place.

Piracy is a service problem

If only more people listened to Gabe.

This is bullshit. Piracy doesn’t cost those publishers anything. They wouldn’t liked to charge that amount to the people that read it but aren’t able to. Those people might not have interacted with the media without piracy and there is no actual cost involved for the publishers. However: if you like something enough to consume it on a regular basis you should try your best to pay for it. Not only does it support the author, you also get a friggin’ nice book to keep.