I believe that one of the reasons why manga became so popular in the U.S. is due to the widespread availability of free translated scanlations on the web. AnimeBlog has a post about how digital versions of comics are becoming a huge part of the industry, and publishers, such as Viz, are beginning to make digital versions of their comics available for formats like the iPad.
The reason for conversion to digital formats is because the drop of manga sales according to this article written in October 7, 2010,
where manga sales “declined 9% in the first half of 2010, with an estimated 20% overall drop in 2010, making it likely that this will be the third bad year for manga sales in a row. If current trends continue, manga will drop 50% over three years.” However, digital comics are expanding “from a $500,000 market in 2009 to an estimated $6 to 8 million dollars in 2010, a more than ten-fold increase.”
However, in conversions to digital formats, the manga industry will be competing against online manga scanlating groups. These groups are organized with translators, typesetters, and cleaners, all with the purpose of speeding up the process of releasing manga.
When manga was first published by American companies, the releases were painfully slow, where popular manga books were released one volume every month. However, these manga titles already had over 100 chapters released in Japan, with 1 new chapter released every week. One manga volume contained about 6 chapters. The American translations of manga were far behind the releases in Japan. For manga fans, waiting for the American release of manga was a terrible ordeal, as manga storylines were continuous, and every chapter usually left the reader at a cliffhanger.
To solve this problem, scanlating groups began to form, where people who were fluent in Japanese (or Chinese or Korean and whatever language the manga was already released in) began to translate the manga, scan the manga into a digital format, type the translations in the speech bubbles, and post the manga online.
Programs were also created in order to read the picture files efficiently, since the pages had to be read in sequential order. One popular program was CDisplay.
The scanlating groups did a good job of putting out manga. As more and more groups formed, the releases became faster and in better quality.
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| Pretty clear, but could be cleaned better. |
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| To really clean and clear. |
Popular manga (usually from Shonen Jump), would be put out every week after the chapter was released in Japan (because Shonen Jump comes out once a week in Japan, and there is one chapter from each manga in one issue of Shonen Jump).
Some publishers have noticed the talent in the scanlating groups. Digital Manga Guild is a group of publishers that is willing to pay online translators, typesetters, and editors for their work in producing manga. This work is also legal, as publishers agree to allow their manga be translated in this format. However, most of the manga in this guild are not mainstream. This may become an issue, as scanlating groups desire to translate manga they want to read and share. That is the reason for their existence in the first place.
If publishers release digital formats of manga, will the fans buy it? Personally, as an avid fan of One Piece, I love buying One Piece merchandise, and I wouldn’t mind buying the chapters as they come out in order to support the mangaka. However, I still enjoy the massive amounts of manga available to me for free. I can pick any manga up and try it, and if I don’t like it, I can just move on to another manga.
