The average take home price seems to be below 60%, (plus they receive the 8% tax which I assume artists have to turn over to the government.)
I’ve read about this before, and it still amuses me how they let themselves be ripped off by online platforms. You would think they would band together and make their own platform. Where are the enterprising individuals among them?
http://www.dlsite.com/home/circle/invite
http://www.dlsite.com/ecchi-eng/circle/invite
Nevermind that though, I’m posting an update to say I’m not dead. I didn’t really leave the scanlation scene as I had planned, and instead moved to erotic manga.
But even there I will likely take another break soon enough. I’ve realized that there’s a lot that never makes it to the west, not even in Japanese, and I could at least help with providing information on that front. Being a provider and preserver of data is honestly more useful for everyone than merely being a translator of things we already know about.
It’s a sad thing to have read so many things that English speakers will never know about. You really should get a rudimentary understanding of Japanese if you decide after a few years in the fandom that you like manga or Japanese things, and it isn’t just some passing fad for you. Just a little Japanese goes a long ways, when a dictionary can fill in the gaps (because honestly, there will always be a word you won’t know, and sometimes the definition refers to something you won’t know in any language, and that’s what wikipedia is for.)
Btw, if anyone knows of an “unmoderated” Japanese forum for shitposting and creative self-expression, let me know. I’d like to get more involved with writing in Japanese rather than just reading it, but frankly, most Japanese are boring drones I don’t even want to talk to. Online they can open up a little under pseudo-anonmity, but most people are boring (I’m talking about all people in general.)
I’d also like to leave the western languages to get away from the crazy SJWs who have infected the English transgender community and silenced both creativity and freedom of expression, out of favoring liberal principles and institutions. I cannot respect outside censorship of ideas and verbal argument in any form, and so I can’t stand such communities, especially since the often lack a sense of self-aware humor that conservatives tend to have. You can’t tell a single joke around modern liberals without being scolded on principles, or because it offends someone.
So I’ve been working with a handful of people to try and make a transgendered online forum that deeply respects freedom of speech and the right of any member to disagree vigorously and vibrantly. I really hope a forum of that frame of mind takes off because I feel that the internet is becoming a lot more censored, less creative, and less tolerant of contrarian ideas as the normies have gone online and replaced creatively expressive homepages with boring standardized portals.
If the forum doesn’t get enough people and take off, I probably will reduce my involvement with the transgender community, (and manga by extension.) I simply do not like the direction things are going, and will not be a part of it. I was holding out hope for the Japanese TG community and artists, but going off of twitter, I find their views on scanlation too ill-thought out to be worth listening to.
So I might have to finally part ways with the TG scanlation scene as Taruby did a couple years back, although for different reasons. He left over disgust with piracy and the fandom’s apathy. I also dislike their apathy, but I’ll leave while holding that he was wrong about the evils of piracy and much too principled about it.
Moreover, I’m more interested in leaving it because I want to find a vibrancy that I think is fading here, even though the manga and scanlation communities are officially devoted to art making and storytelling.
(Note: this was an old draft.)
