Clearly the recent topic of Digital Manga wanting to hire scanlators has struck a nerve with some and struck up great conversation with others. As a follow up to the discussion, I forwarded a link to the post as well as a link to the thread on the AarinFantasy forum that started the entire thing to Hikaru Sasahara, Digital Manga's President to see if he wished to address any of the concerns or to clarify his project. I'm posting his response, with permission, below:

Hi Jenny,

 

Thanks you for sending us the feedback. Reading some of them, I feel that they are missing an important aspect of this special venture. That is they are not the only people that don’t get paid upfront on this project. Neither the contents providers (publishers in Japan) nor we (Digital Manga) would get paid upfront. This is the venture where all 3 parties involved  share the “risk” and “revenue”  although the level of the share varies meaning it won’t be that translators get the 1/3 of the revenue. That is something I would have to figure out based on a level of the contribution that each party makes to the overall venture.

 

We are not looking for a cheap labor but looking for the people who have  passion to read more manga titles and this venture may be the only way to make that happen.

 

Hikaru

 

Hikaru Sasahara
hikaru@emanga.com
President 
———————————-
Digital Manga, Inc. – http://www.digitalmanga.com
1487 West 178th Street, Suite 300
Gardena, CA 90248
Tel: 310.817.8010 x100
Fax: 310.817.8018

So what do you think? Does this change how you feel about his project or merely add more questions/concerns? He's listening so if you want to be heard, speak up! You've all been doing great so far! Keep the wank to a minimum though. You know who you are.

~Jennifer LeBlanc