Tag: industry

Original English Language (OEL) v2.0

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I recently had an interview with Ervin and Nico at the Youtube channel “Shining Otaku”. It brought back the old days of my pioneering work on “The Dreaming” with TOKYOPOP, as part of the original wave of the so-called “Original English Language” (OEL) manga that was a hallmark of TOKYOPOP’s original manga program. See the video below for the interview.

The term “OEL” was always a problematic term because it excluded non-English speaking global manga artists. However, a bigger problem is that the term became popularised, and then acquired a toxic connotation due to what happened to TOKYOPOP in 2008 and after. Despite this, when the interview brought up the term “OEL v2”, I started wondering if the next generation of non-Japanese manga artists can reclaim the term and use it proudly as a badge of honour.

Since the rise and fall of the TOKYOPOP OEL movement, there has been a new generation of manga artists from around the world who are amazing artists and storytellers (many are interviewed on “Shining Otaku”). Sadly, they don’t have a single banner to unite under, though that can always change.

Instead, due to a lack of print publishing venues, many of them have gone on to create webcomics for Webtoons and Tapas. This is not in itself a problem, but it is something that troubles me, because the same issues of creator exploitation and low pay plague these publishers much like they did back in the days of TOKYOPOP. Only now, they seem worse.

The Problem with Webtoons VS Traditional Print Manga

I’m currently doing a PhD at Macquarie University, and part of my dissertation is on Capitalism, Webtoons and Creative Labour. While I don’t have a problem with Webtoons existing as a platform, and I laud it for its ease of use and accessibility, I can’t argue that it’s a good place for creator rights. Nor are artists properly compensated on it for all the work they do, even as options for payment exist via advertising and Patreon–neither of which involve money paid directly from Webtoons.

In fact, all the research I’ve done on it only highlights the difficult situation of the creative labourer in a globalised digital economy. And this trend only seems to worsen, as the online scene becomes over-saturated with free-to-read manga/comics material, which has the overarching effect of driving artist earnings down across the board.

Thanks to the ease and popularity of the Webtoon free-to-read model, this “produce work for free on Webtoons and hope to get picked up as a paid author” approach has been the dominant mode of publishing for many younger western manga artists. After TOKYOPOP crashed and burned after 2008, the western manga dream seems to have shifted from print-book sales to online views–which unfortunately has become something of a disappointment when it came to financial returns, since earning decent money on Webtoons remains a dubious proposition.

As far as I can tell, while there are certainly success stories, earnings via Patreon and advertising can vary wildly from month to month–assuming you can even get readers who are willing to donate to you. Artists can’t get paid decently via Patreon if your readers don’t care to support you, and earning through advertising is very inconsistent, due to the popularity of ad-blockers and the differing pay rates depending on the region of the world your readers are from (boy, I have a lot to say about how advertising pays on Webtoons, none of it nice).

I would never tell anyone to not publish on Webtoons, so long as they’re aware of the risks and have a sound level of expectations. However, recent events in Japanese manga-publishing has seen the Webtoon model shakened, and I’m not so certain about recommending Webtoons as the dominant platform for young artists anymore.

Big Japanese Manga Publishers Hit Back

While Webtoons has been conquering the online manga sphere for the past 2 decades, the big four Japanese manga publishers have been playing catch-up. Initially slow to take to the free-to-read online model, the big Japanese publishers prefer to make the bulk of their money through print volume sales (print magazine sales have long been a loss leader), and seem to want to keep it that way. Part of the reason is the desire to keep production and distribution chains for physical books intact in Japan, although the gradual rise of e-manga sales since 2014 as a portion of total manga sales may have pushed them to adapt. Still, there have always been smaller Japanese publishers who experimented with the free-to-read online model since the start of the internet, though it wasn’t until recently that the manga industry have hit back hard with a new model via the Jump magazine online off-shoot Shounen Jump+ (launched in 2013).

One may think that free-to-read manga doesn’t exactly galvanise print or ebook sales, but Jump+ has proven that to be false. This has been made blatant by the recent massive print volume sales of series such as “Spy x Family”, “Kaiju No. 8”, and “DanDanDan”–all free-to-read manga on Jump+–only one of which has an anime adaptation at this point. This not only proves that free-to-read online manga can sell actual manga print volumes (and e-manga), it proves more than that: the opening week sales of the Jump+ series (hundreds of thousands) utterly outsells that of newer series from the Shounen Jump print magazine (mere tens of thousands). Conventional wisdom isn’t just dead–it has been completely overturned.

(That’s not to mention the 500,000+ sales of “Takopii’s Original Sin“, a 2-volume manga that under the previous model would have sunk without a trace. Instead, it became a viral internet sensation that caused actual volumes to fly off actual shelves.)

All My Predictions From a Decade Ago Was Wrong

This news shook me, because it shows that the publishing wisdom of “e-books are the future”–a common refrain from 2011–have not come to pass. Now that we’re all a decade older, e-book sales have steadied as a percentage of total sales and print books are still around, and Lord knows, print books is and always have been where the money is (at least outside of Japan and Korea, which have cultures of e-manga consumption possibly due to limited space in people’s houses. In the US & Europe, e-comic sales barely top 10%, though data for China is missing).

I stand gob-smacked at all the things I’ve gotten wrong. A decade ago in 2011, I lamented that the old school Japanese publishers are not tech-savvy, and will fall far behind and lose their readers to the Korean Webtoon tech mavens. Five years ago in 2017, I praised western manga artists who jumped onto the Webtoon band-wagon with their full-coloured stories produced in the Webtoon vertical-scrolling format (which unfortunately makes it difficult to re-format for print), thinking that it was the way of the future.

Now in 2022, it’s been proven in cold, hard cash that print is far from dead. The Japanese publishers weren’t wrong in moving at a glacial pace–it may be that as book publishers, they understand that what really sells books is not speed in heading to the market, but good, timeless stories that people will still want to read decades later. Case in point: “Dragon Ball” is available to rent on Jump+, despite that series ending in 1995. There are many people alive today paying to read “Dragon Ball” despite being born years after the series’ original run, but more importantly, it proves that there are now many ways to e-monetise an existing manga that weren’t possible before. “Dragon Ball” still sells print volumes, but it also sells e-manga, and money from e-rentals also count. Previously, publishers weren’t able to profit the manga rental market, but now they can with the internet.

More than that, encouraging fledgling young artists to go onto Webtoons might have been a mistake. While there have certainly been success stories on Webtoons, they are hardly the norm–it would seem that those with the first mover advantage in Webtoons netted most of the benefits back in 2015, and anyone joining Webtoons in 2022 are probably struggling to be seen. Webtoons are also usually in colour and formatted in a way that ill-suits a printed book, two things that makes the “web to print” plan difficult (or even “web to e-comic”–the current Amazon Comixology reader still requires a page-by-page layout). Patreon and advertising money also haven’t panned out as hoped, due to over-saturation and the ease of anyone uploading their own work–though Webtoon needn’t worry, as they have an infinite supply of wannabe artists who will replace anyone who drops out.

There’s not much to conclude from this semi-long spiel, except that the battle for the future of being a paid manga artist is far from settled. What was conventional wisdom in 2011 is no longer wise in 2022, so I loathe to make any more predictions. There is much to be said on this subject, and I hope to place everything relevant from my PhD online once it’s completed in May 2024.

Edit (20th July 2022): Well, seems that Webtoons caught on faster than I did! In this piece of news from Publishing Weekly, “Wattpad Webtoon Launches Print Graphic Novel Imprint” will see Webtoon launching a new graphic novel imprint called Webtoon Unscrolled that will start publishing in September 2022! Now I have to update my PhD on Webtoons yet again!

Section 2: Getting Paid – Publishing Advances

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The NBN has come and gone the Internet seems to be working so far… hopefully it stays working so there won’t be any problems. On the other hand, this post will be the second-last one. The next one after this will address royalties and returns – and then Section 2 (about manga publishing) will end, and I’ll be getting back to drawing my next story!

 

  • This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
  • My comics-prose stories “Short Ghost Stories: The Man with the Axe in his Back” is available on Smashwords and Amazon. Read more at this link.

 


 

Part 5: Getting Paid – Advances

When people talk about publishing contracts, the first thing that comes to mind is probably money. How much will I get paid, and how will I get paid?

Money’s obviously very important, but the general answer to that question if you’re a manga-style artist in the West is: “Not that much,” and “in chunks.” Usually, the money you get is paid in 3 parts – once on signing the contract, once when you’ve reached a milestone, and once when the project is complete. Regardless of the sum, the money is called an ‘advance’, and regardless of whether it fulfils the normal definition of an ‘advance,’ (like in the event of work-for-hire), the money will usually be called an advance.

The first thing you must know about an advance that a lot of people don’t know:

An advance is technically a loan.

That’s right. It’s not ‘free money,’ or ‘payment for your writing of your book which we are now going to license the rights and then publish.’ The money you get paid upfront… isn’t actually yours, though you get to keep all of it, even if your book doesn’t sell well. However, if you screw up your end of the deal and don’t deliver your book on time (or to the publisher’s satisfaction), then the publisher has the right to demand the advance money back from you. Usually they’re highly unlikely to do so, due to the time and costs involved, but sometimes they may.

The advance is money the publisher lends you, in the expectation that you’ll have something to live on while you’re working on your book. When the book is done and published, the publisher fully expects you to repay that money. In other words, if a publisher advances you $10,000 to do your book, your book is expected to earn them that $10,000 back – not through the money they make, but through the money you make.

How?

Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of this thing called royalties. I’m sure you’ve heard that writers (and musicians, etc) get royalties from publishers, which are a small percentage of the sale of each book. Typically, royalties are 8-10% of the list price (15% for hardcovers). This means that if your book’s retail price is $10, then you’ll earn 80c to $1 for each copy of your book sold.

You are expected to earn your advance back through royalty payments, before you’ll see any actual royalty cheques from your publisher.

MATH TIME!

Say I wrote ‘Awesome Story,’ and I sign a publishing contract with QC Publishing to publish the book. The advance was $20,000 at a gross royalty rate of 10% of the list price. The book will be sold at $10. The book just got published.

Question: So, how much royalties will I be getting right off the bat?

Answer: NONE. I’m in the hole to QC Publishing for $20,000, due to the advance they paid me. An advance is a loan, remember? It’s money I technically owe QC Publishing, which I have to recoup for them.

Each copy of ‘Awesome Story’ sold at $10 gets me $1 per copy. If I sold 1000 copies of ‘Awesome Story,’ then I’ve made $1000 worth of royalty money. Take that out of the $20,000 I owe QC Publishing, and I still owe $19,000.

Anyway, I need to sell 20,000 copies of ‘Awesome Story’ before I will see a single cent in royalties. If I don’t sell those 20,000 copies, then I’m in debt to the publisher, and the publisher may not want to publish my next book.

This is why 85% of all books don’t earn back their advance. It’s because not that many books will sell consistently over 20,000 (this is too small a number, actually).

Now, if ‘Awesome Story’ sold only 18,000 copies, QC Publishing is highly unlikely to ask for that remaining $2000 back from me. It’s simply a dick move, and no publisher does it because it’s unfair. Once a publisher pays an advance, the author usually keeps all the money, regardless of the outcome. However, nobody will be impressed when they look at your royalty statement either.

But hey! The Publisher lost money too, right? They took a risk and paid me $20,000, so they lost $2000 on the gamble, right?

Not necessarily.

Retailers take a 40-60% cut of a book’s retail price, so if a book is sold for $10, then $6 go to the retailer (whoever it is). The remaining 4% will be split between the publisher, publishing costs and the author. If the author gets $1 per book, the publishing house gets $3, which has to cover printing, shipping, warehousing, cover design, formatting, copy-editing and all the overheads of running a publishing house.

Anyway, assuming I sold 18,000 copies of ‘Awesome Story,’ then it means my publisher grossed 18,000 x $3 = $54000. Did they lose money? Depends. Generally speaking, publishers calculate print runs through mathematical formulas that will give them an idea of how many copies a particular book will sell. They will usually print a number of copies close to how they think the book will sell, and they will definitely make sure they’ll recoup their costs. The number of copies they print of a particular book isn’t a wild stab in the dark. It’s calculated to ensure that the publisher at least breaks even. If they don’t do that, they’ll go out of business real soon.

*****

Next Wednesday – royalties and returns! Last post on this!

Section 2: What is Copyright?

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Ugh, Internet was down for two whole days. A suburn-wide blackout where I live – thanks to the NBN installation, there’s been a lot of hiccups in the Internet connection lately. I thought I’d better post this up while the connection is still here.

 

  • This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
  • My comics-prose stories “Short Ghost Stories: The Man with the Axe in his Back” is available on Smashwords and Amazon. Read more at this link.

 


 

Part 4c: What is Copyright?

Disclaimer: I talk about publishing contracts, but this is not a definitive guide. I try and keep my information accurate, but if there are any corrections, please let me know. This is not legal advice – I have no authority to give out legal advice. If you’re offered a publishing contract and you’re unsure of the terms, please find a legal professional who can help you.

To understand how a copyright license works, you must first understand what a copyright is.

A copyright is a creator’s exclusive right to make copies of their own work, and then distribute and profit off it. Hence it’s called a “copy right” – it refers to the right to make copies (and to do various things with those copies). This legal concept of “copyright” is protected by law, and protection is automatic, the moment you commit pen to paper and start creating the work. However, this protection extends only to countries who are part of the Berne Convention, and when it comes to court of law, it varies from country to country.

 


 

To give you an example, here’s a photo of all the books I’ve had published over the years. You can buy most of these as a print book from a bookstore, or from Amazon, or as ebooks from various places. The copyright on these vary, because some of these are where I worked only as an illustrator, while others I own partial copyright. That’s the thing about publishing – you don’t always own everything you do, and if you sell off a license, you no longer own the right to sell or distribute your own work.

An easier way to talk about copyright would be through the books I’ve self-published.

 


 

Here’s a pic of three books I’ve self published – “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010”, and two versions of “Short Ghost Stories: The Man with the Axe in his Back”.

All of these books are copyrighted to me. Regardless of when I wrote and drew the short stories in “Short Ghost Stories”, I had copyright protection on all of those stories from the moment they were created. I own the exclusive right to make copies of “Short Ghost Stories”, to distribute and then sell it. By “exclusive”, I mean only me, and no one else, has that right.

If you bought a print copy of “Short Ghost Stories” off Lulu, and then scanned the book into your computer and then distributed it, then you’ve just committed “copyright infringement”. Scanning or reprinting the book in small numbers don’t really count as “infringement”, but distributing it en masse certainly will. You can own the physical copy of “Short Ghost Stories” (which would include all the paper, ink, and binding) and the right to do whatever you want with that particular copy. This includes the right to give it to someone else, resell to a used book store, to cut, to glue, to scan and reprint, and you can even translate and use it as a study. You can also scan it, link it to a page and talk about it (to criticize, to compliment or to hate) – all that is under fair use agreement. However, the right to distribute en masse (ie. distribute to file sharing sites and release the links) the contents of “Short Ghost Stories” is a right you don’t have. Profiting off it is also a right that only the copyright holder has.

You can purchase individual copies of my print book or e-book. However, no matter how many copies you purchase of “Short Ghost Stories”, the right to make money off the contents of the book via mass distribution doesn’t belong to you. Only the original creator (me) has that right. Or, if I licensed that right to a publisher, then they have that right. If I licensed that right to you (for a sum of money), then you have that right.

Now that you understand a bit about copyright and what you’re selling to a publisher, let’s talk about the length of a publishing contract.

 

Part 4d: If I Sell an Exclusive License to a Publisher, How Long does that License Last For?

If you have a good agent/intellectual property attorney, then hopefully the exclusive license to publish your book in hardcover/paperback and e-book only. Hopefully, that term of the contract will be 5-10 years, rather than the full-term of copyright. If it’s not a specified time frame, then it’ll be for the full-term of the copyright, unless there is something else in the contract that mentions a particular situation for a full rights-reversion.

A full-term of copyright lasts until the death of the creator, plus 70 years – and this is constantly getting extended. If you sell the exclusive right to publish your story to a publisher without specifying a time frame or an ‘out of print’ clause, then they’ll keep those rights until 70+ years after your death… so not only you, but your children and your children’s children will be affected.

These days, specifying a ‘time frame’ in your contract is a great idea. It’s because with the advent of e-books, ‘out of print’ clausesare now losing their original intent. ‘Out of print’ clauses used to be the last chance for a writer to get their rights back from a publisher, but since e-books are in print forever, these clauses have lost all meaning (and thus, their teeth).

*****

Anyway, hopefully you got paid a decent amount. Next week, I’ll talk about getting paid an advance, and what that is. These posts are coming to a close, and there are only a few posts left, so I’ll make it quick.

Section 2: Getting a Manga Published (Part 9)

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Well, “Short Ghost Stories: The Man with the Axe in his Back” is out, and you can get it from the links below. I have also gotten a Cintiq drawing tablet, one where your draw only the screen. Colour art is now a lot easier, as evidenced by the Megaman fanart I pumped out in a few hours. WOOT! Expect some more colour art next year! 😀

 

  • This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
  • My comics-prose stories “Short Ghost Stories: The Man with the Axe in his Back” is available on Smashwords and Amazon. Read more at this link.

 


 

Part 4: You Got a Publishing Deal!

Assuming your agent is successful in selling your work, and you got a publishing deal! Likewise, I can also assume that you were successful in selling your own work to a publisher (with or without an agent), and the publishing house has offered you a publishing deal. This means that the publisher will now forward a copy of your publishing contract, plus your advance. So, what does this all mean?

Anyway, this section will tackle some of the issues that crop up in a publishing contract, and also what to expect. There will be much talk about copyright, licenses, advances, copies printed, shipped, sold and returned, and royalties (if any).

Disclaimer: I talk about the publishing contracts, but this is not a definitive guide. I try and keep my information accurate, but if there are any corrections, please let me know. This is also not in any way meant to be legal advice – I have no authority to give out legal advice. If you’re offered a publishing contract and you’re unsure of the terms, please find a legal professional who can help you.

 

Part 4a: Dealing with a Publishing Contract

Every single publishing agreement is different, but I shall try and take a more generalised approach. The other thing is that it’s impossible to talk about publishing contracts without also explaining the concept of copyright. Still, it’s important I lay some ground rules down, because without it, you may end up not understanding much in this section.

There’s also the incidence of unscrupulous publishing contracts increasing, so I feel the need to warn people. A few years ago, publishing contracts only covered limited publishing rights, but now, many of them make a rights-grab for everything you have. The other issue is with the way money is accounted for inside various publishing houses for various publishing deals. What were once egregious accounting practices has now become the new normal.

This means the next big topics are these two things:

LEGAL STUFF and MONEY.

These are things that need to be addressed, in order for people to understand exactly what it is they’re selling when they sign a publishing contract with a publisher.

 

Part 4b: Firstly, What are you Selling to a Publisher when you Enter into a Publishing Agreement?

Read the question I posed above, and give me your answer.

If you answered “a story” to my question, then you’re wrong.

If you answered “a book”, “a novel”, “a manga” or a “manga-style comic book”, you’re wrong too.

If you answered “my story”, you’re even more wrong. If you sold “your story” to a publisher, it may well mean that you sold the entirety of your copyright to your story, which means that your publisher now owns your story, not you. When your publisher owns your copyright, they can make TV, movies, comic books, novels, audio books, video games, picture books, etc from your story without paying you a cent, because you don’t own the copyright anymore.

So, what do you sell a publisher, when you sign a publishing agreement?

You sell a license. Typically, a license to publish your work in book form, and book form only. A license is a “right”. It’s not any of the copyright you own on your story.

Specifically, it’s a license that gives the publisher an exclusive right to copy, distribute and sell your work, in a particular language, a particular region, and a particular format.

  • Region rights cover where the book can be published and sold. Usually the planet can be divided in whatever way you wish, but normally it’s by continents or countries. I can bag “US” rights, or “Canadian” rights, but typically people go for “North American” rights. I can bag “Japan” rights, or I can bag “Russian” rights. Alternatively, I can go “English-speaking region” rights, which would include the US, Canada, UK, Australian and New Zealand. (Oddly enough, it’ll leave out Singapore and India, which are considered different regions of the world)
  • Language rights are usually intertwined with Region-rights. It doesn’t make sense for a Korean publisher to bag “Japan” rights, or for a French publisher to bag “German” rights. However, it does make sense for a Taiwanese publisher to try and bag “Hong Kong and Macau” rights, including “China” rights if they can profit off it.
  • Format may be a hardcover book, a paperback book, an audio book, an e-book, or a book in braille format. (Once upon a time, the rights to these different formats were sold separately, though they’re now bundled into one publishing contract.)

The rights to make foreign-language translations, movies, plays, musicals, video games and novelizations off your story is a secondary right, known either as a “derivative right” or a “subsidiary right”. You can sell all the book publishing rights to your story (world-wide rights, all languages rights, all book formats) without selling a single derivative right to your story.

Now, a book publisher has no real business trying to get movie rights to your book, but they’ll certainly try to get it from you if they can get away with it. I call this sort of thing a ‘rights grab’, and creators need to be wary of this sort of thing cropping up in publishing contracts. Believe me, copyright is important, and understanding how to sell a license your copyright (or purchase a license for a copyright) is crucial to being a creator in this day and age.

*****

Next week, I’ll talk about copyrights., which is very important.