Ask the President!

[kokiden]

Another question inspired by the teleconference. Mr. Sasahara mentioned groups needing to keep up the pace in order to work with the DMG, and he mentioned something like five or six titles per month? Did he misspeak, or will we really be expected to translate, typset, and edit five complete manga volumes per month? Or was he speaking of chapters or one-shots?

[Kiliana]

@kokiden

Uh, I think (and hope >o<) that this was meant as 6-7 chapters (or indeed oneshots) per month. Or the equivalent of one whole manga volume. And that is a lot of work. There's no way in hell that anyone would be able to pull out 6-7 volumes per month! Even if you give up sleeping, cooking and move your computer *cough* to the bathroom ^_^'', I just can't picture three people being able to produce that amount in 30 days >___<'''
So, like I said, it has to be chapters, right? RIGHT? @___@'

*twitch*

[blkingston]

I have a few questions based on the transcripts of the teleconferences (thanks to Choutiv and Kokiden for all the details!):

1. How big will the manga packages be? From the transcripts, the number seems to have gone up from 3-5 volumes to 6-7 volumes.

2. Will groups have any say at all in the packages assigned to them? I had been under the impression that groups could choose packages...but now I'm worried that DM will be distributing them at random. I realise that DM doesn't want us members to be picky about projects, but I think most would be able to do a much better job (in terms of quality AND speed) if we were working on manga we genuinely liked. Quality in particular is really important, because there has been some mutterings elsewhere about inaccurate translations in licensed manga - and I suspect DMG translations will be under even greater scrutiny than the average licensed manga.

3. Doing some rough calculations - let's say DMG manga is available for rental at the same cost as June manga (200pts = $2USD). Assuming that JP publishers drive a hard bargain and localizers get 10% of revenue (20c per rental), and groups get paid when revenue for a single project reaches $100, that means that a DMG title would have to be rented 500 times before members are paid. Based on emanga sales so far, how long would it take for the average title to be rented 500 times? No doubt this will vary between genres and titles, but it would be nice to have a rough idea of when localizers can expect to receive payment for a BL title vs a shoujo or shounen title etc.

[kokiden]

@blkingston

The question was asked in our teleconference about how packages would be distributed, and Mr. Sasahara very firmly stated that the packages would be assigned by DMP staff. Personally, I think that's the best way, as I think competing for packages would be stressful and would make the DMG more political and less supportive.

[Laurie]

Oops- sorry. Posting error- Deleted.

[Scatterbrain]

That enormous number really scared the hell out of me...

Let me see, I've been wondering... about payment issues. I would like to know if there is a real calculation about it. (I liked the one made by blkingston also)

I totally agree with the idea that DMG staff choose the titles for us. I want to believe that they would use an objective criteria for doing so.

[starlightmuse]

@blkingston: Revenue will not come from emanga rental ALONE. Whether or not titles will be for rent or keep (which costs more) has not been decided. It was also stated that we will also be offering DMG produced titles through all of our digital platforms, i.e. Kindle, Nook, Sony PSP etc.

[Ikichi]

Is there any chance that our completed projects would be turned into a physical book at all?

[blkingston]

Kokiden wrote:
The question was asked in our teleconference about how packages would be distributed, and Mr. Sasahara very firmly stated that the packages would be assigned by DMP staff. Personally, I think that's the best way, as I think competing for packages would be stressful and would make the DMG more political and less supportive.

So the idea of DMG members engaging in a competition for a title (i.e. several groups provide the translation of the first chapter of a manga, then DM plus forum members rate the best version) is well and truly dead? I remember Mr. Sasahara mentioning it in an interview with Deb Aoki months ago as a way to ensure good translation quality.

starlightmuse wrote:
Revenue will not come from emanga rental ALONE. Whether or not titles will be for rent or keep (which costs more) has not been decided. It was also stated that we will also be offering DMG produced titles through all of our digital platforms, i.e. Kindle, Nook, Sony PSP etc.

I see. I was focusing on emanga in my question because it seemed to be the best established and most competitively priced digital format on the DMP site, so I assumed the majority of revenue would come from this format. From what I've read online, consumers also seem more positive about using emanga than an e-reader like Kindle (text being blurry, problems zooming in etc). Maybe this will change as the technology improves.

[Ariya]

This is a thought that came to me quite randomly just now:
Will letterers also be in charge of cover designing, creating the title logos, lettering inner title pages, table of contents, etc, or will they only be dealing with the manga chapters themselves? On a related note, will the groups themselves be deciding the English title for each respective project they work on? Or will all this be managed by other parties?