Suppose there were a one-click way to do it straight from whatever website or app you're reading the scanlated manga from. You can select an amount to pay and the proceeds gets sent as a cheque to the mangaka of the manga. Would you use it? 5y1w3s

Alternatively, suppose that instead of a straight up donation, there's the option to pay for the manga. The money is paid to the Japanese publisher and the volumes are donated to a library or school in Japan. Would you use it?

would you donate some dollars to Taylor Swift everytime you listen to a full album or a song without going to any of her concerts or buying any of her merch?

would you donate some dollars everytime J.R.R. martin writes a Game of Thrones volume?

No, it's not called "donating" when you need to spend money on creative artworks that you like in any form, in any way and any country. when it's printed and licensed. Your piracy is not excused, mine either. Let's doom the manga industry, after all, Japan will still be full of Japanese willing to pay for what we don't, right? 🤣

Definitely. Not for everything I read ofc, but some works really worth it.

Me too. In fact, I often wish to. But I ain't using my credit card and I don't trust PayPal.

I always wished there was same page where I could just donate some money every month and then it would be divided between authors whose work I read based on how much time I spent reading their work, that would be great & simple.

This isn´t a theoretical question anymore. The Patreon for Jin was specifically started to get an official US translation going. Here: https://www.patreon.com/motokamurakami

It´s not the first such i effort i saw and how many web production rely on such campaigns alone to be financed? The topic is worthy of a proper weekly poll.

I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

The underlying assumption, which might not shared by everyone who responded, is that there is value in the non-profiting scanlation enterprise. I see a lot of community-building, Japanese-learning, and general volunteerism that makes it feel worthwhile to preserve. I don't want to perturb that ecosystem.

Many scanlation groups avidly ing the original mangaka, many readers would happily part with dollars to properly pay for the content, but what seems to be missing is some functional and mindless infrastructure to make it all happen.

The problem I see with Patreon is that it still relies on the proactive effort of mangakas to hook themselves into the system. This seems unnecessary: details of mangakas are mostly retrievable, and if the mangaka is already represented by an agent and publisher, the pipes are already in place.

No, I wouldn't. 😛
Because I am already buying printed volumes and don't read scaned stuff anymore. 😎 I found lot of fansub translation really misleading and terrible. Not to mention missing pages. 🙁 And yes I ite there are few good fansub groups with talented translators but it's very rare thing. 😢 I had enough of bad translation and that's why I started study English at first place. And later even Japanese language. 😎

Collecting manga is my hobby now and I ite it's not hobby for everyone. But for me it's fun and part of my life now. Whenever I buy new japanese manga, I am so happy. 😃 There is the beautiful dust jacket, limited editions come with CDs and sometimes you even got card with autogram of author. It is like heaven for me. 😀

I do not despise of people who read scanlated manga but myself I have no need to do it anymore. So... more than sending money to authors with one click (as payment for pirate stuff), I would like to meet some of those authors personaly and say them - Thank you. 🙂

I think I probably would for some mangaka when I get a job after my studies but only for authors that deserve more attention than they receive. I buy physical manga after reading them online to them to begin with.