Table of Contents

#00. Prologue #01. Will manga exist 10 years from now? #02. Just what are manuscript fees, anyway? #03. What kind of a life is a life lived off royalties? #04. A million-seller hit with 220 million yen of profit in a single year...what does that turn my yearly salary into? #05. Printing 1 million copies myself would make me a quicker 100 million. #06. You know, I'm starting to think I should just die along with paper media. #07. I'll make my own homepage, release my own manga on it, and let all my readers purchase it there. #08. I haven't had a single meeting with an editor for several years now. #09. A relationship between mangaka and readers without a publisher in between. #10. Honestly, doing online comics is hard. #11. Those books are the publisher's products, not yours. #12. OK, so how much will it actually cost? #13. Sato Shuho on Web is open. But is it making money? #14. You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here. #15. Marching toward 'Manga on Web' #16. Epilogue #17. Credits

1 Prologue

In February, 2009, I started an e-book site called Sato Shuho on Web. Currently, we're in the middle of a slump in the publishing world. Manga magazines keep taking breaks and ceasing publications, and bookstores are disappearing from our streets. Every year, big publishers find themselves billions of yen in debt, and the industry itself is continuing a 14-year streak of dropping sales. With every new publication, manga magazines and publishers gain tens of millions of yen of increased debt, and so they're constantly scrambling to fill those holes through tankoubon (pocket-sized paperback) volume sales. Right now, if you go into a bookstore you can still buy books, and there's no way every single bookstore in the country would disappear. However, many changes, both visible and invisible, have begun in various places. While the publishing world deteriorates, digital media is developing, and according to a report by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the ratio of cell phone to household was 95.6%, while computers were at 85.9%. In the previous year, the number of people who have ever used the internet was 90,910,000 people, and the regular usage ratio was 75.3%. In 2010, with e-book hardware like the Kindle and iPad, Japan finally started getting on board, and this year came to be called "E-Book Year 1" (as a reference to Japan's year cataloging system).

Nowadays, seeing people looking at their cell phones on the train is a normal occurrence, and it's much harder to find someone reading a manga magazine. Is this phenomenon merely a slump in the publishing world? Or is it the end of paper culture? As a mangaka with over ten years in the industry, I couldn't help but feel an slight uneasiness in my gut. "Will manga even exist in the next decade?"

2 Prologue At first it was just an offhand question. But for the sake of the argument, let's say these changes in the publishing world do signal the end of paper culture. Where does that leave manga? The option to cast in your lot with a publisher still exists, but that may not be the only option anymore. What we take for granted now may not be around forever. And so, I decided to do an experiment.

3 Will manga exist 10 years from now?

There's a very scary term that exists in the manga industry called "serialization poverty." It refers to the first time a mangaka gets a serialization. You work real hard to draw it all, but after half a year, it still hasn't gotten popular, so it gets canceled. Then all you have left is a big debt. Your serialization has led you to poverty.

When a single manga is serialized in a magazine, a mangaka receives profit known as "manuscript fees" paid by the publisher, according to the number of pages of the manuscript. Aside from the work necessary to draw the actual manga, data also needs to be collected, the script needs to be thought up, and then the actual panels of the manga need to be planned. There are various steps to the process, but no money is paid out for any of them.

Mangaka pay the rent for the office, pay their art staff, buy their materials and pay for everything else necessary for manga production using the manuscript fee. When Umizaru(*1) first began its serialization, I received 10,000 yen for each manuscript page.

*1: "Umizaru (Sea Monkeys)" - The author's first serialization, chronicling the work of coast guards. It ran from 1999 to 2001 in Weekly Young Sunday (Shogakukan). It was made into a drama twice by NHK, and then into a film and another drama by Fuji TV. 12 volumes in all.

4 Will manga exist 10 years from now? 20 pages were the standard for a weekly serialization, so I received 800,000 yen per month.

I don't think it was that bad a salary for someone as young as I was at the time. But as I just explained, creating a manga requires a lot of different funds.

Let's break down what it actually cost to make Umizaru. First, the manuscript fee is deposited into my bank account from the publisher, minus 10% for withholding tax.

That leaves me with 720,000 yen.

At the time, I didn't have my own company, and I was employing an outer art staff (*2) to draw a portion of the art. That cost

5 470,000, leaving me with 250,000. In this industry, it's custom for the mangaka to pay for the meals of the art staff, and that cost about 100,000, leaving me with 150,000.

*2: Outer Art Staff - They come from the outside, but we actually worked together. As this is a sole proprietorship, I can't hire "employees."

The materials and data cost about 100,000, leaving me with 50,000.

The apartment/office that I both lived and worked in cost 70,000 for rent, leaving me with -20,000. Add in utilities and sundry expenses, and it becomes -70,000.

These are all just rough estimates, but the manuscript fee alone clearly leaves me in the red. And this is excluding all personal life expenses.

6 Will manga exist 10 years from now? I pay for my own personal expenses, but then there are times when I want to treat my staff to BBQ and such, so no matter how I dice it, I always get about 200,000 yen in the hole each month.

Incidentally, you can't find a very big room for 70,000 yen a month in Tokyo.

My room was comprised of six tatami mats, where I would work 20 hours a day, day and night, which obviously earned me quite a bit of complaints from the neighbors. It was an old, wooden apartment building, so the walls were thin, and late at night we could hear people loudly having sex next door. And for some reason, whenever that couple would finish their business, they'd always hum "Stand By Me." (*3) Whenever I hear that song now, I recall those days. I suppose it's etched in my memory now.

*3: "Stand By Me" - A famous song by Ben E. King.

Midst all that, my staff and I drew manga without sleep or rest. During that period, I used the money I had saved up from working. I had about 2 million yen in my bank account.

7 When I released my first tankoubon volume, I was down to 70,000 yen. If I had asked the editors that were working on my serialization, maybe they would have lent me some money. But then I would be drawing manga to pay back my loan, and I wouldn't be able to look at them with a straight face anymore.

Editors usually say things like, "Once you get your volumes out, you'll get royalties, so don't worry about it," but we didn't even have a publishing contract signed when I started the serialization.

Just because a mangaka starts a serialization in a magazine, (*4) it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be able to put out a tankoubon.

*4: Comics published for the fiscal year of 2010 - In 2010 there were 11,977 comics published, but 8,851 of those were magazines, and 3,126 were actual books. The comics market in 2010 made 2.3% less profit than the previous year - 409,100,000,000 yen - but comic volumes sold 1.8% more, making it the first time profits recovered in five years.

8 Will manga exist 10 years from now? The reality of the situation is that published volumes are a result of popularity. Furthermore, in this industry, there aren't even writing contracts made prior to the publishing contracts. I also often hear about popular manga suddenly ending when new editor-in-chiefs come into office and change editing policies. Editors will also often keep a new mangaka's manuscript from appearing in a magazine for other unrelated reasons.

In those cases, the publisher will pays the manuscript fees, but this sort of situation has become so common that there's a word for it now: "dead on purchase."

Basically, this is a world of spoken promises, without anything ensured through actual documents.

9 One day, about half a year after Umizaru's serialization began, I mustered up my courage and demanded a raise in manuscript fees from my editor at the time. I truly needed all the bravery I had to do this.

If he was to say "Okay then, we don't need you anymore," I'd instantly lose my job. I just thought it was too unreasonable, I said. After all, this was my job, yet the more I work, the poorer I get. What kind of a job does that?

"I can't make a living like this. Please increase my manuscript fee."

I thought I was being very brave by bringing this up, but my editor just replied casually with: "We can't."

I was shocked. "No, please don't say that. I'm begging you."

"I'm really in trouble here. There's no way I can go on working like this."

Before I could even finish talking, he started scolding me.

"If we listened to every little demand a newbie mangaka brings to us, we'd never be able to go on managing a magazine!!"

This is a story from ten years ago, so I imagine that some of you are thinking "Oh, but things aren't like that anymore."

And you would be right. Publishers are even more desperate these days. (*5) Manuscript fees for new mangaka at all publishers have become about 1000 yen lower. Manga magazines are already on the decline, and some big publishers go 20 million yen into debt with each weekly magazine they publish.

*5: In the middle of a massive slump - for the past few years, publishing sales have been decreasing. In 1996, the industry reached a peak at

10 Will manga exist 10 years from now? 2,656,300,000,000 yen, and then fell to 70%, at 1,874,800,000,000. Internet and video game usage increases are blamed for this.

There are 50 weekly magazines published per year, which means 10 billion yen of debt per year. So they try desperately to fill that hole with volume sales.

And this isn't just a manga problem. It extends to all genres of magazines. In 2008, a large publisher who had about 70 magazines in publication reported being in the red with over 60 of them.

Some magazines are still making profits, but over 90% are seriously in the red. Famous magazines that you've probably all perused at some point are also experiencing these sort of business failures.

It's very clear now that the magazine business model is collapsing altogether. Manga magazines will most likely disappear in the near future. We already can't put food on the table with manuscript fees.

11 If magazines disappear entirely on top of that, then how will mangaka be able to make a living? What? We still have volume royalties? Unfortunately, that's only wishful thinking.

As I'll explain in detail later, newly-created (as in, non- serialized) volume royalties alone cannot support a mangaka. This has been proved in areas of literature and art where newly- created works are the main focus. And in the case of manga, a separate staff is necessary to even draw it, which creates extra labor costs, so there's no question about it.

The form of expression known as manga may continue to exist without me, but if manga itself disappears, I will no longer exist. I don't want manga to disappear. What can I do to ensure that manga survives on to the next generation?

12 Will manga exist 10 years from now? Just what are manuscript fees, anyway?

I once demanded a "definition" of manuscript fees from the editors in the magazine that was serializing my manga.

Until then, through my entire career as a mangaka, I had never received a clear explanation as to what these fees were. I sort of had a general idea that they were "the payments you get for putting your manga in the magazine," but whenever I got into more detailed questions like "Why are they set at those prices," or "How much should manuscript fees be included in the process of drawing the manga," I would come up with nothing.

In 2004, my art staff demanded raises. At the time, my manga "Give My Regards to Black Jack" (*1) had become a big hit, and every time a new volume was published, they would always ask for more printings. My staff was proud of themselves, and said "we created part of this work, so we're also supporting its high quality." And in truth, they were doing an excellent job, so you could say that their request for a cut of the profits from the work was a natural one.

*1: "Give My Regards to Black Jack" - My medical manga that was serialized in Morning (Kodansha) from February 2002. It sold over 10 million volumes altogether, was made into a drama in April 2003 by TBS, and then into a special drama in January 2004. There are 13 volumes in all.

13 Meanwhile, I was already using up all of my manuscript fees to pay for the manga production costs, including their salaries, so by the time they gave me this request, I was already deep in the red. I was using the royalties to pay off my own debt.

Those volume royalties were paid to me because I owed to the copyrights(*2) to the property, so one could say that money has nothing to do with the art staff. It's just like how songwriters and composers get paid separate fees for their work. The people who are actually playing the music get completely separate payments.

*2: Copyrights - Intellectual property rights owned by people who create contents like manga, movies, and music. This gives the creators the right to control and manage their own work. Profits can be earned from copyrighted works when the copyright holder gives permission for a copyrighted work to be copied, screened or performed.

By that logic, they should get paid art fees for their artwork, while the completed illustrations would belong to me, the copyrights holder. Therefore, I thought the proper thing to do in

14 Just what are manuscript fees, anyway? that situation was to ask for a proper raise in my manuscript fees due to my manga becoming a hit.

And so, after finally clearing up the "definition" of manuscript fees, which I had always wondered about, I tried asking for a reasonable raise in my own manuscript fees. Since I was no longer a newbie, and had earned my share of accomplishments as a mangaka, I figured we would be able to talk it over in a civil manner.

"I want to give my staff a raise, so please increase my manuscript fees."

That's what I said to my supervising editor one day. However, he didn't have any intention of taking me seriously.

"I'm just your editor. I know nothing about monetary issues," was the first thing he said.

So, I asked him to introduce me to the editor-in-chief or the person in charge of accounting, but he never got around to doing it.

"We pay you enough through royalties, don't we? Why do you need more?" he even said.

I couldn't take it.

It's true that at the time, my income equaled that of the average wages for a salaryman my age. But that, and the fact that my manuscript fees never increased regardless of how popular my work became are two completely different matters. Aren't manuscript fees the production costs for making the manga?

So I said "Alright then, I won't draw it anymore." And after going on a hiatus for a while, my editor-in-chief finally contacted me.

15 Basically what he said was that manuscript fees weren't meant to be production costs for the manga, but rather "compensation for the production of the manga manuscript."

According to his explanation, "manuscript fees are normally calculated by page count, paid out by the number of pages a manuscript becomes when published in the magazine. After the manuscript fee revision year, number of serialization years, and the degree of contribution to the magazine began to be taken into account when calculating manuscript fees. But up until now, manuscript fee breakdowns have not been deeply discussed, and they should be considered as falling under the category of compensation for the work."

OK, fine, but I'm employing people here.

So I told them, "I won't draw any more manuscripts until my production costs for the manuscript are guaranteed."

In the end, they signed an agreement that they would take "necessary production costs into account along with the years of serialization and the degree of contribution of a work."

Manuscript fees are payments made simply for the art being featured in the magazine, and have absolutely nothing to do with the actual production of the story or the process of making it into a manga.

In other words, manuscript fees (*3) are basically like publishing fees paid out only when a manga is presented in a complete form.

*3: Manuscript fees - This only represents the definition of manuscript fees as stated by the Morning editors, and not that of other publishers or editors.

We can see many problems here, like how the manuscript fee revision year wasn't explained to mangaka before the fact, and how the standards regarding things like "degree of contribution

16 Just what are manuscript fees, anyway? to the magazine" are very vague, but getting a clear definition of what manuscript fees were and signing that agreement was fruitful in the end.

As we've seen so far, manga manuscript fees do not take into account the necessary production costs (salaries for staff members, materials, data, studio management, and rent), and create a paradox in which the more manga one draws, the poorer they become, so it was a great step forward that they acknowledged this when making their new promise.

My new manuscript fees based on the agreement we sealed bumped my payment from 23,000 to 33,000 yen a page. I was drawing 80 pages a month at the time, so I was getting 800,000 yen a month, or 9,600,000 yen a year.

When normal businesses hire someone to do a job, they examine the details of the work, and, after considering the production costs, give out an estimate. If the hired worker agrees with the estimate, they sign a contract, submit an order form, and then produce bills, in that order. But no such customs exist in the publishing world.

For example, out of all the new mangaka who are about to start a serialization, I expect not one of them is able to get a proper meeting with their editor-in-chief before the fact and negotiate their manuscript fees.

One day, after working hard to bring in his or her own home-made manga over and over again, the supervising editor goes to the new mangaka and says "ready to cut your panels for a serialization?" and the new mangaka happily, bravely goes off to plan the story.

Planning the panels is like drawing the storyboard for movies and anime -- basically, the blueprints of the manga.

The story plan gets tightened and elaborated on in a meeting with the editor, and depending on that, the serialization is finalized or not finalized.

17 If the serialization is finalized, creation and script fees should be paid out, but the editors never talk of such things. The new mangaka just happily starts drawing the story once the serialization schedule is planned.

At this point, there's still nothing said about the manuscript fees. Even if the mangaka tries to talk with the editor about them, they'll just say something like this: "Who cares about the manuscript fees? There are tons of people out there who'd let us run their manga for free. You should just be grateful you're getting a chance at a serialization like this. I can't believe you're actually asking about the money. Are you serious about this?"

Finally, the serialization begins, and a few months later, the manuscript fees are deposited into the mangaka's bank account.

That is when the new mangaka finds out for the first time how much his or her manuscript fees are. After overcoming all that opposition, new mangakas see the result of their efforts displayed before them as numerical values, and they're stunned.

"I should have just gotten a part-time job...at least then I wouldn't be in debt."

That's also when they first realize that they can't make a living on that money. Talented mangaka who disappear from the industry usually all cite the same reason: "I can't make a living off manga."

Note: Comics and film adaptations: It takes time and money to make original films, so TV stations and film companies often choose to make film adaptations of widely-known, finished works. Publishers also like film adaptations, as it

18 Just what are manuscript fees, anyway? can sell more volumes for them. The merits are big for both sides, so film adaptations of comics have been greatly increasing.

19 What kind of a life is a life lived off royalties?

In the previous chapter, I explained both the definition of what manuscript fees are, and how it's impossible for a new mangaka to make a living off the manuscript fees alone. In this chapter, I'd like to explore what life is like for a mangaka in the 15th year of his career. Numbers-wise, in 2010, when New Give My Regards to Black Jack ended its serialization, my manuscript fee was 35,000 yen per page. Tokkou no Shima, which is still being serialized, gets 30,000 yen per page. It differs depending on the work and the magazine, but original works and one-shots are usually priced starting from 15,000 yen per page. I draw about 450 to 500 pages of manuscript per year, which comes to 150 million yen in manuscript fees. For New Give My Regards to Black Jack, I also received a planning fee of 150,000 yen per chapter. Meanwhile, I had five staff members, and labor costs were about 170 million yen in total per year. In addition to that, I also spent money on studio upkeep, materials, and data, which means I racked up millions of yen in debt per year.

Of course, I can't save up any money for my own personal life after all that. Splitting the 170 million between 5 people results in 3 million and some yen per person. It's a bit lower than the average salary for a twenty-something salaryman. Art staff are important resources in the manga industry. Without them, manga wouldn't exist. With that in mind, I'd like to pay them a bit more, but that salary is the best I can do. Mangaka get the "sensei" honorific attached to their names, proof that a master-disciple hierarchy still exists in this industry. It's common to see art staff members get treated like disciples of mangaka, and despite putting out a lot of work with a small number of people and being tied to their workplace for long hours, they often get paid less than part-time workers, and in some cases are virtually working for free. If the Labor Standards Inspection Office (*1) were to slip their scalpel into the manga

20 What kind of a life is a life lived off royalties? industry, it would collapse immediately. Before I became an independent mangaka myself, I worked as an assistant for various other mangaka. Out of all my experiences, the lowest pay I ever got was 180 yen per hour.

*1: Labor Standards Inspection Office - In Japan, the labor standards state that no one is allowed to work more than 40 hours per week, excluding break time. The Labor Standards Inspection Office is an entity that investigates whether or not these standards are being upheld. They exist within each prefectural labor department.

On the other hand, when I was serializing Umizaru, I wasn't able to pay my staff as much as I pay them now. I had three staff members, and on top of that, we were doing a weekly serialization, which meant that we were drawing 800 pages per year. We had far from enough people for the job, and had to stay up all night two or three times a week. We didn't get a single day off for the two and half years of the serialization, had absolutely no personal lives, and yet we were still in the red. Currently, my five staff members and I work 12 hours a day, six days a week, so we're under less stressful conditions than Umizaru, but we're still in the red. If there are mangaka out there who are making a living from manuscript fees alone, I'm positive that they're doing at least one of the following: working extremely hard by themselves, or forcing their staff members to adopt illegal work practices. Now, that's enough talk about manuscript fees. Next, we'll be discussing royalties.

Royalties are profits paid out to the copyright holder when tankoubon volumes of manga are published. When a manga is made into a tankoubon, the copyright holder receives profit without having to do anything on his or her own, so the word "royalties" comes with a lot of dreamy ideas attached to it. A life lived on royalties. It sounds elegant, and perhaps even conjures up images of a mangaka enjoying time off in a resort on a southern island or something. Or maybe they're living in an expensive apartment on the top floor of a huge building in Ginza or Roppongi, drinking the finest wine...sorry for the lack of imagination, but

21 that's the best I can come up with. Anyway, the point is, the word "royalties" brings with it many images of success. Now, I'd like to show you what an actual life lived on royalties is like. For manga, 10% of the price of one tankoubon volume is paid out to the author. If the tankoubon costs 500 yen, then that means the author gets 50 yen a volume. At least 10,000 volumes are made during the first printing, so at that point, the author receives 500,000 yen. If the manga series is on a weekly serialization, then four volumes will be published per year. That means 2,000,000 yen in royalties per year.

22 What kind of a life is a life lived off royalties? 20% of that gets eaten up by taxes, which leaves the author with 1,600,000 yen. If he gets in the red by 200,000 yen per month, then that means 2,400,000 yen of debt per year. Subtracting the 1,600,000 yen in royalties from that leaves us with -800,000 yen. After publishing 4 volumes, a mangaka is left with multiple debts, and the possibility of the serialization getting canceled. This situation happens quite often. The Annual Publishing Index that the AJPEA puts out every year estimated manga tankoubon sales as 455,220,000 for the fiscal year of 2009, with a total of 227,400,000,000 yen in profits. Apparently there are roughly 5,300 mangaka who published tankoubon volumes that year, and according to some sources, the royalties for the top 100 mangaka average at about 70 million yen. What about the remaining 5,200 mangaka, then? Their average royalties are about 2,800,000 million yen. After debt and taxes, there's hardly anything left.

Note: The comics market from a sales perspective - Sales in the Japanese publishing industry in 2010 totaled in at 1,874,800,000,000 yen. Out of those profits, 409,100,000,000 belonged to comics sales, which means that comics dominated 21.8% of the market. One very special characteristic of the Japanese publishing world is that the comics share of the market is very large when compared to other countries.

It's far from enough profit for me to amply pay my art staff members. Honestly, they'd be better off financially if they just worked 800 yen-an-hour part-time jobs. This is basically what it's like on average for any mangaka who's running a series in a weekly manga magazine. According to a survey done by the National Tax Administration Agency (*2), the average yearly salary for all salarymen in Japan was 4,120,000 yen. In order for me to raise my own salary to that level from its current state, I would have to publish more than one tankoubon volume every year and make sure the annual total of volumes published was over 160,000 copies. bottom: The comics market from a sales perspective - 2,874,550,000 books were sold in the 2010 fiscal year in Japan. 1,027,660,000 of those were comics, 35.8% of the total market. In

23 other words, one of every three books bought in a Japanese bookstore is a comic book.

*2 line: Tax Administration Agency Survey - The 2010 Survey of Pay Rates in the Public Sector

24 What kind of a life is a life lived off royalties? A million-seller hit with 220 million yen of profit in a single year...what does that turn my yearly salary into?

Normally, when a single tankoubon volume sells over 10,000 copies, it ensures that the next one will be publishable. Selling any less than that will brand it a financially worthless series, and it will become very difficult to publish the next volume. For manga being published in small-to-medium size manga magazines, sometimes several volumes will be published, but then, despite the series still being serialized in the magazine, no more volumes will appear. There's a reason for this. In the manga industry, only when a tankoubon volume sells 20,000 copies is it seen as 'good,' and when it sells 50,000 copies, it's seen as a hit. When it exceeds 100,000 copies sold, it's treated basically like a cash cow. I suspect that less than 10% of all manga on the market sell over 100,000 copies. And less than ten titles a year sell more than 1 million copies, which is less than 1% of the whole. In its peak, "Give My Regards to Black Jack" sold more than 1 million first print copies. Somehow, I miraculously made it into that 1%. How did it go with the royalties, then?

I was publishing four volumes a year that each sold over 1 million copies, for a total of 4 million. That means 200 million yen in royalties were deposited into my Satou Manga Works account. Adding in my manuscript fees, I made 220 million yen that year. 40% (*1) of that was taken by the country through taxes, so I was left with 132 million. Subtracting running costs like staff salaries and the like left me with roughly 100 million yen in my company's account. From that, I took 2,800,000 out a month for my company salary. That comes to 33,600,000 yen per year. Japan's average CEO salary is 30,000,000 yen per year, so I was

25 pretty much on the same level. Well? What do you all think of that? To be honest, I was surprised that I could make 33,600,000 per year at just a few years past thirty. I doubt I could have ever made as much working any other type of job.

*1 line: 40% - Here's the breakdown for income tax - Below 1,950,000 - 5% Over 1,950,000 and below 3,300,000 yen - 10% Over 3,300,000 yen and below 6,950,000 yen - 20% Over 6,950,000 yen and below 9,000,000 yen - 23% Over 9,000,000 yen and below 18,000,000 yen - 33% Over 18,000,000 yen - 40% (As of March 2012)

That made me pretty happy, and it also made it easier for me to plan the rest of my life. "But," you say. 99% of all mangaka in the industry make less than that per year. Even mangaka who sell 100,000 copies of the 4 volumes they publish per year sometimes don't even make 10 million (*2) yen per year. And if mangaka who have 100,000 copy hits are in the top 10%, then that means the remaining 90% definitely makes less than 10 million yen per year. The fact still remains that the average mangaka's salary is equal to or less than that of a part-time worker at a convenience store. All professions are equally honorable, but I believe that value could be better appropriated here. Drawing manga is a trade in which only one out of a hundred people are ever able to go pro

26 A million-seller hit with 220 million yen of profit in a single year...what does that turn my yearly salary into? with. And then only one out of those hundred are ever able to get weekly serializations.

*2 line: 10 million yen a year - Tankoubon volumes cost 500 yen on average, with 10% royalties. The formula I used to get this sum was 500 yen x 10% x 4 volumes x 100,000 copies = 20,000,000 yen. Since making over 18,000,000 yen means you have to pay 40% in tax, then we have to calculate 20,000,000 yen x 40% = 8,000,000 yen and 20,000,000 yen - 8,000,000 yen = 12,000,000 yen. After subtracting the final running costs, it's somewhat questionable whether they'd really be left with 10 million per year.

I see profound hypocrisy in the fact that after working day and night sleeplessly with extreme precision, then finally grasping victory and receiving a stable serialization, this is what mangaka are faced with. Fads are just that. Temporary. Last year, my company salary was much lower than it was during the peak. Incidentally, the average yearly salary for all full- time employees at a certain large publishing company is 16 million yen. Five years after joining the company, employees receive over 10 million yen per year.

27 28 A million-seller hit with 220 million yen of profit in a single year...what does that turn my yearly salary into? Printing 1 million copies myself would make me a quicker 100 million.

Now, I'd like to discuss tankoubon volume price and how that affects royalties. For example, what does it cost to make a volume that costs 500 yen, including royalties to the author? I happen to possess documents outlining the financial details of a certain manga volume, so I'll explain them below. Please note that I procured these documents from an outside publisher, so they aren't related to anything I published.

[Tankoubon Volume A] List Price: 515 yen / 50,291 copies published

Paper: 1,725,210 yen

Block Copy: 12,800 yen

Letter Pressing: 1100 yen

Typesetting: 28,700 yen

Printing: 853,705 yen

Binding: 1,081,256 yen

Processing/Supplemental Work: 201,629 yen

Manuscript Fees (Details Unknown): 8000 yen

Royalties: 2,589,986 yen

Direct Human Resources Fees (Details Unknown): 989,962 yen

29 Subtotal: 7,592,068 yen

Price per Volume: 148.97 yen

If you're bad at math, just try to understand that it costs them about 150 yen to create one volume of this manga. Remember, though, this was data taken from a printing of approximately 50,000 copies. Depending on the amount of copies ordered, the price to print a book can vary. In an earlier chapter, I talked about how volumes that sell under 10,000 copies are seen as financially worthless, and therefore further volumes aren't published. This is because the manuscript fees, typesetting fees, block copy, letter pressing and direct human resources fees don't change whether 10 or 50 thousand copies are printed. Taking these fixed costs into account, I estimated what it would cost to print 10,000 copies and came up with 230 yen.

Looking at it this way, it makes sense. Printing a volume that only sells so much really wouldn't be profitable. Now, let's see what happens if 1 million copies were all printed at once. Again, the manuscript fees, typesetting fees, block copy, letter pressing and direct human resources fees won't change even when 1 million copies are printed. After calculating it again, I came up with 130 yen. Let's review what we've figured out so far: (*1)

10,000 copies at 230 yen = 2,850,000 yen in profit

50,000 copies at 150 yen = 18,250,000 yen in profit

1,000,000 copies at 130 yen = 385,000,000 yen in profit

As we can see, there is about a 380,000,000 yen difference in profit from the first printing of 10,000 and 1 million copies. If you printed 1 million and sold every single one of them, you would make 380,000,000 yen. And who does all that money go to? The publisher, of course. Every last coin.

30 Printing 1 million copies myself would make me a quicker 100 million. *1 line: Review 10,000 copies: (List Price 515 yen - Printing Price 230 yen) x 10,000 = 2,850,000 50,000 copies: (List Price 515 yen - Printing Price 150 yen) x 50,000 = 18,250,000 1,000,000 copies: (List Price 515 yen - Printing Price 130 yen) x 1,000,000 = 385,000,000

With "Give My Regards to Black Jack," close to 1 million copies on average were printed of every volume, so selling one volume of that gave the publisher 100 million more yen of profit than they would get from printing 100 volumes of some other manga that will only sell 10,000 and bring in a measly 285 million in total profits. And I see not a cent of that. There were 13 volumes in total, so you could say that they made 1,300,000,000 yen in extra profits which they kept all to themselves. Like I explained earlier, royalties are normally 10% for tankoubon volumes. One day, I thought "If the profit ratio goes up, then the royalty ratio should go up as well," and I brought this idea up to the publisher. Calculating royalties in conjunction with increased profits seems only fair from a business perspective.

Note: Publisher scale and profit - According to "Publisher News, Mid-October 2011 Issue," there were 3,815 publishing companies in existence in the 2010 fiscal year. Looking at it from a profit scale point of view, however, the 50 publishers with making the most profits make up 50% of all profits, while the top 500 publishers alone make up 90% of all profits. The remaining 3,315 companies are in the bottom 10%. In other words, almost all the publishers in Japan hardly publish anything, and are extremely small-scale.

These days, some publishers, such as shojo manga publishers, who have seen a severe decrease in profits, have been decreasing the amount of royalties they pay out to authors. Additionally, if there's a separate manga artist and creator for a series, sometimes the creator is paid 7%, while the manga artist is paid 5%, resulting in 12% royalties paid out to the authors.

31 If I made sure to collect enough details, documents, and show them the numbers, then I thought negotiating would be possible. And so, I went through a proxy and had a new contract made. The results I got were pretty terrible, though. They wouldn't even look at the documents I prepared, and only said "this is unprecedented, so we can't just raise your royalty payments," over and over again. What's the basis for keeping my royalty payments grounded at 10%, then? It seemed like they had no clear reason for anything. The only reason I understood was that royalty payments were worked into the calculations for printing costs, and profit distribution excluding royalties was already agreed on by bookstores and wholesalers, so they couldn't do anything about it. "If you're unhappy with 10%, then how about doing self-publishing (*2)?" they asked me. "I see," I thought, and went to go get an estimate from a self- publishing company. What do you think they gave me as an estimate for the printing cost of one volume? 1200 yen.

*2 line: Self-publishing - When an author covers the costs of publishing his or her own books. In return for paying out all the costs of production, self- publishing allows the author to keep all profits. (Cutting out the need for royalties)

If I printed 50,000 copies, I could make one volume for 150 yen, but 1000 copies would cost me 1200 yen a piece. And I would be paying for everything, so royalties wouldn't be included in the equation. So, next I asked for a quote for 100,000 copies. It was 120 yen a volume. That sounded much better -- it was hardly different from the deal the publisher was getting. After I calmed down though, I started to think harder. Would I really be able to sell 100,000 copies? I possessed no sales skills, nor did I have a foot in the door with any bookstores. And I sure didn't have enough money to hire someone to do all the business for me. Nor any money to advertise. If by chance some kind of miracle was to occur, and a bookstore

32 Printing 1 million copies myself would make me a quicker 100 million. chain did allow me shelf space to put my books, there would still be a question of how I would distribute it all. There was no way I could just rent a truck and drive around to every store in the country. So, if I couldn't do it myself, did I really have no choice but to listen to what the publisher says?

Note: Publishing costs! So what?!

1: Or maybe I should just accept the fact that manga isn't profitable, and go find another job. I ended up getting nowhere with my negotiations. In the end, mangaka are basically subcontractors working for publishers. Unfortunately, it's a long way from being an "equal" relationship. One day, I got an idea. "What if I just made my own publishing company (*3)?" One that respected the position of the mangaka, one that could truly create an equal relationship between the

33 publishing side and the creation side. This idea came to me in 2006.

*3 line: Publishing company - In recent times, due to a publishing recession, Japanese publishers have been dying out one after another. 2001 was the peak, with 4,400 registered publishing companies. In 2010, there was 3,800. In a single decade, approximately 600 companies went out of business.

34 Printing 1 million copies myself would make me a quicker 100 million. You know, I'm starting to think I should just die along with paper media.

Why can't publishers and mangaka be on equal terms? I don't think I'm any more important than my editor. We aren't even doing the same jobs, so it'd be nonsense to try and compare ourselves. I just want to negotiate with my editor as a business partner. "Then I'll just create my own publishing company, where mangaka and editors are treated as equals." After getting frustrated over my failure in royalty negotiations, I considered establishing my own publishing company. This was about 5-6 years ago. I immediately called upon a publisher friend of mine and asked him some questions. He told me that in order to deliver my manga to everyone, at least three entities would be necessary. 1. A Publisher. 2. A book wholesaler who we refer to as an "intermediary." (*1) 3. A bookstore chain. Even if I did make a publishing company and created my own books, unless I started business with an intermediary, I wouldn't be able to get my books into any stores. *1 line: Intermediary - Wholesalers in the publishing world who act as intermediaries between publishing companies and bookstores. After publishers create books, intermediaries ship them to bookstores all over the country. Aside from shipping, intermediaries usually also deal with returns and storage.

Intermediaries are responsible for taking bookstore orders and delivering books all throughout the country. In order to begin business with one, it's necessary to register a Japanese Book Number (ISBN). (*2) After that, you can apply for a trading account to be established with the intermediary you wish to work with. Once it's created, transactions can begin. The application conditions are very strict, though, and it's difficult for brand- new customers to get a foot in the door. These days, publishing is on the decline. My friend also told me that there are some publishers who already have established relationships with intermediaries, but fell into business slumps

35 and are basically "sleeping," so buying one of those smaller companies would also be a viable option. Even if I did buy a sleeping company, however, I'd need to keep publishing books at a sustained interval in order to stay in business. The publishing and profit numbers that come in each month affect the transaction conditions with the intermediary, so you need to constantly be creating results, and if the numbers get too low, then they won't deal with you anymore. The real question was: did I really have what it takes? *2 line: Japan Book Number (ISBN) - The International Standard Book Number for published works. These numbers are placed on books all over the world so that they can be cataloged by computers. Since intermediaries require ISBN numbers for the books they deal with, bookstores aren't able to send books to online bookstores like Amazon. After applying and paying the fees, even individuals can register ISBNs.

No matter how hard I work, I can only produce 4 volumes of manuscript per year. If I worked as an editor instead, then, would I be skilled enough to prepare 10 or 20 volumes of manga that would definitely sell per month? Not on my own. Would I be able to direct other people, then? Would I have enough power to bring in new authors? Did I really have what it takes to run a company while dealing with a vault of books? And after it all, would I have any time left to draw my own manga? I soon gave up on the idea of starting my own publishing company. This was right after I finished the psychiatry story arc in Black Jack and went on a break. My distrust toward the Morning editors (*3) had come to a boiling point, so without deciding what magazine the series would continue in, I went to do writing and research for the organ transplant arc while I also tried to find the right path for myself.

*3 line: Morning - A seinen manga magazine that Kodansha started in 1982. In 2010, 340,000 issues were published. Representative serializations include Hirokane Kenshi's "Shima Kousaku" series and Inoue Takehiko's "Vagabond."

36 You know, I'm starting to think I should just die along with paper media. *4 line: Manga on cell phones - This refers mainly to the manga releases aimed at 3G cell phones. Bitway is one of the most famous companies that started releasing manga early on, and in 2004, au, Docomo, and Softbank began their initial support of such services. There are many other companies who deal in this business.

Five years ago, manga on cell phones (*4) had made a lot of progress. It was normal to see people staring at their cell phones on the train, so reading manga on cell phones and paying for it through cell phone payments was probably a perfect fit. All cell phone companies were desperate to gain new manga content, and many corporations even invited me to "please let them distribute my manga." Some even strongly urged me to "continue the serialization online," but I didn't budge. No matter how good the manuscript fee and royalty conditions were, for some reason, I had a very strong belief that told me "manga is something that should be read on paper." I couldn't self-publish, and I couldn't make my own publishing company. Magazines were dying out, and I couldn't bring myself to like the new cell phone trend. My tankoubon volume sales were also steadily declining. I felt like I was on a sinking ship. Maybe I should just die along with paper media, I thought. So, I continued my research on my own, writing a manuscript that would probably never see the light of day in any magazine, and glaring at my shrinking checkbook whenever my staff's payday came around. I was being steadily crushed by my own powerlessness. In December of 2006, I signed a writing and publishing contract with Shogakukan.

My tankoubon volume royalty percentage was to start at 10% and then change to 11% after 100,000 copies were sold. My manuscript fee, as I explained earlier, was 35,000 yen per page. Aside from that, I also received a planning fee of 150,000 yen per chapter. I changed the manga's title from "Give My Regards to Black Jack" to "New Give My Regards to Black Jack." (*5) I agreed with the condition that the finished manuscript would be published in the magazine under temporary rights to use (*6). Tankoubon volume

37 publishing is limited to within Japan, and all secondary use (*7) of the work, such as in film adaptations and international tankoubon volume publishing, would be administered by the Satou Manga Works company I manage. In short, I did not sign a secondary rights administration consignment contract (*8) with Shogakukan. At the end of the negotiations, the sliding royalty percentage system I had wanted for so long had finally become a reality. Depending on how much was sold, my royalties would slide from 10% to 11%. A 1% difference may seem like a small one, but with that tiny percentile, I had succeeded in destroying the unwritten "10%" rule that the manga industry had established. I'm deeply thankful to Shogakukan, and I'm still indebted to them even now. However, pangs of frustration came along with my success.

*5 line: "New Give My Regards to Black Jack" - The medical manga "Give My Regards to Black Jack" (see P. 62) was given a new title and began running in Weekly Big Comic Spirits in January 2007. Due to the creator's demands, the final volume's cover was almost purely white, and created quite a stir. (9 volumes)

38 You know, I'm starting to think I should just die along with paper media. *6 line: Temporary rights to use - When a magazine publishes copyrighted work under consent of the author. Usually publishing can only be done once. If the company wants to publish the work again, it goes into the realm of secondary rights.

In the end, I was only able to deliver my manga to my readers by going through a publishing company. I compromised. The circumstances surrounding me as a manga artist really hadn't changed. As usual, I was unable to make a living on manuscript fees alone, and I had to gamble my entire life on the royalties I could only hope I would get. Midst the publishing decline and the raging waves that digital manga was creating, I had been unable to make a real stir.

39 Perhaps, out of fear of drowning, I had merely lunged out at the closest ship I could find. Was there anything I could do for the sake of all manga? As long as I continued to rely on the existing system, I would never be able to overcome it. In order to change something, one needs not to gain, but rather lose one's wisdom. There certain things only idiots can do. And so, I thought about riding on the waves of the internet.

*7 line: These rights are required when a copyrighted work is used a second time. Strictly speaking, manga tankoubon volumes also require secondary rights. Depending on the contract signed between the copyrights holder and the publisher, extra payments may arise.

*8 line: Secondary rights administration consignment contract - This contract basically says "Normally, I would do this job myself, but this time I'll entrust it to a company that specializes this kind of work." Normally, with manga, it isn't the author but the publishing company that manages the secondary rights usage.

40 You know, I'm starting to think I should just die along with paper media. I'll make my own homepage, release my own manga on it, and let all my readers purchase it there.

There's a difference between "official sales" and "actual sales" when it comes to magazines. Some magazines that say they've topped 1 million official sales may be fudging that number. It doesn't mean they've actually sold that many. For example, let's look at Magazine A, a very popular male comics magazine from a big publisher who you probably all know. Their official sales number in at 400,000 copies, but the actual sales aren't even half of that. The truth is that stocking shelves in bookstores and convenience stores with their magazines doesn't even allow them to sell half of all they've got. In my case, with "Give My Regards to Black Jack" and "New Give My Regards to Black Jack," the actual sales of the tankoubon volumes outdid the actual sales of the magazine. (*1) In other words, the industry model of "publishing your work in a magazine in order to advertise it to the readers and get them to buy your volumes" is collapsing. In fact, it may be changing into just the opposite - by selling my tankoubon volumes, I'm actually advertising for the magazine.

*1 line: According to the 2011 Publishing Index, comics magazine sales are diminishing with every year, and in 2010, the 559,170,000 magazines sold was a 60% decrease from the magazines sold in 1995, the peak year. Meanwhile, comic volume sales were at 468,490,000 books. The gap decreases more and more every year. As far as estimated sale profit goes, comics beat out comic magazines in 2005. In 2010, comics were at 231,500,000,000 yen, while comic magazines were at 177,600,000,000. The profit gap is widening.

Various surveys done in recent years have proved that magazine readers and tankoubon volume readers are not necessarily in the same pool. My series "Tokkou no Shima" is dominating the lowest rank on the reader popularity survey in its magazine, but it

41 sells the most tankoubon volumes out of all series featured in the magazine. Up until a few years ago, there existed phrases like "magazine reader" and "volume reader," separating readers into two big groups: those who read the chapters as they're serialized in the magazines and those who read the chapters that are collected in the volumes. Some authors would even start to think "I'll aim this manga toward the volume readers," while others would say "But in doing that, you'd be abandoning all your magazine readers." Since magazines have become so weak in recent times, however, those sort of strategies don't really work anymore. Incidentally, even manga with taglines like "Over a million copies printed!!!" written on their spines haven't necessarily sold a million copies. After all, we live in a world where something known as "bestseller bankruptcy" exists: in which so many copies of a first edition are produced that they're unable to sell them all. The books get returned to the company, and they end up getting crushed under their mountain of unsold bestsellers. And even in these cases, they make sure to write "Over a million copies printed!!!" on the spines. When I thought about getting involved with the internet, I decided that I'd "make my own homepage, release my own manga on it, and let all my readers purchase it there."

I was essentially creating a pay-to-read manga site. (*2) That would eliminate the need to take any big risks like creating my own publishing company, and I wouldn't have to worry about managing a vault either. Perhaps I could sell one 24-page chapter for 30 yen.

If I replaced the magazine with the internet as the way to release my work, and managed to get only 1/5th of the readers I had with the magazine, I would be able to earn the same amount of profit as I did from manuscript fees. It was unfortunate that I had to sacrifice 4/5 of my readers, but I thought there was zero chance of me making absolutely no profit at all. This would also solve my distribution problem, and I would no longer have any need for an intermediary. It made feel a little sad to know that

42 I'll make my own homepage, release my own manga on it, and let all my readers purchase it there. my books would no longer be lining the shelves in bookstores, but I'd also have no more need to deal with any hard-headed publishing companies. No, wait. After releasing my works on the internet, I could still release my tankoubon volumes from a publisher, couldn't I? The comics market had shrunk by about one trillion yen compared to how it was in 1995. I may sound like I'm repeating myself here, but all data points to the fact that the manga publishing industry is a dying one.

*2 line: Pay-to-read manga site - An internet website that sells comics as digital data. Also called webcomics. There are also a lot of free online comics, such as when some publishing companies provide samples of their comics online for free.

Before, when I had been invited to distribute my manga through cell phones, I had only declined mainly because I was insistent on staying with paper media, and felt some sort of negative reaction toward cell phones and digital media. I should have felt something similar when I considered releasing my work on the internet, but you know what they say: Necessity knows no law. And so, I desperately swallowed down my resistance. Even if I had chosen to release a new manga on cell phones, I would have had to deal with a cell phone company for the manuscripts. That would have merely shifted the target of my frustration from a publishing company to a cell phone company. The structural hypocrisy of the manga industry would most likely still haunt me. With the internet, however, I felt like I might be able to handle everything on my own. In the beginning, I thought, "I'll just publish the tankoubon volumes through paper media," and convinced myself that it would be alright. Either way, I felt like I could no longer ignore the fact that everything was heading more and more toward digital media. Music had switched from records to CD, and then from CDs to downloads through PCs. Similarly, paper was in the process of being replaced by digital media.

From here on out, paper books will probably become collector's items, much like records are now. Perhaps people who read manga

43 on the internet and people who collect tankoubon volumes will split up like magazine and volume readers. If I could just remember that my ultimate goal in publishing tankoubon volumes was to gather more people online, then I would probably be able to continue business without contradicting myself. Even if I had to use self-publishing for the volumes, as long as I could register an ISBN for them, I'd be able to sell them online bookstores (*3) like Amazon without having to go through intermediaries or actual bookstore chains. Finally, I was starting to feel like I could handle it all on my own. At long last, my delusions were starting to take form as a realistic plan.

*3 line: Online bookstores - A website that sells and ships comics, magazines, and bookstores. Amazon is the most representative website, but there are other online bookstores run by actual bookstore chains as well.

44 I'll make my own homepage, release my own manga on it, and let all my readers purchase it there. 45 I haven't had a single meeting with an editor for several years now.

In the end, are publishing companies truly a necessity? There's self-publishing, where the author covers all the funds necessary to publish the book, and then there's business publishing, where a publishing company covers the costs necessary for publishing (NOT creating) a book. For manga, publishing companies employ editors, or "book planning professionals," who keep their eyes on the trends of the world and work with mangaka to produce manga that will sell. Sometimes, the editor takes care of the planning while the mangaka simply does the brute work. Whatever the division of labor is, business publishing is very unique. Since the publishing company is in control, they tend to prioritize the editor's opinions over the mangaka's opinions. My series "Tokkou no Shima" (*1) was born from a Houbunsha editor's idea. That editor was very passionate about his idea, namely, "creating a manga set in World War II about a suicide torpedo named Kaiten." In this case, my job is simply to exercise my own personal style as much as I can within my limitations, do research, and write a good story.

*1 line: Tokkou no Shima - A historical manga about a special attack squad, centering on a Japanese suicide torpedo named "Kaiten," a.k.a. the "Human Torpedo," based on actual history. It began periodic serialization in Weekly Manga Times (Houbunsha) in 2004. As of March 2012, 4 volumes have been released.

46 I haven't had a single meeting with an editor for several years now. The editor checks the finished manuscript, and if there are any mistakes or panels that look too confusing, he orders the mangaka to make changes. Then, after checking to make sure the changes were made, he goes through the final process necessary to get it into the magazine. Copyrights for the finished story belong 100% to the mangaka, while the publishing company reserves primary use rights to the finished manuscript. This sort of relationship only becomes a problem if the power balance starts to crumble. Mangaka have to pay for all production and human labor fees on their own, and then actually draw the manuscript. As far as the law goes, they retain 100% of the copyrights to their work, but as far as the publisher is concerned, "this manga belongs to us." Many times, publishers and

47 editors treat the finished product like their own. Not only that, but it seems that even some people come to believe that they're the ones who are really creating the manga. The other day, I met with a fellow mangaka, and he told me this: "I ran into this Koudansha editor named "__-san," and apparently, he used to be in charge of you, Satou-san, when you were working on Black Jack. He told me that he was originally the one who thought up the character named Akagi. Is that true?"

I never heard anything about that. I haven't had a single meeting with my editor for several years now. I design my panels on copy paper, and then fill in the story from the first page to the last, exactly how I think it should go. When I'm finished, the first thing I do is show it to my wife (yes, I'm married) and get her opinion. With her comments in mind, I revise the panels and then draw the groundwork. When I've finished a good deal of it, I fax the manuscript to my editor and simultaneously begin work on the art. After my editor sends his comments back, I make changes that can be done in the final stages as I draw the actual manuscript. For "New Give My Regards to Black Jack," my editor never saw any of the latter half of the serialized chapters. I just handed the panels to the editor and made him promise to not give me any opinions or thoughts on the work and simply let me know whether it could be published or not.

I had my staff members take care of all contact regarding scheduling and manuscript delivery. I consciously avoided all chances I had to speak with my editor, and never mentioned the name of the publishing company when I was collecting data. I simply tried to do everything on my own. It wasn't like I hated my editor or anything. I was merely experimenting. "Can a mangaka create a manga at a constant speed and quality level without relying on the publisher?" Or, rather, "Can a mangaka make a direct connection with his or her readers?" That was my experiment. Taking that step and releasing my manga online meant stepping

48 I haven't had a single meeting with an editor for several years now. into a world where I was completely disconnected from any publishing company. Of course, they wouldn't be able to help me there. What I wanted to know was, in that world, would I be able to provide good manga to my readers at the same pace? It would require the ability to setup, plan, research, and produce the manga entirely on my own. I was trying to get myself prepared for that kind of lifestyle. The answer I found was: all you need to make manga is a mangaka.

All I had to do was remember the days before I became a mangaka, when I was bringing my manuscripts in to publishers. Mangaka all start drawing manga on their own. Of course, publishing manga requires the help of a publishing company, and it's fact that I relied on the help of publishers in many areas to create my works. Honestly, I'm very thankful, but as far as drawing manga goes, I do not believe that publishing companies are absolutely necessary. I understand that there are many mangaka out there who deeply value the meetings they have with their editors, and I'm not here to argue against them. Meeting with editors allow mangaka many chances to hone and sharpen their works, and it can be a great chance for them to kick the quality up to the next level. It's also true that publishing companies have played a big part in building manga culture. However, I hope you remember that "services" aren't all they've done for us.

One day, I wrote a manuscript. I haven't decided on the title yet. It's the first chapter in a new, long-term series. I wrote it all on my own without meeting with or talking to anyone. Sooner or later, the media known as "magazines" will be no more. And when that happens, publishers will no longer pay manuscript fees to mangaka, and volume royalties will no longer be the only thing mangaka rely on to make a living. Publishing companies will most likely lose most of the functionality in their editing departments. At that point, perhaps cell phone comic companies will step in to support mangaka. From a mangaka's perspective, I believe it's necessary for us to present an answer from our side as well. After I finished my

49 manuscript, I sealed it neatly in an envelope, and then went to visit a website company my friend had introduced to me.

50 I haven't had a single meeting with an editor for several years now. A relationship between mangaka and readers without a publisher in between.

Several years ago, a band named Radiohead (*1) produced their own music with their own money, then sold the album on cell phones and the internet without going through a record company. It created quite a stir. After the album was released, I bought an independent CD version from a CD shop. Business-wise, the release itself earned them the equivalent of millions of yen. It was a very interesting endeavor that allowed them to search out a new relationship between those who make music and those who listen to music. "What would happen if I tried the same thing with manga?" Maybe the relationship between mangaka and readers would change as well. I had already begun thinking about building my website when I heard this news, so it made me really excited. I decided that the first thing I needed to do after opening the site was to release the manga I had drawn so far. I owned the copyrights to the work, and although I had been paid manuscript fees to draw the manuscripts, those fees only granted the publisher a one-time chance to publish the work, so the manuscripts still belonged to me. Since I had signed publishing contracts with multiple publishers, I wouldn't be able to publish the same books with another publisher, but I still retained all secondary use rights.

*1: Radiohead - An English rock band who debuted in 1992. Their 2007 album, "In Rainbows," was distributed in MP3 files from their site. They even allowed downloaders to set their own prices, an unprecedented sales tactic.

Publishing means "Putting information on paper and distributing it to the public," so electronic publishing falls into a completely separate category. Online comics fall into the e- book/e-publishing category, so I can release my works as I like. I even considered taking New Give My Regards to Black Jack and

51 Tokkou no Shima, which were still being serialized, and releasing them on my website simultaneously. I immediately went to hear the publishers' opinions on my website. Some were peaceful about the issue, and others simply grimaced and accepted, since they had no legal way to stop me. They had no real qualms about old works, but asked me to wait one month after the serialized chapters were released to release them on my site, and I accepted.

I was fine with it, because I knew that at home, I had a brand- new manuscript tucked away in my shelf, ready to go up on the site when my serializations ended. I figured I'd charge 10 yen for old chapters and 30 yen for new chapters. At BookOff (*2) and other similar large bookstore chains, my volumes are sold at around 100 yen per volume, or less, and considering how easy they can be read at manga cafes, I decided I'd have to use a payment model like this to be competitive. 10 yen per chapter meant about 100 yen per volume. My royalties were 50 yen per volume, which meant my profit would be doubled. As my negotiations with the publishers continued, I had more meetings with the web development company. After many meetings, I took a look at the estimate they had prepared, and nearly jumped through the roof. 10,000,000. 10 million yen. I am a complete amateur when it comes to the internet, so I was completely clueless as to whether this was an appropriate price or not.

*2 line: A very large chain of used bookstores run by the BookOff corporation. Unlike previous bookstores, BookOffs are wide and bright inside and allow users to read books inside the store, making them a very "new" type of used bookstore. On the other hand, since new books can be purchased so cheaply here, BookOffs are seen as one of the reason why new editions haven't been selling very well.

52 A relationship between mangaka and readers without a publisher in between. I quickly got in contact with a different friend than the one who introduced me to that company and asked him to introduce another one to me. I was trying to get a competitive bid. (*3) I gave the second company the same explanation I gave the first, and then, after two months and multiple meetings, they gave me a quote of around 8 million yen. Since it was going to be a pay site, there were security problems to worry about. They would also have to implement a unique payment system for the site, as well as work in a viewer (*4) so that the online comics could be read. Therefore, they claimed that they couldn't make the price any lower. In addition to that, they would need to sustain and manage the site month to month, but they couldn't give me a clear estimate of how much that would cost. This was apparently because it would depend on how much service I'd require of them, so they couldn't give me any concrete numbers. For example, if I requested only 8 hours of support on weekdays, and paid 300,000 yen to one staff member, they could give me monthly support. If I required 24 hour support, however, then the price would triple. Then, if I wanted weekend support, things would get more expensive. The type of servers I choose could also vastly change the overall price.

*3: Competitive bid - What multiple companies produce when they're forced to give estimates for the same job in order to compare them. This makes the price competitive and gives the client more of a choice, as well as a better understanding of how serious a company really is.

*4: Viewer - Software that allows image files (or PDFs) to be viewed on smart phones and computers. Page turns and jumps to certain pages can be easily done with clicks and tabs. There are many different types of viewers available.

Feeling troubled, I had another friend introduce me to another company. There, I explained everything a third time and met with the company once a week. After another two months, they gave me another estimate. 7,800,000 yen. Here, however, I was faced with the same problems regarding

53 support and management. Monthly security fees, server fees, data center fees, viewer fees, support fees, payment agency fees...the list went on and on. Exhausted, I thought about giving up and stamping the contract right there, but then I decided I'd take a look at one other company, just to be sure. I first met them in the lobby of a hotel in Shinjuku. An sympathetic acquaintance of mine had introduced me to them. Remember now, I'm a mangaka through and through. I don't know much about anything else.

I may have been very passionate about putting my manga up on the internet, but there was no way I could do it all by myself. And so, after bothering a great number of my friends, I apprehensively sat down in the lobby of that Shinjuku hotel. When it became time for the appointment to happen, the CEO of the development company appeared. After showing him the estimates I had received so far, he said "We can do all this for 5 million. As far as support goes, we can't just stick one person on it and leave it all to them. You'll never just be able to pay one person for support."

54 A relationship between mangaka and readers without a publisher in between. A few months later, I received his official estimate. Eight months had passed since my initial meeting with the first company.

55 Honestly, doing online comics is hard.

Finally, I decided on a web development company, and after many meetings, actual work on building my site was underway. Once the functions of the site were decided upon, I started thinking about the screen design and drawing illustrations. After all, I had absolutely no room to hire an outside designer. I couldn't beat out a pro designer in terms of quality, so I decided to focus on quantity. I ended up with a little less than 100 manga pages of content. I even drew a manga for my profile on the site, which I featured at the beginning of this book As I was working, however, more problems arose. Namely, the payment system. Internet websites can't just charge fees to people's cell phone bills like cell phone shopping can do. Of course, there are other payment methods like credit cards and web money (*1), but then I realized that payment services won't accept credit card payments for sums of 10 and 30 cents.

*1 line: Web money - Electronic money used mainly on the internet. This virtual money is managed by different companies, including Webmoney, Bitcash, and so on. Usually it's set up as 1 point = 1 yen, which allows people to turn their money into a completely different currency that they can use solely on the internet.

Apparently, this is because to the payment company, it simply isn't worth the time required to process such a paltry sum. They won't process any payment less than 300 yen, which means that all products need to be priced at 300 or higher. I thought about giving up on my idea of selling the online comics by chapter and selling them by volume instead, but that would make it impossible for me to sell newly-released chapters. I needed to be able to sell my manga by chapter, so I thought I'd simply have all users by their points in increments starting from 300 yen. At 1 point = 1 yen, they could use the points as they would use their own money and read manga as they like. However, the only contents I had planned for the site were my own

56 Honestly, doing online comics is hard. comics. If it only cost 10 yen, I could see a decent number of people giving the site a try. But if it cost over 300 yen to give only MY comics a try...how many people would go for that?

The truth is, at the time, online comics services weren't that hard to come by. Many publishers had already begun their own distribution services, but there wasn't a single example of one that had succeeded. The only real thing I had going for me was the fact that I was distributing my own comics. Success would not come easily. And the minute I realized my 10-yen payment model wouldn't work, all my hope dissipated. How else could I make my site profitable, then? Should I just use the online comics service as a way to promote my comics, self- publish the new works, and then sell the books online? Maybe I could utilize online sells and turn my site into a sort of bookstore. But then I'd be faced with the "stock" risk again. A bookstore? A strange thought occurred to me one day. "I know, I'll make a bookstore." I wouldn't have to self-publish new books, I could let them be business published (*2) as I've always done.

*2 line: Business publishing - When a publisher covers the costs for a book to be published, unlike with self-publishing. In exchange for covering the costs of publishing, publishers get to keep all profits of a big being sold, and give royalties out to authors.

If I sold the volumes on the site, I would get profit as a bookstore on top of my royalties. Then, I could use that money to run the site, and possibly even funnel some of it into manga production. Compared to selling self-published books on the site, letting a publisher handle it would cut out a lot of the risks, and most importantly, ensure that the books get out to bookstores. Usually, when mangaka take part in talk events and doujin events, they do direct sales of their manga volumes at the event space. The volumes sold there were purchased at a discount price from

57 the publisher by the mangaka, who keeps all of the profits. I was thinking about doing the exact same thing, except online. I would have to figure out how to handle stock, shipping, and shipping cost problems, but it wouldn't be impossible. I immediately talked to the publisher about having more copies of my manga printed. At this point, the decline of manga magazines was an unavoidable truth.

Publishers were no longer stuck on their magazines, and had begun pumping all of their energy into tankoubon volume publishing. If more mangaka started to do what I was doing, then they could be free to serialize their own series on the internet and deal with publishers only for the publishing of the actual volumes. Publishers would no longer have to pay manuscript fees, they would no longer have to give out any support for the preparation of data, materials, or even have meetings. Instead, they would be able to sign publishing contracts for tankoubon volumes with mangaka. Publishers wouldn't have to go into the red anymore They could pay out royalties to mangaka as always, and as long as the books sold well, both parties would profit. I don't think intermediaries or bookstores would be happy about direct sales of volumes to mangaka, but publishers already do it, and the manga publishing industry has reached a new level of crisis. Playtime's over, folks. Personally, I was ready to try anything I could think of. A few weeks after I contacted the publisher, I was sitting at a table in a coffee shop in Ginza, surrounded by the editor-in-chief, my old editor, and my current editor. I was just on my way home from visiting an important data contributor. Seinen comics magazines - fighting a losing battle - There's no stopping the massive decline in sales that seinen comics magazines have been experiencing. The 2011 Publishing Index reported the total 2010 sales of both weekly and monthly seinen magazines as 270,490,000. Comparing this to 1991's sales of 566,110,000 shows us that sales have dropped below half over the past 20 years.

58 Honestly, doing online comics is hard. Because of certain circumstances within the editing department, my previous editor had handed over his duties to my current editor. My previous editor was on his way back from making this announcement and bidding his farewell. We hardly ever met, as I was letting my staff members take care of all that, so it had been a while since I'd seen him. When I go out to collect data, I almost always wear suits. The difficulty of trying to collect data as a mangaka without a big corporation to bolster me has stung me pretty deeply, so I'm always extremely grateful to anyone who decides to help me collect data. I take care of managing all schedules and stay in contact with all my data contributors, which made it a necessity to meet with my new editor. All three of the editors who sat around me were wearing casual clothes and jeans. I remember this irritating me. "I informed you about this several weeks ago, so I'm sure you all understand the situation by now. I'm creating a website, and I want to sell my manga volumes on it. Well? I'd like to purchase a large quantity of my own volumes for a discounted price."

59 Those books are the publisher's products, not yours.

The answer I received was a very cold one. "Those books are the publisher's products, not yours." Surrounded by the three of them in that tiny Ginza coffee shop, I was truly speechless. "Not mine? But I drew them," I instantly shot back. The three of them exchanged looks, but they said nothing. Then, the editor-in-chief opened his mouth. "They belong to us, though. Legally." The new editor then gave his own reply. "That's right. The proprietary rights belong to us." At first, I wasn't sure I understood what he was saying. "But my name's written in big characters on the front cover. 'Sato Shuho.' And I drew everything that's inside. I've also reserved 100% of the copyrights, so no matter how you look at it, they're mine...right?!" My voice was getting hysterical. The editors started to look a bit troubled, and resigned themselves to stare at the cloud of cigarette smoke floating near the ceiling.

"If you were to, for example, Sato-san, buy your own book at the bookstore, then yes, it would belong to you. Because at that moment, Sato-san, you paid money to purchase proprietary rights to that book. Until you purchase it, however, that book in the bookstore belongs to the publishing company. This is the same for all consumers. Their payments give them proprietary rights to the book, while the copyrights to the contents remain the property of the author. The consumer hasn't purchased the copyrights, and is not allowed to turn the book into an anime or a drama, or basically use it for anything other than their own personal entertainment. Thus, the tankoubon volumes do not belong to you. As you said, Sato-san, the rights you own are the copyrights, and not the proprietary rights. Therefore, we may not sell our products to you at a discounted price, even if you are the

60 Those books are the publisher's products, not yours. author." And so, it didn't take long for my idea about selling my tankoubon volumes on my brand-new site to go swirling down the toilet.

Here's a summary of what the publishers told me: *The tankoubon volumes are the publisher's products, and therefore belong to the publisher. *Mangaka are merely assisting publishers in creating a product, and the end product (book) does not belong to the mangaka. *Therefore, mangaka cannot purchase the products at their original price. *Mangaka are also not allowed to make deals directly with publishers. *However, since they did take part in the authoring process, they can buy the books at 80% of the list price, a special discount that is available to every company employee. *If the mangaka wishes to purchase the books at a lower price than that, they must go through an intermediary or an e- bookstore. *If the mangaka decides to go through an intermediary or e- bookstore to make the purchase, they must ensure that they will purchase a monthly average of over two million yen in books. *Two million yen a month is too small for large intermediaries,

61 so this limits the mangaka to small to medium-sized intermediaries. Unfortunately, intermediaries of this size lack the manpower to deliver books exactly as they're ordered. *This means that if a mangaka decides to order 10,000 of his own books one month, he may only be able to get a hold of a hundred or so in the necessary time frame.

At the end of our meeting, the editor-in-chief said this: "You're free to sell books online if you wish, but don't come crying to us when bookstores stop selling your books." After telling me over and over again that the books weren't mine, he went and called them "your books" at the end. It was so unfair. "What do you mean by that? The bookstores will refuse to stock the shelves with them?" As I asked this question, the publishers started exchanging glances again. "I doubt anyone would go that far. But they may start stocking them in places that are harder to find...like in the corner, or not putting them in stacks out in the front. They're people too, you know." bottom: Comic magazine profit structure - Even if a comic magazine's profit is in the red, selling tankoubon volumes of the magazine's serialized contents can put them back in the black. This is the structure that comic magazines have run on for a while now. The reason why comic magazines keep getting canceled is because the number of volumes sold keeps dropping, and many magazines are finding themselves unable to stay out of the red anymore.

"But the books are your products, aren't they? Isn't that a problem for YOU, then? If that's the case, then I'll just sell them all myself! The old system isn't really working anymore, so how about assisting me on this new business venture?" I was met with silence again. Then, the editor-in-chief opened his mouth. "You know...even without manga, as long as our company continues to exist, we'll keep getting paid." As we left the coffee shop, the editor-in-chief said "I'm disappearing here," and vanished into the night streets of Ginza.

62 Those books are the publisher's products, not yours. The other two editors also walked off in their own directions. I hardly ever come to Ginza, and the last trains had already left the station, so I went stumbling aimlessly down the road, unsure even of where I should go to get a taxi. Finally, after finding a taxi stop and getting into a car, it hit me. I felt so pathetic, yet somehow I felt so sad that I couldn't even cry. I couldn't even begin to count the number of times they'd treated me like a child. When I reached my house, my taxi fare was around 9,000 yen. When I pulled the 10,000 yen note out from my wallet, I said something to the taxi driver that I'd never ever said in my entire life.

"Keep the change." But that only amplified the void within. After a few days, I approached my wife. "I want to give online comics a shot, even if it's unprofitable. what do you say?" She gave me a pretty cool response. "Sure, why not? You've been so well-behaved lately anyway." It sounded so natural, like she really didn't mind. Her motherly nature teaches me just how destructive motherly nature can be. I only ever do what she allows me to. Now that I think about it, I was unemployed when we got married. After "Umizaru" finished its serialization, and before "Give My Regards to Black Jack" started, there as a period of eight months

63 where I was simply paying my three staff members, despite the fact that I had no job.

The majority of mangaka hire staff members when they start a serialization and then part ways with them when it ends. The mangaka are only doing it to protect themselves, so I guess it's understandable, but thinking about it from the staff members' points of view, having the fate of your entire livelihood in the hands of a mangaka must make for an even more unstable life than the mangaka's. I felt that since I had hired these people, I was responsible for them, and that firing people out of my own convenience was the wrong thing to do. Mangaka and manga staff are taking an equally large gamble with their lives. A gamble that only one out of every 100 people win at, and one that sometimes doesn't even pay out well to the winners. I just wanted to merge my ideals with my work. Only four years ago was I able to pass a credit card review. Many times, I had real estate agents refuse to lend me space "because I was a mangaka." But I like manga. After a few more days passed, I got an idea. "I'll open up my online comics payment system to all mangaka and people who want to become mangaka."

If I did that, then starting my own online comics service as an individual and turning it into a business would become extremely difficult. But if there was no way for me to do it myself, then maybe I could make it a possibility with a little help from other people. "I'll publicize the system, and I won't take any money from people who take part in it." I didn't want to become a middleman. If the number of members increased, then the readers would increase as well, and the sales of my manga would probably go up too. There was no telling how much it would cost to create and keep the site up, though. The one thing I was sure of was that it would surely cost many times more than the upkeep for a personal site. And so, I was faced with a question: was I ready to use up every last coin of my

64 Those books are the publisher's products, not yours. savings? I was about to step out on yet another journey.

65 OK, so how much will it actually cost?

The prices of books are protected by something called the resale price management system. (*1)If you go to a store and buy a book, you'll pay list price for it. Depending on the region or season that a vegetable was produced in, its price can go up or down, but this never happens with books. Book prices are the same nationwide. This is because bookstores buy their books on commission from the publisher. When a greengrocer sells his vegetables, they're bought by the market and then sold to customers. The greengrocer incurs 100% of the losses from leftover product, but can try lowering the price to sell them all off. Since bookstores don't buy their books through normal transactions, they can have their leftovers taken off their hands by intermediaries. The idea is that publishers consign their books and allow bookstores to put them on the shelves. Then, if the books are sold, then bookstores are allowed to keep one portion of the profit. With consignment sales, it doesn't really cost any money to order the books.

*1: Resale price management system - This system requires that a set price is attached to things like books and CDs. Forcing bookstores to abide by this price protects from unauthorized price drops and copyright infringement.

Of course, if a bookstore just orders a bunch of books that won't sell, they won't make any profit and their funds will be eaten up by store maintenance and labor costs. With that in mind, bookstores do take big risks, but in exchange for the additional risk of purchasing books at full price, the stores are required to sell them at the list price determined by the publisher. When they're sold, bookstores usually claim 20 to 30% of the profit. In the previous chapter, I recounted my meeting with some editors from a certain publishing company that I wanted to purchase my own copyrighted works from. In the end, they told me "we can sell the books to you at 80% of the list price, but we cannot make transactions with you as a business entity."

66 OK, so how much will it actually cost? Basically, what they were saying was "you can buy and resell our books if you want, but if you do, you'll need to resell them at list price." They wanted me to sell their books at list price, with the additional risk of having to purchase them all without a consignment discount. Despite all this, I still decided to go through with my idea of selling my own tankoubon volumes online. Even if it was only out of my own stubbornness, and even if it led to no real profit, I still felt that being able to sell my own products was a necessary skill I'd need for the future.

In the following days, I stood my ground and went to have the same talk with other publishers. They still insisted that I purchase their books as a regular consumer, but dropped the discount down to 70%. After being told by the first editor-in- chief that 80% was the maximum discount they could give, I was surprised to see some places give me an additional 10% discount without any trouble. How were they able to do that? "From time to time, you may get people who tell you things like 'Do you know how hard these people are working to sell your books,' and 'Who do you think's been selling them for you up until now,' but they're in the wrong. It's true that the books are the publisher's products, and therefore, they aren't 'yours.' The publishers are the ones managing the stocks, and if the books end up not selling and the publisher goes bankrupt, the mangaka wouldn't be responsible for paying off the debt. Therefore, it's only natural that they'd work hard to sell their own products. It may sound a bit cold, but the publishers aren't necessarily working hard just to sell YOUR books, so authors should all work hard for themselves. But, if the publisher and mangaka can find spots within their separate work where they can help each other, then they should cooperate."

That editor-in-chief's words gave me a bit of hope. It was all about attitude. And, of course, whether or not I really had the guts to do what I wanted. I decided to sell my books online as they were released. Of course, I had no intentions of making any kind of profit.

67 I imagined what would happen if a hundred mangaka started posting their new manga on my site. Readers could pay 30 yen to read the newest chapter of various series, and if that got them interested, then they could pay 10 yen to read older chapters. 100% of the profit would go back to the mangaka.

Note: Why has the publishing industry gone sour? - People say the reason for the slump in the publishing industry is "loss of readership." According to a reader opinion survey that the Mainichi Newspaper runs every year, the amount of people who read books daily is 50% of the total population, 75% if magazines are included. And guess what? These statistics have hardly changed since the 70s. The world still has many readers in it, yet books aren't selling. What do you think the true reason is?

Registering manga on the site would be free. All mangaka would need to do is fill in the necessary registration information. Content would not be judged, nor would page number or quality be restricted. Any and all artists could register. Site fees would be free for the first few months, and then, regardless of whether mangaka made profits or not, they would be required to pay system upkeep fees to continue using the site. My initial dream was to require no extra fees. However, if by chance the site happened to get really popular, and a huge amount of unscreened manga started to get posted on the site, I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle all the system upkeep on my own for the free periods. I slowly began to see how requiring mangaka to pay only upkeep fees could burst my little balloon in the end. If that was the case, then, perhaps I should allow everyone to register their manga, and then only release and require fees from works that I saw as "sellable?"

68 OK, so how much will it actually cost? Then I'd just be taking the place of the publishers. That wasn't what I set out to do. Humans encompass the whole spectrum -- erotic, violent, good, bad, everything. I believe that manga has a duty to show this chaotic world exactly as it is. Would it be possible, then, for me to put ads on the site and use that revenue to support it? But wait, hold on...I still didn't even know how much the development costs would be. And what about the running costs to support such a huge system? Judging from the estimates I had received so far, I had a pretty good idea of what it'd be -- I could probably build a house with what I was preparing to spend. After further research, I learned that several free manga sites already existed. And there were even more pay-to-read online comics sites. (*2) I also learned that apparently, none of those sites were doing very well. Someone had already thought of everything I had, and it wasn't looking very optimistic.

*2 line: Pay-to-read online comics sites (See P104) are web sites that offer manga for sale online. There are sites like eBookJapan that deal with flat fee payments, as well as e-book rental sites like Renta! that offer viewing for a limited period of time.

69 At the same time, however, the "media" known as manga wasn't doing so hot either. Young Sunday (*3), which Umizaru had been serialized in, went on a break in 2008. In magazine terms, "a break" essentially means it's been canceled. Once they go on break, magazines never return. About half a year before it was canceled, I started hearing rumors that they were "going to go under," but I received no contact from anyone at Young Sunday. Then, one day, I had a chance to talk with a Young Sunday editor on the phone, so I just decided to ask him outright. "I heard that the magazine is going to be canceled. Is that true?" The editor was silent for a moment, and then he chuckled. "So it got out?" Several months later, a postcard notifying me that the magazine was going on a break was delivered to my office post box.

*3 line: A weekly seinen magazine published by Shogakukan, created in 1987 and put on a break in 2008. It had many popular titles that were turned into dramas, including Sato Shuho's "Umizaru," Mase Motorou's "Ikigami," and Yamada Takatoshi's "Dr. Koto's Clinic." Just before it went on a break, its sales were recorded at 190,000 copies, a straggler among other weekly seinen magazines.

And then, one day, Young Sunday was no more. This is how magazines die. Because the magazine went on a break, all the mangaka attached to it became unemployed, but not one of the editors were let go from the publishing company. Most of the Young Sunday editors were split between the Big Comic Spirits (*4) and Shonen Sunday (*5) editing departments. And because they chose to keep their entire editing staff on board, Spirits and Shonen Sunday ended up diving deeper into the red than any other Shogakukan property. Kindai Mah Jong Gold (*7), the magazine that ran my series "The Death-Defying Negotiator M," no longer exists anymore either. I don't like it when manga disappears. But I also don't want to ignore the fact that it may all eventually disappear.

70 OK, so how much will it actually cost? I don't want to leave my future in the hands of someone else. It all comes down to whether or not you've got the guts to make your dreams into a reality. I made all my money drawing manga, so it's only right that I should try and use it to save the future of manga. When I run out of money, I'll just draw some more manga.

*4: Big Comic Spirits - A weekly seinen magazine created by Shogakukan in 1980. Representative titles include "Oishinbo," written by Kariya Tetsu and illustrated by Hanasaki Akira and Urasawa Naoki's "20th Century Boys." In 2010 it sold 260,000 copies.

*5: Shonen Sunday - A weekly shonen magazine created by Shogakukan in 1959. In 2010 it sold 680,000 copies. It's carried many big-name authors, including Takahashi Rumiko, Adachi Mitsuru, and Aoyama Gosho.

In February 2009, I opened "Sato Shuho on Web" without any problems. At that time, it was just a small site with a few basic functions aside from forums and blogs. No online comic functionality, shop system, or payment system had been implemented yet. The adventure had begun.

*6: "The Death-Defying Negotiator M" - A mah jong manga serialized in "Kindai Mah Jong Gold" (Take Shobo) from 2001-2002. There were nine chapters in all, published in a single volume in April 2003.

71 *7: Kindai Mah Jong Gold - A monthly seinen manga magazine published by Take Shobo. It was created in 1987, and put on a break in December 2005.

72 OK, so how much will it actually cost? Sato Shuho on Web is open. But is it making money?

Sato Shuho on Web, the website that opened in February of 2009, was my answer to the unreasonable nature of the manga industry, as well as the shrinking problem paper culture was facing. Mangaka shouldn't be slaves to the system. Perhaps by setting up this site, what I truly hoped to achieve was freedom. All pre-opening production cost approximately 5 million yen. And once the site was online, I'd have to pay monthly management costs. Paying the site staff labor costs, maintenance costs, credit card payment costs, viewer usage costs, and monthly running costs would require at least 300,000 more yen monthly. Would we really be able to get all that back?

73 I could feel myself shiver at the magnitude of risk involved with this new adventure. A quiet excitement enveloped me, but I knew that I would need more than zeal to get through this. To reiterate, when I first opened the site, there were no online comics, no shop, and no payment system.

I wasn't able to prepare the digital comics or functionality necessary to sell my products by the time the site opened. We lacked what most official mangaka web pages featured, and had hardly any unique content aside from a bunch of illustrations and an original manga. Needless to say, the site didn't really make any waves. The original profile manga I drew for the site -- the manga that appeared at the beginning of this book lit the first flame. As more and more people on the internet began to read it, the number of users on the site rapidly increased, overloading our servers in no time. As we went through complaints procedures and hurriedly built a new server, I slowly began to feel like this might actually work. As we worked to build an e-book shop on the site, we also called out to a wide range of mangaka and invited them to join.

Even by the time we finished building the shop, we still didn't have a wide enough selection for it. I only had 35 volumes of published manga, which left our product lineup sorely lacking content. When I thought about what we would truly need to make profit, the answer that kept coming to me was "quantity." We needed to gather a bunch of mangaka, encourage them to release their works, and make the site bigger. I wanted a site where readers could read a wide variety of manga. In the end, variety would increase our readership, which would ultimately result in more readers for my manga as well. I needed to completely revamp the site and then call in other mangaka. Only necessary maintenance costs would be removed from the profits, and everything else would go to the mangaka. I also wanted to implement a free blog service in conjunction with the manga viewing service.

74 Sato Shuho on Web is open. But is it making money? First, though, I needed to gather the mangaka. And so, in order to once again bring my delusions into reality, I took action.

Now that Sato Shuho on Web was a real site, my interests had already shifted elsewhere. As I had more meetings with the system development company, I prepared this letter to send out to mangaka. It's a bit long, but it's a good explanation of the ideas I had at the time (*1), so please give it a read.

Dear all manga producers (*2) -

[1] About the online comics system

As I explain how our online comic system will work, please take a look at the pages of the profile manga on my site and use them as an example. We are using a special page viewer on this site to try and emulate the feeling of flipping manga pages as closely as possible. We feel that this viewer plays a vital role in our system.

*1: Looking at the actual webpage as you read the beginning of this letter may help you understand it better.

*2: I like using the term "manufacturer" for myself, but for all other mangaka I use the normal character for "producer.

All members who complete the free registration on our site will be able to purchase online manga and read it on the site. You'll notice that our online viewer is designed to look like a ring-bound notebook. The rings in the center have been altered, however, in order to present spread pages in the best manner possible. We are also planning to make other additions to the viewer, such as bookmark (*3) and zoom functionality. In my case, I've set the prices of my manga at 10 yen for old chapters between 20~24 pages, and 30 yen for new chapters. Personally, I categorize new chapters as ones that are being released for the first time online, or are currently being serialized. They can be still be considered "new" until 6 months after they're published in a tankoubon volume.

75 *3: Bookmark - Adding a bookmark with one click allows a user to immediately jump back to a certain page, or return to the book later without losing their place.

On this site, 1 point = 1 yen. Readers can purchase however many points they want, at a minimum of 300 points per purchase due to credit card purchase limits. We will accept credit card and e- money payments for point purchases. To reiterate, one old chapter of mine will cost 10 points, and one new chapter of mine will cost 30 points. Registered mangaka will be able to set their own chapter prices as they wish. We're also considering implementing a feature that allows readers to read sample portions for free. If this is implemented, mangaka will be allowed to freely set how much of a manga they wish to use as a free sample.

After buying a manga/work on the site, readers will be able to view it any number of times they want within a period of one year. Please note, our website is not a "download" but a "viewing service." On our site, readers purchase not "download" rights, but "viewing" rights.

[2] About our site system

We want our site to become a big, free mall where different mangaka can come and set up their own shops. Currently, the site I run, "Sato Shuho on Web," is only one part of that mall. First, we'd like to have all interested mangaka fill out registration with their personal information or their company's information, then scan their own manga and upload the digital data to our servers.

In order to change the paper media into digital data, it is necessary to be in an environment where you can freely use a computer and a scanner. There is no limit on the amount of pages for a registered work, but with the server space in mind, we will set a maximum upload limit for newly-registered users only. (Ex: Several tankoubon volumes) Newly-uploaded manga will be

76 Sato Shuho on Web is open. But is it making money? temporarily placed into our "newly-registrated" corner and released for purchase to all readers. (At this point, it may be a good idea to start advertising the manga on your own site or blog.) After a two-month period in the "newly-registrated" corner, mangaka who've earned a profit from chapter purchases, as well as mangaka who have not made a profit yet but still wish to promote their work will be required to pay "system usage fees."

Paying these fees will allow mangaka to set up their own independent pages on the site. These personal pages will allow journals and bulletin boards to be created, just like the current features on "Sato Shuho on Web." We'll create the basic frames for these sites on our end and allow mangaka to customize them with their own images. Those who are familiar with the various types of blog services that are currently available should be able to imagine what our service will be like. We also plan to create special pages for amateur mangaka as well as mangaka with works that have page counts of equal to one or two tankoubon volumes. After the two-month "newly-registered" term, users will be able to choose whether or not they wish to start paying the system use fees. If paid, users will receive their own personal pages.

[3] Registration and System Fees

As explained in the previous section, registration as a "newly- registered" user is free.

These two "newly-registered" months are completely free. All system maintenance fees that are incurred during this period will be covered by Sato Manga Works. After that period, whether or not a mangaka earns profit or not, they will be given the option of paying "system usage fees" in exchange for gaining their own personal pages. These fees encompass all costs necessary to maintain the site, including viewer usage costs, site maintenance fees, security measures to prevent illegal copying, server fees, and site and server administration costs.

77 I will not take any money from these fees for myself. The points paid by users will be converted back into real money. After a percentage is paid to the point system payment provider, the rest will be sent directly to the mangaka. I'm very sorry to say this, but currently, we have no idea of how much the "system usage fees" will actually cost.

We estimate that in additional to an initial one-time only fee, we will require users to pay anywhere from several thousand yen to a maximum of 60,000 yen per month. We will categorize payments into different levels of service, as "Pro" and "Lite" versions and allow mangaka to choose the level that fits their needs best.

[4] Service Start Date

We are currently busy building the site so that we can begin service within this year. This concludes the system overview. If you have any questions or find something that you feel should be corrected, please contact us. We will strive to answer you as quickly as possible. Thank you very much. Sato Manga Works Ltd. CEO - Sato Shuho

[4] Service Start Date

We are currently busy building the site so that we can begin service within this year. This concludes the system overview. If you have any questions or find something that you feel should be corrected, please contact us. We will strive to answer you as quickly as possible. Thank you very much. Sato Manga Works Ltd. CEO - Sato Shuho

Looking it over now, it seems really slipshod and unpolished, but it was what I brought with me when I went out to garner interest from other mangaka. I was advertising my business now. Over the course of the process, I met with around twenty mangaka, from amateurs to veterans. I can remember myself running around in the midst of summer, overcome with stress and sweat. The

78 Sato Shuho on Web is open. But is it making money? businessman life really didn't suit me. I received a wide range of replies from the mangaka I met with. The initial fees and monthly fees that could rise to a maximum of 60,000 yen were a sticking point for most. They had all contacted me themselves, so they all saw the meaning in what I was trying to do...up to a point. "But will it make money?" was always the question we ended up with. And I still wasn't confident enough to give them all a hearty "Yes!"

79 You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here.

In September of 2009, seven months after "Sato Shuho on Web" opened, the online comic payment service was finally up and running. It was the time of reckoning. Would we make money? At the time, the internet was swirling with criticism toward what I was doing. "There's this idiot mangaka out there shouting things like 'paper culture is dead' and trying to make his own e-book site to sell his manga. Where does he think he'd be if it wasn't for the publishers? Seriously, some people...why would you bite the hand that feeds you?" I also received long e-mails from people who were apparently "editors currently employed at publishing companies," and I was even criticized by fellow mangaka on their blogs. A mangaka friend of mine told me that among the editors, I had become the target of a lot of criticism. In short, "Sato Shuho" had been identified as a security risk by the publishing industry. Not only had I criticized the existing publishing industry system, but I was trying to create an entirely new one. It goes without saying that I had been prepared for this, but I was a little disappointed to see my fellow mangaka attack me as well.

Honestly, watching them try and defend the publishers like that actually made me feel a bit sorry for them. Unable to adapt to the changing times, the publishing industry was like a boat made of mud sinking in the sea, left with no other defense than to assert their vested interests. And there those mangaka were, clinging desperately to the boat and trying to protect it even though the water was already up to their knees. It was a pathetic sight. It's true that mangaka are connected to publishers, but if anything, they're closer to being freelancers. If they don't

80 You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here. produce a product that sells, they're thrown away. It's just another wretched popularity contest. And even if a manga does start to sell, it's only thanks to the publishers and the bookstores. I acknowledge that. And I'm thankful. But I think it's going too far to make myself feel like I'm forever indebted to them. No one should be required to, at the very least. If you truly believe that mangaka should feel indebted to the publishers for making manga sell, then doesn't it also make it their fault if manga doesn't sell? If publishers were going to take responsibility for a manga not selling, then I would understand the logic. But come on. Only telling me that I need to feel obligated after something sells? You call that fair?

Note: Bookstores are disappearing rapidly all over the country! - Due to the publishing slump, Japan's bookstore count has shrunk by 30% in the past 10 years. While supermarkets and suburban, large bookstores increase, smaller bookstores that depended on the locals for business are slowly being pushed into extinction. And now, with the advent of online bookstores and e-books, these local bookstores are going to be faced with even harder times.

So, to answer the whole "Why are you biting the hand that feeds you?" question, I really think that mangaka is looking at publishers and authors from too similar a viewpoint. They're hardly in the same category. Publishers are business partners, and ideally, mangaka and publishers should stand on an equal level. Now, to get back on topic, on the initial day that the online comics payment system was activated, I found myself glaring at the administration screen. If I screwed up here, I would become a laughingstock. I would also betray everyone who was expecting something great from me. Soon, I watched as the first reader purchased an online comic. Then there were two more. And the numbers just kept increasing. A few hours later, our profit had reached 10,000 yen, and in the first day, we made a whopping 100,000. It was a huge success. In that first month, we made over 800,000 yen. After all that time, my effort and faith had begun to bear

81 fruit. If we could take in 800,000 monthly with my contents alone, then how much would 10-20 additional mangaka make us?

With my spirits lifted, I went to meet with the mangaka again that summer to let them know how the site was doing. At this

82 You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here. rate, even if we did have to require 60,000 yen payments from the mangaka each month, they would easily earn enough profit to make up for it. Of course, making the fees as cheap as possible could only help us, so I went to do a little research on the upkeep costs for similar e-book sites. After negotiating with the system development company, I was successful in lowering the monthly system usage fee from 60,000 yen to 25,000 yen. With that, I decided to implement a Lite version of the service for 5000 yen a month as well as a Pro version for 25,000 yen a month. All that was left now was to hurry with the development. The current site title, "Sato Shuho on Web" was too personalized, so I also needed to think of a new name.

For better or worse, the "Sato Shuho on Web" title had made its rounds and taken root in people's heads, so I wanted a similar- sounding title to switch in. I came up with "Manga on Web" (*1). I started work immediately, hoping to open the site within the near. I also hired new web staff. It all looked like it was going smoothly, until we hit yet another pothole. In December, right before we were supposed to open the new site, the development company reported that they were behind schedule on their work. We tried putting our heads together to see if there was any way we could still open the new site within the year, but it seemed to be impossible. I knew that they were working their hardest on developing the new site, so I tried not to be too unreasonable. After all, I owed them a lot for extending their hands to me when I had frustrated myself thinking about how to create my own website. After delivering my apologizes to the necessary entities, we announced that the site would be opening in the new year. However, even after the new year had arrived, we still had yet to see any light at the end of the tunnel. We changed plans once again and aimed for a grand opening in February, but that soon changed to March.

*1: [Manga on Web]

83 During that period, I repeatedly apologized to the mangaka who were involved, but kept feeling like they were gradually starting to lose faith in me. The day we opened the site was supposed to coincide with the arrival of our newly-hired Web staff. However, when that day reared its head, the site was yet unfinished. I received a report from the company stating that opening the site in March would be difficult, but I told them I couldn't wait any longer. "How about an opening date of March 30, then?" he replied. On that day, I made the following tweet: "Today we received new web staff. You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here." I was serious. I was seriously trying to challenge the system we had come to know as "publishing" and change it for good. I also wanted to show the world that mangaka are brave enough to arm themselves with weapons, and that the imminent danger we faced could end up destroying all manga as we knew it.

I know I'm repeating myself, but I love manga like nothing else. I couldn't take the idea of losing it all. And it also pissed me

84 You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here. off that no one else was standing up to do anything. But at the same time, I knew that people saw me as a little boy crying wolf. My powerlessness frustrated me yet again. When the flood came after Noah built his ark, did he breathe a sigh of relief? "At least I won't be a liar now." On March 30, 2010, "Manga on Web" opened. It had more holes in its framework than swiss cheese, but it was open. I had expected over 20 mangaka to join my site when it opened, but in the end, only a few pro mangaka, several semi-pros, and some amateurs ended up joining. Then, the site was plagued by numerous severe bugs. The system developers had been so hurried that they had delivered everything without testing it enough. And so, we found ourselves buried up to our necks in bugs that hadn't been fixed.

85 You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here.

["Manga on Web" is a site where anyone can easily create an online book, release it to the public, and read or purchase other online books. Members can also send messages to each other and write blog posts.]

This is the explanation you'll see if you click on the "For First Time Users" link on the site.

"Manga on Web" is a service that allows members to purchase online books using points (online currency) that can be acquired through credit card or WebMoney payments. Purchased online books can be viewed over and over again during their valid use periods. These online books are compatible with iPhones, (*1), iPads (*2), and iPods (*3), so they can even be viewed when you are not at home. Anyone can upload their own digital data to the site without supervision, which includes photograph collections and novels.

*1: iPhone - Apple's smartphone, the first version of which was published in 2007 (and not released in Japan). It looks stylish and cool, and its design alone created a stir great enough to garner them great success. Total sales of the iPhone in 2011 were over 140,000,000 units. At one time, Apple dominated 40% of all market profit.

*2: iPad - Apple's tablet, which went on sale in May of 2010 in Japan. It looks like a bigger iPhone, with a 9.7 inch display screen that's perfect for reading e-books. In April of 2011, the iPad 2 was released, and in March of 2012, the 3G model went on sale.

"Manga on Web" had a surprisingly quiet opening. Because of the free two-month period after registration, however, we welcomed in a large number of mangaka who began posting their own works. Unlike when I had first released my own works on "Sato Shuho on Web," we experienced no sudden rush of visitors, and not only

86 You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here. that, but my own sales were gradually dropping. Perhaps our charm had worn off a bit. Some of the new mangaka saw rising profits, but most of them only made several thousand yen. Obviously, they wouldn't be able to quit their day jobs, but at that rate, they wouldn't even be making enough to pay the 5000 yen for the Lite version of our service. When the free two-month period ended, I saw many mangaka clean up shop and leave the site for good. We kept getting newcomers, but they many of them simply left when time was up, creating a problematic cycle.

*3: iPod Touch - Part of Apple's portable audio player series, it can connect to WiFi and access the internet in addition to playing music. As a mobile data terminal, it's convenient. It's almost identical to the iPhone in terms of design and function. The biggest difference is that it can't use SIM cards, which means no 3G.

A lot of people around me said "This is just a bunch of mangaka pretending to run an e-book store." The profit from my books kept us from getting into the red, but I couldn't say the same thing for the other mangaka. The critics weren't entirely wrong. "After all that talk about how publishers are siphoning money from mangaka, look! He's collecting money from the other mangaka on his site," they also said. System usage fees are necessary for system upkeep, and I didn't take a single coin of that money for myself. But I guess it didn't look that way from the outside.I tried a lot of different things to help everyone make money, such as starting partnerships with merchandise stores and other e-book sites, but I couldn't see any noteworthy results. Meanwhile, the site's problems kept increasing. We were no longer able to manage the site as smoothly as we had been able to so far, and I even started having trouble with the system development company.

The one thing we all agreed on was that we needed to avoid mangaka leaving due to having to pay the system fees even though they weren't making a profit -- despite the fact that it'd be

87 very difficult for anyone to make real profit in such a short time span. The development company had been managing the servers, so I tried meeting with them and negotiating lower server rates in order to lighten the load the mangaka were feeling. Until the trouble was solved, though, they refused to negotiate with me, so I felt as if I had really hit a dead end. (Currently, all the trouble with the company has been solved, and we're getting along very well.) The site bugs weren't being fixed. Mangaka weren't making money. Any sort of new development was impossible. We were being hit with a triple whammy. So, I thought about what exactly it was that I could do to help things. In the end, I decided to make all chapters of "Give My Regards to Black Jack" free. I figured that causing a stir and getting more people to access the site was top priority.

If my own profit was my top priority, then releasing all my chapters for free would have been nothing more than a loss of profit. In terms of keeping the site alive, though, I believed that this was the only thing I could do. This wasn't the sort of huge corporation that could just keep spending money on advertisements. The response I got from risking the fate of my site like this was immense. We immediately got articles on several news sites, giving us an explosive boost in page views and crashing our servers again. This time, not only could visitors no longer view the site, but we couldn't even log into the administration site, so we started getting a lot of complaints from the other mangaka, and some even left because of how long it took us to fix everything. I thought I had been acting for the sake of the site, but again, most people came to see it as nothing more than another personal stunt. And once again, the site had fallen into a crisis. I was cornered by complaints from both visitors to the site and the other mangaka. No matter what I ended up saying, it only seemed to sound like a cheap excuse.

88 You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here. But it wasn't all bad. I had definitely increased the site's notoriety, and the sales for the rest of my manga skyrocketed. For the first time, I earned a million yen of profit in one month. Other mangaka's profit doubled, and in some cases even tripled. My free chapters of Give My Regards to Black Jack were viewed over 5 million times. My idea of abandoning profit had actually led me to greater profit. One mangaka said to me: "What you're doing right now is fighting a war. When something new starts, you should be happy and excited about it. There's no author out there who'd willingly take part in a bloody war like this. Why don't you take it easy on yourself for once?" His words made me think. It was true, not a single one of the mangaka on the site was helping to finance it. In that regard, maybe there really was no one taking part in my war but me. Still, I believed that the mangaka on my site were all doing their part to cut a new path for the future of manga.

Note: Comics on the e-book market - In 2002, the e-book market was only worth a mere 10,000,000,000 yen. Since then, it's been rapidly expanding, and in 2009 it was worth 5,740,000,000,000,000 yen. However, 75% of that was dominated by comics aimed for cell phones. Now that e-book readers like the iPad and Kindle are evolving, we can expect another great expansion in the market. The true age of the e-book is about to begin.

Eventually, I came up with an answer for him. "Everyone's covered in blood when they're first born." After this, the trouble with the system development company dissipated, and development continued. The free two-month period was done away with, and the Pro and Lite version plans were changed into a payment-based plan and a completely free membership plan. People who only had a few uploads were now able to stay as free members for as long as they liked, while other users could now upload as much as they wanted for a much more affordable price of 300 yen a month.

89 After these changes, we gradually saw more and more mangaka join our site. The unfortunate cycle of mangaka coming and leaving finally came to an end, and we succeeded in increasing both our page view and member counts. At long last, the site was up and running.

We strengthened our servers so that they were able to handle high levels of access, and made a lot of other enhancements to deal with various situations. We continued renewing the site, and currently, Manga on Web boasts over 100 pro and amateur mangaka members, and approximately 20,000 normal members. We even started having events on our site, for example, the "Manuscript Prize," (*4) which we started in 2011. We evolve daily, and recently, full purchasing and downloading of various works has become possible. Managing the site, however, is as difficult as it's always been. It may still be a small site in the process of truly maturing. Judging by what's happening so far, "Manga on Web" still hasn't risen to something capable of replacing paper publishing. The publishing industry may be shrinking, but it still lives on, and e-books haven't completely conquered it. I believe that I succeeded in making a small change, though. And my experiment is continuing. No, that's incorrect. This experiment isn't mine anymore...it's a shared entity.

*4: Manuscript Prize - A manga contest I started on Manga on Web. We collect incomplete, original manuscripts and give 500,000 yen to the winner. The runner-ups get 300,000, and honorable mentions get 100,000.

I may no longer possess the right to choose whether or not this will continue.

90 You may laugh, but I'm really trying to change the world here. Epilogue

It was always my dream to become a mangaka. However, the job of being mangaka proved to be too harsh a climate for me. The unreasonable nature of the manga industry frustrated me beyond belief, and pushed me so far that I started up my own e- book site. This book is a chronicle of that experience.

Currently, Manga on Web proudly stands comparatively high on the list of e-book sites where users can make contributions. Are we making a profit? It all depends on what we have left after paying all the management costs. We aren't making big money. When I was in the process of writing this book, Kodansha infringed on my copyrights in regards to "Give My Regards to Black Jack." Yes, that's right. Of all things, the original publisher of "Give My Regards to Black Jack," Kodansha, entrusted secondary use rights to a third party without my permission. I dealt with this matter with Kodansha in 2011, and they ended up regretting it. I reported about the details on the internet, so if you're interested in knowing more about this issue, please check it out here: (http://mangaonweb.com/creatorDiarypage.do?cn=1&dn=32797)

A publisher's losses and an author's losses are not necessarily equal. A publisher is an independent business entity, so obviously they must value their own profit over the author's profit. However, if things take a turn for the worse, this can sometimes end up in infringing on authors' rights. It's a given that the publishing industry is going to deteriorate more and more from here on out. The rise of the e-book industry also seems to be a certainty now. As the balance of power changes further and further in favor of e-books, I imagine we'll only see more and more of these infringements from publishing companies. The idea of "publishing" itself, which is directly connected to the release of paper books, is really an entirely different beast than digital business.

91 When authors sign publishing contracts with publishers, they grant publishers monopolies on publishing rights...when it comes to paper books, at least. Contracts for e-books and e-publishing are completely different. And now, publishers are trying to monopolize digital business as well, of course. With digital manga, copyrights only belong to the author, so they can sign all sorts of different contracts and basically do as they please. Publishers don't like this. There's profit to be made, yet they can't take advantage of it.

And so, publishers are trying to assert their "neighboring rights," or insisting on conditions in new publishing contracts that give them total monopolies over all digital content. They're trying everything they can to monopolize digital rights. "Unless you grant us digital rights, we cannot protect your rights or enact measures against piracy" is what their official stance is. And there's some truth to that. But it's also true that publishers would never do anything unless there was something in it for them. When only paper media existed, authors had no choice but to join hands with publishers, so maybe in a way, it was relieving to be able to entrust everything to a single company. Now that we're in the digital age, though, and the internet is here, authors can move themselves. We're in a period now where authors need to make many choices, where a higher level of literacy is required of them. For me, publishing is merely one way to get my works out to the world. I want to circulate them through paper media, but also through digital data, and then through film and TV dramas. I'm merely creating a partnership with publishers in order to get my work out to people.

Manga on Web now plays an important part in my presence on the internet. I've gotten many job offers through the site, as well. As an author, I'm being protected by no one. I'm floating alone in a sea of entertainment. The freedom I acquired is the freedom of the wild frontier. Being able to walk anywhere you want to isn't really as free as you might think. Wandering around without

92 Epilogue a plan will only lead to exhaustion. As a manager of the site, I need to protect the people who've taken part in it. I have no freedom there, and the responsibility I bear is great. I think about it sometimes. "Being a caged bird and being free, which is truly better?" In the end, though, I know I'd still rather walk on my own two feet. -March 2012. Sato Shuho

93 Credits

About the Author

Sato Shuho

Born December 8, 1973 in Hokkaido. In 1998 he made his debut with "Congratulations!" in Weekly Young Sunday (Shogakukan). His hit series, "Umizaru," (Shogakukan) and "Give My Regards to Black Jack" (Kodansha) have been made into TV dramas and films. "Give My Regards to Black Jack" won him the 6th Japan Media Arts Manga Excellence Prize.

94 Credits