Thread: Mangaka Salary
View Single Post
(#13 (permalink))
Old
ILOVEJAPAN (Offline)
JF Old Timer
 
Posts: 362
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: japan (i wish)
03-27-2008, 03:37 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by typing View Post
Oh yea,
The Otaku market is worth about 1.7 billion dollers in Japan alone, if you're a top artists you're looking at cornering in 10-20% of that all to yourself (Maybe even more) that about $340,000,000 every year, as a contract artist of your own work you'll be getting contracts fo 50% royalties and still a few hundred thousand dollers for work.
So someone like Rumiko Takahashi, who is not only getting the Japan market but the north american one as well probably earns somewhere around 10 million every year. (I do believe she get's taxed about a million dollers every year so that looks about right)


However it's getting popular that's the hard part...
I mean consider the numbers, how many people live in Japan? 127,708,050 is the number I've found.
let's say 0.1% want to become comic book artists.
thats 127,708 people.
Now take into account America
33,218,878 (canada)
281,421,906 (USA)
lets assume because comic popularity here isn't the same as in Japan and it's even harder to get into the market that only 0.01% want to become comic artists. thats 31,464.

so thats, north america and Japan alone, 159,172 people trying to make millions in comic books.

Top north american comics? Marvel and DC (X-men, Spiderman, Batman, Superman)
Japan has more top comics, enough so there are schools that are run just for aspireing manga-ka's, we assume that there are 100 popular titles every year, that no artists get repeat popularity (I mean Akira had Dr. Slump, all the dragon balls and games associated, Rumiko had Ranma, Inuyasha and a bunch of others and the animation team that does the current starlet "Haruhi Suzuyama" is also responsable for another big title "Lucky Star" so 100 top NEW artists, since many artists do two or three different comics in a month. The comic market here is FLOODED, when you have an 8 story building and every floor is Manga which changes stock on a monthly basis, you can only imagine the shelf life something that isn't SUPER POPULAR is.)
you're looking at about a .06% chance of becoming a millionare.

Less so if you're hoping to make it in Japan since you are fighting a language, cultural relevence (Things which are normal to you may not make sense to a Japanese person) and general racism.
(I've yet to hear of a Gaijin manga-ka in Japan, you can't even find a "Calvin and Hobbs" here)

Wow! you really know what you're talking about! I'm impressed. Ok, that all makes sence. Just one question:

You said the otaku market in Japan is 1.7 billion in Japan...when you say otaku market are you talking manga, anime, games, toys, or all of the above? The last I heard the manga market alone was around 4.5 billion, which was actually down from about 5.5 billion(ish?) if it's at 1.7 billion that's a huge decline. This is not looking good for the manga market...?
Reply With Quote