Mangaka Salary

[typing]

Originally Posted by DrunkenShinobi

and how mach can Mangaka earn if his manga develop to anime, video games
etc...?


and can you add an example like Akira Toriyama? ^^"

Ah, that's a different set of skates there, once you do get popular and start to publish depending on the popularity of your publishings (especially depedning on what market you aim to)

Akira Toriyama was pretty lucky in his (?) career, he had one unpublished work, three one shots and then a big hit with "Dr. Slump" afterward hitting another headliner with DragoneBall which is what MADE Shounen Jump popular in the first place.

So he got popular by around the age of 25 or so. Enough so that even though he wanted to end Dragon Ball, his editors wouldn't let him do it for years (Probably why DBZ and DBGT while good, is just alot of the same stuff over and over again, especially in DBGT where Akira didn't have much to do with it other then overseeing the project)

He's selling in the millions of billions of copies, has overseen video games, has his character licenced in Japan and America and so fourth, assuming he has a kick ass contract he's got to be rolling in cash now.

Assuming they *Rude term*'ed him on the contract he's got a decent living, and is ruing his lawyers.

[typing]

Originally Posted by ILOVEJAPAN

You must be missing something typing...Not that I know anything about this subject, but I do know that really popular manga artists have become extremley rich and made millions. Take Rumiko Takahashi for example. She's what? A multi-millionair? She's one of the richest women in Japan. Infact, I thought I read somwhere that she has waverd in and out of being the richest woman. There are other examples of millionair manga-ka like her (Kazuo Umezu being one) so popularity does have to factor in somwhere. I assume the companies reallypopular artists work uder must pay them much higher.

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)

[ILOVEJAPAN]

Originally Posted by typing

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...?

[Shiningmonkey]

Well, if I'm not that successful in the manga market (I'm pretty confident in my ability even though I have yet to upload some pics) I will always have my fallback into the video game market. Plus, me and my friend are working in conjunction; we both have programming experience. Overall, my career is pretty much set for now.

[MMM]

Originally Posted by ILOVEJAPAN

You must be missing something typing...Not that I know anything about this subject, but I do know that really popular manga artists have become extremley rich and made millions. Take Rumiko Takahashi for example. She's what? A multi-millionair? She's one of the richest women in Japan. Infact, I thought I read somwhere that she has waverd in and out of being the richest woman. There are other examples of millionair manga-ka like her (Kazuo Umezu being one) so popularity does have to factor in somwhere. I assume the companies reallypopular artists work uder must pay them much higher.

It's like the music business. For every success story there are hundreds of not thousands of those that don't find success.

[XrachelleX]

it really depends on how well your book is selling. because i think that over in japan, the publishers get part of that money that you get from just one book but all.

[MMM]

Originally Posted by XrachelleX

it really depends on how well your book is selling. because i think that over in japan, the publishers get part of that money that you get from just one book but all.

Sure, just like any other business. I assume the publisher gets most of the money from any book sales. As a translator, I have gotten back end points for work from the publisher (0.1%-0.5% of cover price after a certain number of sales) but usually it doesn't sell enough to actually see that money.

[typing]

Originally Posted by ILOVEJAPAN

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...?

I just read the 1.7 from an article talking about an otaku english school so I don't know how accurate that is.

Mine is just an estimate from Japan, does yours count for the world market or just Japan? (And yea it counts for everything)

[typing]

Originally Posted by MMM

It's like the music business. For every success story there are hundreds of not thousands of those that don't find success.

And for each one of those failures, there is a Willium Hung mocking them mercilecly by becoming famous for being a twit.

[ILOVEJAPAN]

Acording to this article the manga market had always been above 500 billion yen in Japan, until in 2006 it dropped into the 400 bilionyen range. 2006 Japanese Manga Market Drops Below 500 Billion Yen | ComiPress

That must have been what I was thinking of. I keep forgeting that the yen and the dollar have diffrent values.

So about how much would that be in dollars?