Examining Digital Manga Guild

Well folks, I’ve decided to go ahead and share my thoughts about Digital Manga Publisher’s Digital Manga Guild.

Quick background information, Digital Manga Publisher originally asked the public about the idea of having scanlators legitimately work on mangas for a royalty during the time when the US government and the publishing industry at large were starting to take a more “aggressive” attack on illegal scanlations.

Anyway, I actually heard about this from the About Mangaspotlight Blog and decided to give it a shot. I applied for the editor and typesetter position back in November. It took only one day for me to complete both tests; however, due to technical difficulties on their part, I had to try five times to upload both files.

Three months later, I received a message saying that I passed both tests and that my next task was to go onto their forums and find a group. I thought “okay, this should be easy. All I have to do is find a translator and typesetter. That shouldn’t be a problem, right?” I was horribly wrong. As I soon found out, there were more editors and typesetters than translators, supporting the idea that the translators held the true power. I mean, after all, a typesetter or editor lack the capability to translate the Japanese texts. Fortunately, I found a four person group and quickly proved to be a reliable individual.

At the moment, there is little action going on at the forum now because they’re still ironing out the details regarding publishers, tax issues, and lack of translators. There are some teleconferences that will happen this week so that members can eagerly ask their questions. Other than that, from what people have been telling me, most are losing interest in the movement. Despite the lack of people now on the forums, I know full well that I intend to stick it out.