Jan Mitsuko Cash

Obviously now! Come visit me >:D

Somtimes it's just timing rather than our own actions or abilities. You've gone viral before for your manga! You won an award for your writing (translation counts)! That's proof you can do it!
Maybe it's the trends or a matter of finding the right magazine/editor, but people are rooting for you!

漫画家の皆さん！「英語圏に出版されたい〜！海外のイベントに参加したい〜！」と思ったことないですか？？それについてちょっとお話ししますので、ご興味のある方ぜひRPのリンクでご登録ください！！
（漫画家じゃなくてもご参加できますよ！）

A pigeon wearing Ketter's beanie and scarf holding an ICE OUT sign with a golden halo behind his head stands proud over a snowy / tear gassy blue background. Painted in acrylic

Today's bonus pigeon is 70 years old and he's fucking angry (and he's fucking right).

Greg Ketter of DreamHaven Books in the Twin Cities 💛

Black and white one not taken by me, but I think those are pigeons in Tokyo from 50+ years ago

I was prepared for this moment!!

[Kodama] Yuzuko Hoshimi's MAGICA Volume 1 pre-orders are up at
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/MAGICA-Vol-1-Yuzuko-Hoshimi/dp/1966523173
B&N https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/magica-vol1-yuzuko-hoshimi/1148021204
BAM! https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Magica/Yuzuko-Hoshimi/9781966523178

Our next Kanto Manga Loc (and more!) meetup will be on November 12!

If you are in the area and would like to attend, please let me know. Also, feel free to let me know if you’d like to attend one in the future!

I haven't been sitting on it long, but Cocoon's announcement is so exciting! I think it's the first time a publisher has licensed something based on my suggestion
With the anime, someone would have probably gotten it, but maybe not as quickly and maybe not Viz

My mom's side is Okinawan, so this one has a place very near and dear to my heart

(PAID) - We need a dialogue editor who is fluent in Japanese.
Limited series, 8 episodes.

Donate to Matt's Journey: Healing and Comics, organized by Matthew Haasch With your support, I can focus on healing from lymphoma while continu… Matthew Haasch needs your support for Donate to Matt's Journey: Healing and Comics

Shocked and saddened to hear that Matt Haasch, founder of indie manga publishing company @starfruitbooks.bsky.social has passed away. His gofundme campaign for his medical and other expenses is still up - contribute if you can. www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-...

editor friends, my job is hiring an Editor - Fiction & Non-Fiction: www.viz.com/company-jobs...

先生頑張って！応援してます！！

Screenshot of the VIZ manga app. At the top is artwork of a young woman and man standing in front of a Japanese-style house. Beneath the artwork is the text: “HIRAYASUMI Story and Art by Keith Shinzo Sometimes slowing down is the best way to move forward” Beneath that are a list of chapters starting from chapter 1

Vols 1-5 of Hirayasumi by Keigo Shinzo are available now in the VIZ app! It’s such a lovely story, and I wound up reading all 44 chapters in one sitting.

Translation by @jmitsu.bsky.social
Lettering by Elena Diaz

I'm not sure how things work in Japan--and even my US knowledge is very limited--but teaching might work differently
We're also still allowed to form organizations, but we just don't have protections like full-time employees, so there are some things we can't do

Dear manga publishers, we don’t want your AI translations VIZ Media quietly added an AI-translated manga to their app and hoped no one would notice. We did and want none of it.

VIZ Media quietly added an AI-translated manga to their app and hoped no one would notice. We did.

Manga deserves better than cheap, soulless automation. This is a betrayal of translators, fans, and the art form.

We don't want your AI translations!

We're freelancers. Legally, we cannot unionize

"Under U.S. antitrust laws, freelancers organizing to negotiate higher pay could be viewed as engaging in “price-fixing” since they’re considered individual businesses rather than employees of a single organization."
www.themuse.com/advice/can-f...

Large language models are incapable of having respect for an artist. And the people choosing to use them for the localization of art hold an active disdain for that art and the people they supposedly want to appreciate that art.

Lettering pays poorly. I work a full-time office job to support my passion of lettering manga. I don't dislike AI localization because I see it as a threat to my livelihood, I dislike it because it is profane. An essential aspect of the job is respecting the work of the artist and writer.

y'know, I've been a die-hard supporter of the Shonen Jump app, and lately the Viz app

but this is literally Step One to publishers strongarming licensors to save a couple bucks on translators and letterers

contact Viz... let 'em know

I actually care about the quality of the products I pay for

anyone who has a viz sub they pay for, I totally suggest leaving a comment about this www.viz.com/company-cont...

NFTs (Neat Font Tricks)...AI (Adobe Illustrator, obviously)...VC (voice chat, where we cry together)

I'm going to start a lettering consultancy agency and all it will say is "don't use comic sans, anime ace, serif fonts, or system fonts"

"also don't left justify text"

I'll personally donate $40 so you can buy a great Blambot font if you don't want to spend $130 on Wild Words!

Yup! They're one of the only ones. JNC also does raises based on amount of work translated for them. Other publishers seem to only do rate adjustments across the board for inflation, if they adjust them at all

Yen has been giving me yearly raises, pretty much, so good on them, but yeah, the dollar doesn't stretch as far, so it's really stagnant.

and don't get me started on how many thousands of dollars I've lost over the years because of the yen-dollar exchange rate... 😃

Anecdotally, letterers are usually paid close to translator rates for styles that require less retouch, then rates should go up from there based on the amount of work asked for
But it'd be better to ask professional letterers like @sara.pizza , since I don't work as a letterer

Yup. I've gotten a rate increase here and there but it's nowhere close to cover cost of living increases. So by stagnation, it really just means you're making less money. The $800 I was making on books in 2017 wouldn't go nearly as far today, and I live in relatively cheap North Carolina.

Yeah, I almost always ask first now before I'll do a test. I've still tested with places paying below market but usually they're new publishers just starting out, and sometimes they reconsider their rates with enough feedback from freelancers

Oof! I hope you can!! I think all the major print publishers pay $5 or above now, and a handful of places also raised rates to $6 a few years ago when we had that big inflation spike
There are a few places that pay sub-$1000/vol. but that's usually because they're calculating from a page rate