Manganovel and Toshiba have launched Manganovel, a site which serves as a distribution channel for Japanese manga publishers and allows readers to post their own translations of the manga comics for sale. The approach is intended to give international English speakers access to manga earlier than normal and at the price paid by Japanese. It uses the work of “reader-translators”, fans which translate manga which is often only published in Japanese. The reader-translator can send their work back to Manganovel and price it as free or as two percent of the price of the manga (the manga goes for $4-5), and people who buy the translations can give feedback on how good it is. The translators get half the sale price of the translation.

No-one is likely to get rich translating the manga, but it’s something reader-translators tend to do anyway for the love of the genre, and the Japanese publishers get the advantage of selling to a much larger international market without having to fork out for professional translators. Some languages are not available for translation for particular comics. Many Japanese publishers have previously ignored unauthorised translations of their work (technically copyright infringement) because they could see it grew the market rather than taking their customers.