How Many Pages Does Manga Artist Draw

Ink, Sweat, and Tears: How Much Does a Manga Creative person Earn?

A Student in Human Academy'due south Manga Program

Ane of the more than difficult questions to answer virtually whatever manufacture is the question of income. The short (and probably more than authentic) answer is almost always "it depends," but that isn't really helpful to anyone.

Making the issue all the more complex is the problem of mean vs. median income. A very pocket-sized number of very successful people making a lot of money can easily make the average income wait to be much higher than what the majority of people actually earn.

That said, there are yet some basic things that could be said most how much money a manga artist can generally be expected to make, and information technology'south definitely worth taking a look into!

A await into the life of a manga artist

When I was younger, I always assumed that any fourth dimension you saw someone's work getting published — exist it a movie, album, book, or comic — they must be wildly successful. I'grand pretty certain I'one thousand not the only person who came to this conclusion, either.

As I got older, moved to Nihon, and actually got to know a few published manga artists, I was quite surprised to learn that this isn't exactly the example.

As it turns out, the money that a manga creative person can expect to earn from drawing the manga itself is really pretty depression.

Most manga is initially published in a weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly magazine, the top-5 most pop of which beingness (numbers in parentheses existence the number of issues printed in 2015):

Weekly Shonen Jump (2,422,500)
Weekly Shonen Magazine (1,156,059)
CoroCoro Comic (1,050,000)
Weekly Young Japan (577,273)
Monthly Shonen Magazine (575,376)

While information technology's pretty unlikely for a newcomer to the manga manufacture to become published in one of these big name magazines, information technology wouldn't really matter besides much since rates are about the aforementioned across the manufacture.

In fact, the rates don't even change much for famous manufacture veterans, though they of course have other avenues of income, equally nosotros'll discuss later.

Manuscript income (原稿料; Genkouryou)

A manga creative person is mostly paid betwixt ¥3,000–8,000 (avg. ¥5,500) per manuscript folio, and a typical story carried in a weekly or monthly magazine is around 20 pages each.

There may exist additional payments made for encompass images, sketches that appear throughout the magazine, or other images to exist used in advertising, simply generally this is the limit of direct income from the serialization of the manga.

So crude annual income in the case of a weekly and monthly mag would exist:

Published weekly: (¥5,500 × xx) × 48 = ¥5,280,000 [~ $51,920]
Published monthly: (¥5,500 × twenty) × 12 = ¥1,320,000 [~ $12,980]

Information technology'due south besides worth noting, though, that more successful manga artists (and artists working on short deadlines, such as those publishing weekly) generally hire one or more than assistants to help out with backgrounds, text cleanup, and other tasks.

These positions are paid for out-of-pocket by the artists and tin directly affect their lesser line. The average cost for an assistant is ¥180,000 per month, per assistant.

A mutual scene in Japanese convenience stores

Compiled book royalties (単行本の印税; Tankoubon no Inzei)

Assuming that the manga goes well and a decision is made to compile it in a volume, the manga creative person can expect to make royalties off of the published books.

This is really where the majority of an average manga artists' income comes from.

In most cases, the artist is entitled to 8–x% of the pre-tax price of all of the printed copies of the book for the get-go run . From the second run and on, the artist is nevertheless entitled to royalties only for the number of volumes actually sold.

Using the real-life example of an acquaintance of mine, the publisher opted to do an initial run of 30,000 volumes to be sold at a MSRP of ¥429. Assuming at that place is no 2nd printing, he could await to make:

Royalties per book: (¥429 × xxx,000) × 9% = ¥1,158,300 [~ $11,390]

This number can easily change quite a fleck, though, depending on how many volumes are printed, whether there is a second (or fifty-fifty third) run, and how many books are actually published in a given year.

Information technology's not uncommon to release two or more volumes per year if the manga had enough of a head start in magazines.

Anime royalties (著作権使用料; Chosakuken Shiyouryou)

The best information I could discover on how much money a rights-holder (in this case, the manga artist) tin expect to make from having their series turned into an anime was approximately ¥150,000–200,000 per 30-minute episode produced.

Apparently live action remakes of a manga pay at much lower rates, about likely do to the degree that the series is by and large reworked with regards to graphic symbol designs and stories in social club to make them fit improve into the real world.

Assuming that the anime is ultimately released on DVD, the rights-holder tin can expect to make around 0.five% to 1% of the sale price of each DVD sold.

Sketch by Dragon Brawl'due south Akira Toriyama

In summary

Though in that location's manifestly a lot more than to factor in about how much a given manga creative person earns depending on how well known they are and what other products their piece of work is fabricated into, it's interesting to take a wait into what an upcoming manga artist tin can expect to make, bold their story and characters take off.

Equally for how much the upper echelons of the manga industry make, information technology seems that the heaven's the limits with reported incomes upwards into the hundreds-of-millions in yen for the artists behind such titles like 1 Piece (~¥three.1 billion), Dragon Ball (~¥one.5 billion), and Attack on Titan (~¥1.3 billion).

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