Digital Manga to Host Official Scanlations

Digital Manga Publishing (DMP) President and CEO Hikaru Sasahara has informed Anime News Network of his company’s plan to launch commercial distribution of officially sanctioned fan translated manga. The program will tentatively launch with as many as “several thousand” manga titles – most of them in the yaoi genre – translated by amateur anime fans with permission from legal Japanese copyright owners & publishers. Digital Manga will host the scanlations online and split revenue with the Japanese publishers. Fan translators will be credited and may possibly receive a percentage of sales revenue. Tentatively, scanlations will premiere online and may expand to television broadcast, advertising, and print. DMP’s plan has been in development for over a year, and, according to Sasahara, “a few” Japanese copyright owners have tentatively agreed to accept the plan.

Domestic digital distributor Manganovel launched in October 2007 with this business model, and ceased operations in February 2009. The MangaHelpers fan site has announced plans to evolve itself into the commercial digital manga distribution platform OpenManga.