Shounen Sunday artist has no money
Wakaki Tamiki, author of Sekesshou Albatross which ran on Shounen Sunday for a year and also has an upcoming new serialization to start in the next issue of Shounen Sunday. However, he writes on his blog that he’s extremely low on money now, with less than 10,000 yen (US$100) in his bank account.
He would have no money to pay the utilities bills, but he managed to get an advance from Shounen Sunday for the manga that’s starting serialization in the next issue.
He also mentions that they haven’t increased the amount he gets paid per page despite having been promised that he’ll get more, and that he has never gotten a raise in the amount he gets paid per page after having been around for 9 years.
He says that when he compares the amount that he gets per page as compared to his other friends that also draw manga in other magazines, they get several thousand more yen per page as compared to him.
Though, it should be noted that mangaka are seldomly able to live off the amount that they get from the magazine and they only really get a substantial amount from tankoubon sales. I always thought the guys that have had a reasonably long serialization in the top selling magazines don’t run into financial problems like this, I thought wrong.
April 6th, 2008 at 5:04 am
This world isn’t a rosy world.
Gues we always have gotta save up for a rainy day.
April 6th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
10000 yen is just enough for 1 week
how rich of him
April 6th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
got less then 10$ myself, and that will cover food for another 3 weeks, :P he’s far from the only poor guy out there.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I hope all those cartoon artists end up selling spa pamphlets at the mall lol
like a certain chick I know that thought making anime posters would feed her. hahaha
April 7th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Keep in mind that many manga artists, especially ones working in weekly anthlogies, run a small studio and employ other artists to keep their schedule, working insane hours. Divide that by three, and it’s about 3000 yen each, about 300 US to live on/week, and given how expensive Tokyo is to live in [given he's an SSunday artist, I imagine it's a necessity for all the meetings with editors and such], they’re probably living from paycheck to paycheck
So I guess the lesson is - BUY PEOPLES STUFF. If they make comics and you like them, support them. Artist’s get royalties from translated releases too, so give a comic artist a better living today!
April 7th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Now isn’t this kind of sad. It’s possible that his series is not popular enough to hold on a strong following. It’s a dog eat dog world in weeklies. It can be cruel if you can’t make it big. *sigh* That’s sad.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Someone should tell them also to like, do work for Tokyopop or something, since they actually DO make contracts with artists who are based abroad.