OneManga shutting down

[Ayiekie]

No, because I'm well and truly hooked.  But the question is, would the publisher have gotten my money without the scanlations' existence?  Nope.  I never would have bothered looking at it on the shelf (because I rarely check out manga on the shelf).  But because I got a chance to get involved in the story via the fansites, I've ended up spending no less than $250 so far on the extant volumes, and plan to continue buying.  And if the publisher can't work out the ROI there, well, that's their problem.

Once again, you post your anecdotal evidence like you think it means something. You spent $250, whee! That means what, precisely? The total profit the company got from that probably couldn't pay a translator for a single day's work. You are utterly insignificant on the scale of money that even the modestly-sized anime/manga companies function at. Your experience doesn't mean anything. Only the experience of the overall population of manga fans is relevant. You are not Joe Everyman. You are not the norm. Your anecdotal evidence is worthless. Literally every single anime fan I have ever met has downloaded stuff they could have bought and then not bought it, including several on this forum. I don't bring this up as some sort of debate masterstroke because it does not matter because that doesn't prove anything about how the entire market works.
So could you and every other piracy apologist stop bringing up "B-b-but I bought X because of piracy and without it I'd never spend any of my money on anime or manga ever!" as if I or any publisher is supposed to care? It just shows your ignorance of economics, statistics and basic logic, which does not speak well for your ability to judge how piracy affects the market.

Because I don't want to wait a year or more when I can have the latest stuff now.  I'll gladly pay for it -- and read it again -- when it gets to North America, but I want to know now how they get out of the Lotus Eater Machine, for example.  If I have to, I'll wait, but if I have the option, I'll take it.  The publisher gets my money either way.

Did you seriously just argue that you have some moral justification to illegally take a product against the wishes of its creators and legal license holders because you want it?
Well, gee, Bob, maybe I might respond to this devastating argument with the daring concept that your desiring something doesn't make it your god-given right? Not that I actually have an issue with people who download stuff and then always buy it, only with the concept that most people do this (they don't) or that the existence of pirated products is good for the industry (this is absolutely untrue for fansubs and very likely untrue for scanlations). But seriously, how exactly can you end up sitting there arguing seriously that "I want it!" is a justification for taking it, and still think you're on a side with any moral high ground?

How convenient that I've lost my job and I can now devote my all time to learning one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to acquire, so that I may have the moral high ground with which to enjoy my mass-produced foreign pop culture.
Sorry, Epsilon, but you make it sound like it's just a quick afternoon's study and a little effort later that evening and Shazam! Instant mastery.  No.  I know people who've got degrees in Japanese who struggle with some of the stuff in manga.  Remember that we're talking about entertainment here.  Once it becomes a chore, it stops being entertainment.

And here's the same argument again. Bob, if you're not willing to put effort into it, why do you deserve to have it, exactly?
And by the by, manga is almost entirely written for children. Your people who have degrees in Japanese that struggle with reading it are less fluent than Japanese children, which says more about them than it does about manga. To be broadly fair, I suppose they might be having trouble with slang, colloquialisms, or archaisms (all of which are frequent in manga), but all of those are legitimate parts of understanding a language.

What a curiously arrogant question.  Would I have the right to follow it immediately if I were borrowing a copy from a library?  I mean, it's functionally the same -- one entity buys a single copy and makes it available to a theoretically unlimited number of other readers.  (And before you object that the two are not the same, allow me to point out that there are -- admittedly extreme -- elements in the publishing industry who, following the model of the RIAA, gripe audibly that lending libraries are piracy, pure and simple, and should be somehow regulated or controlled so as to prevent/recover lost revenue.)

I know "strawman" is overused in internet debates, and yet that is still such a blatant strawman - you quite literally put someone else's argument in his mouth - that it's hard not to point out.
Libraries are not Onemanga.com, either legally or in the eyes of any sensible person. To note just two pretty major differences - libraries buy the books they have (often in quantities and/or at a premium), and people who borrow copies of books from a library don't get to keep them forever. Your bringing that up is disingenuous and intellectually dishonest.

It's a curious thing... in large quantities anecdotal evidence becomes somehow ennobled and becomes marketing data...

Yes, Bob. In large quantities, showing the differing experiences of large quantities of people. I understand this, which is why I don't quote my anecdotal experiences as some sort of evidence in a debate about the economic impact of scanlations.

You will, of course, have to find honest and verified statistics about losses first... as multiple threads (with linked references) over in Politics have shown in the past, just about every financial claim about the "cost" of piracy has turned out to be at the very least grossly exaggerated and at worst completely fabricated by industries that have a vested interest in a two-hundred-year-old distribution system.

That is because the vast majority of those threads include the usual self-satisfied intellectually dishonest bullshit that is rampant in online piracy discussions. The arguments in this thread are an excellent example of that, being as they are completely identical to arguments used to support fansubs, software and music piracy. And really, mentioning the industries' vested interest but not the internet crowd's vested interest in continuing to be able to take free stuff whenever they want is typical of that as well. Not to mention the fact that, of course, the industries opinions are based on their economic self-interest and well-being (rather than their desire to get free stuff), and often formulated by people who are actually educated in things like statistics and economic theory that Joe Internet knows jack about.
It is demonstrable that software sales do suffer because of piracy. The world's largest market is unequivocal on that fact. The best argument anybody has come up with that scanlations do not harm sales of manga is that an extremely limited selection of sci-fi books had an uptick of paperback sales due to being released for free online. You and others ignore the fact a billion people averaged out show an overwhelming predisposition to replace legitimate sales with pirated material (except, very notably, in the case of MMOs where this is not possible), but leap on the Baen Free Library as if it's the Holy Grail. I suggest that shows your considerable intellectual bias in the matter. Moreover, the piece of evidence, while interesting, is hardly conclusive of anything.
1) Manga and books are not identical. Manga takes a lot less long to read and is more visually oriented than novels; it is therefore more easily replaced by a digitised equivalent. Many - I would say most but can't prove that off-hand except by pointing to the Kindle as obviously filling an existing need - people do not like reading books from a computer screen, but I see no evidence of a similar large-scale aversion to manga, even given that I count myself as a person who actually dislikes reading manga online (which is why I'm not following Rin-ne). Most fans seem to prefer a dead-tree version but have no real objections to reading manga online; this is absolutely not the case with novels. Therefore, in the most important and relevant area (does the pirated copy replace a legitimate copy?), the comparison falls completely flat.
2) The example given is of an extremely limited number of sci-fi novels. I have actually no problem with acknowledging that could increase sales (due to the above), but that is hardly a demonstration of what would happen even on a large scale for the book market, let alone the rather different manga market.
To convince me that scanlations are overall helpful for the industry - and I'm more open to that than you probably think, in the sense that I think there is a slight possibility that a Baen Free Library type system could actually benefit manga sales, whereas anime, software and music very demonstrably would only be hurt by it in the large scale - you actually should be trying to present evidence that manga is more like books (people do not by and large consider the digitised version a substitute for a legitimate version) than software, music or anime (the digitised version is basically equivalent to a legitimate version for most people). But while I would agree there is SOME effect of that sort (most people would consider a real manga a qualitative improvement over a scanlation), I don't see any reason to believe there is any significant real aversion to reading online as there is for books. I see this in your own arguments - sure, you prefer a real copy, but you have so little problem with scanlations that you continue reading dozens of chapters ahead rather than wait for the real copy to come out. Of course, that too is anecdotal! However, in the overall anime community I'd say the same opinion prevails, and it is true on a pure numbers game that a hell of a lot more people read scanlations than buy the product (further proving that scanlations are desirable as an entity unto themselves, whereas there is not nearly as large a community for pirated novels).

And let me just remind everyone that yes, I am a published author, and yes, for every "pirate" copy of one of my works out there I have theoretically been robbed of anywhere from 25 to 50 cents -- assuming said pirate would have ever bought a copy in the first place.  Even so, I can smell the bullshit as it wafts from the office towers in NY and LA.

And that means you know what about economics, exactly? You're arguing from authority without claiming any facts other than your worthless anecdotal evidence. Piracy apologists love harping on any creator they can find in their midst, but ignore that the vast majority of creators do not support their views. Why should I care you're a published author, Bob? Lots of published authors don't approve of piracy. Do you change your views because of that? Does anyone?