We plan to primarily pay our translation team members in royalties based on a percentage of sales. We would like to be able to provide upfront payment in conjunction to this where possible based on standard industry rates. This will further be supplemented by our bounty system, allowing general consumers who wish to donate to the translation the ability to pre-purchase a copy of the translated work.
Please see our compensation overview section for a more for details.
Compensation and Pricing Overview:
Our current model utilizes three payment methods designed to be used in conjunction with one another.
1. Royalty Payments
The main method of compensation we provide is a royalty split agreement that guarantees a certain cut of sales of the final product to each translation team member. Instead of forcing artists to pay out of pocket for translation services, they instead relinquish a portion of their profits from our site, calculated as follows:
When the artist submits their product to us for translation, we ask them for their desired wholesale price. This is the amount of money that the creators receive from each unit of sale, and is split between all people that contribute. Whatever dollar value the author specifies, it will split along 70-30 lines, with 70% going to the creator, and the remaining 30% being split between the translation team roles (translator, editor/QC, typesetter, and hand-letterer). Contributors may fulfill multiple roles, and will receive the share for each role they fulfill. Royalties will be paid out on a monthly basis. If the earnings for any particular member for the month total less than $100, then this payment will be deferred and paid out quarterly to reduce transfer fees.
We would like to talk with other translation teams for their thoughts on how they would like to split their shares among themselves, but for now I would like to keep this a fixed ratio weighing each role by their degree of responsibility. This would mean giving 12% to the translator, with 6% to each other role. This is more or less how I currently split the profits from the sales of Wataya’s CG sets, however those numbers were decided based on the idea that this is the only method of compensation received. We would like to test how the other two payment methods we plan to offer will pan out, as their success will likely influence these rates.
Please note that these rates are calculated using the wholesale price, not the retail price. The final retail price for the product will be calculated by multiplying the wholesale price by 1.33, resulting in 25% distribution fee taken by Mating Press. This results in the following split relative to the retail price:
We have prepared a simple conversion tool for you to play around with to help give you an idea of how these rates influence each other and what you can expect.
Disclaimer:
This is a rough compensation estimate and may not reflect actual payments.
For accurate figures, please contact me.
After one month has passed since the release of a title on Mating Press’s store, we will allow Japanese artists to sell the censored version of the translation on Japanese distribution sites such as DLsite in accordance to their local laws. Distribution on these platforms will be done entirely by the artist who will receive 100% of profits from those sites. Artists will only be permitted to freely distribute in such a way to Japanese markets, while we at Mating Press hold the rights for foreign distribution.
In our experience, we’ve found that asking artists to report their DLsite earnings and putting the responsibility of transferring the earnings from English versions on them is an overall logistical headache that is best avoided. Due to the censorship demanded by these sites, the lack of foreign users, combined with the fact that the bulk of revenue is generated within the first month of sale, we consider this to be the best compromise.
2. Bounty System
Taking inspiration from the scanlation community, we intend to create a system where contracts we’ve negotiated with artists can be viewed publicly on our bounty board. Our personally vetted translation teams will be able to browse the list of works available for official translation and submit requests for titles they would like to work on. General users of our sites will also be able to browse this list and donate money to help fund the translation of titles they would like to see. The minimum donation will be equal to the wholesale price so that we’re able to give users who donate a free copy of the final product in the event that it is translated, ensuring our contractual royalties can still be paid out to all parties while bypassing our distributor service fee in the process.
The money from these donations will be added to a pool which will then be paid out to the author and translation team upon project completion. How this money is split will be broken up into two brackets:
The minimum donation will be split in accordance to the royalty rates as mentioned above. This allows the artist and translation team members to still earn the cut of profits they are contractually entitled to per unit of sale.
Any money that a user donates beyond that minimum will be split along separate lines, with all money going entirely towards the translation team members. Our hope is that this allows users to have influence over what titles they wish to see translated, while also helping fund the translation effort in the process. This money will be paid out upon project completion as a lump sum, allowing for a secondary source of income that isn’t reliant on waiting for royalty payments to start trickling in.
We have not yet tested this system so we’re still unsure of specific rates, however our intention is to weight these percentages according to the responsibility involved, with the translator receiving the larger share compared to the other roles. This split will be along the same ratios as the translation royalty splits, with the translator receiving 40% of the pool, with each other role receiving 20%.
We would also like to reach out to potential donators regarding what other benefits we at Mating Press can give them beyond a copy of the title that they helped fund. We’ve floated the idea of some kind of site-specific currency that can be given out for each dollar donated, which can then be redeemed for other benefits such as requesting titles/artists they’d like us to try and negotiate contracts with.
If you are a potential donor or translation team member who is interested in potentially working with us in the future, we would love to hear your thoughts about these issues in particular to see how we can better accommodate your preferences.
3. Upfront Bonuses
The previous two compensation methods were designed so that we can still guarantee payment for our translators without needing any start-up capital. We likely won’t be able to offer upfront payment to our translators as we’re growing, but as time goes on we want to be able to offer a method of supporting our translators who prioritize upfront payment over a passive income. While we still want to offer translation royalties for all our contracts, we would also like to offer standard industry rates for each role (translation, typesetting, lettering, editing/QC) where possible, especially for less popular titles which may not pay out much in the way of royalties.
We would like to ask any potential translation teams who want to work with us to reach out and let us know the rates you charge so we can create a standardized minimum compensation for each individual role. After we’ve talked to enough people to formulate a minimum standard, we would then like to offer those rates on our contracts once we get our feet off the ground.