Well, Japanese copyright laws are a little more dodgy. Most doujinshi artists don't make any profit at all from their creations. It's the people who buy them, then put them up for auction on eBay who makes a killing. I have some Rurouni Kenshin doujinshi, which is why I know. Certain artists and groups go for high amounts of money, especially given the collectible aspect of it. They have "low print-runs," if you can even call them print-runs. The rarer the doujinshi and the more popular the artist, the higher the price goes up.
The thing about doujinshi is that you see a lot of interesting stuff. Like the person above said, it's not all derivative. Some of it is original, but it tends to be rougher around the edges. It's not what gets published in the manga-zasshi. Even then, only the more popular titles from the manga-zasshi get collected into the tankoubon. Add in the filter of domestic licensure and the pool of titles goes down even more. (One of my friends is a junior editor at TOKYOPOP, so it's fascinating to read her lj entries on acquisition meetings. Apparently the editors sit around and flip through manga-zasshi, trying to find titles that look good.)
Some popular artists came from the doujinshi pool -- CLAMP (although that original group of 10 has narrowed down the four we know today) and Kazuya Minekura are two prime examples. In fact, the original concept of Saiyuki was a doujinshi. It attracted so much attention, it was picked up for a trial run.
I do know an instance where some publisher collected doujinshi based upon Saiyuki and printed it in a bound book version. The publisher sold it and made a profit. Minekura sued and won that lawsuit, IIRC. So I think there are limitations to fair usage in derivative doujinshi.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-10-20 04:55 pm (UTC)The thing about doujinshi is that you see a lot of interesting stuff. Like the person above said, it's not all derivative. Some of it is original, but it tends to be rougher around the edges. It's not what gets published in the manga-zasshi. Even then, only the more popular titles from the manga-zasshi get collected into the tankoubon. Add in the filter of domestic licensure and the pool of titles goes down even more. (One of my friends is a junior editor at TOKYOPOP, so it's fascinating to read her lj entries on acquisition meetings. Apparently the editors sit around and flip through manga-zasshi, trying to find titles that look good.)
Some popular artists came from the doujinshi pool -- CLAMP (although that original group of 10 has narrowed down the four we know today) and Kazuya Minekura are two prime examples. In fact, the original concept of Saiyuki was a doujinshi. It attracted so much attention, it was picked up for a trial run.
I do know an instance where some publisher collected doujinshi based upon Saiyuki and printed it in a bound book version. The publisher sold it and made a profit. Minekura sued and won that lawsuit, IIRC. So I think there are limitations to fair usage in derivative doujinshi.