A Brief Introduction to Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for comics in general. Outside of Japan, the term manga is used exclusively used to refer to the Japanese comics.

Manga covers a wide variety of genres, and reaches audiences in many different and diverse spectrums of ages. Manga is a very important part of the publishing industry of Japan and it motivates many adaptations to different formats: animated series, known as Anime, movies, video games and novels.
Note: Tagosaku to Mokube Tokyo Kenbutsu (1902) is considered the first manga.

Terminology
Hokusai Katsushika, a representative of the ukiyo-e, coined the term manga by combining the kanji corresponding to informal (man) and drawing (ga). It translates literally as "Informal Drawing" or "doodles". The Japanese call it 'insignificant images', also in the manga because they buy annually more than 1 billion volumes in black and white, printed on cheap paper. The professional to write or draw manga is known as a manga artist.

The Manga industry
The manga in Japan is a true mass phenomenon. A single fact serves to illustrate the magnitude of this phenomenon: In the year of 1989, 38% of all books and magazines published in Japan were manga.
As you can guess by this figure, the manga is not just a fad for young people. In Japan there are manga for all ages and social status, including homemakers, clerks, teenagers, office workers, etc. Erotic manga also known as hentai is a quarter of total sales.

Manga Magazines
Manga magazines are one of the most popular distribution forms of manga in Japan selling millions of copies every week. Shonen Jump Magazine, the most popular manga magazine in Japan sells around 6 million copies every week. Shonen Magazine follows with around 4 million copies.

Manga magazines are weekly or monthly publications of between 200 and 900 pages in which there are many different manga series that consist of between 20 to 40 pages of the magazine. These magazines are usually printed in black and white low quality paper with the exception of the cover and usually some pages from the beginning. If a series turn out to be successful they tend to be published for several years within the magazine.
Another variant that has emerged as a result of the proliferation of file sharing over the Internet is the digital format called e-comic. The most use formats of e-comics are the.cbr and.cbz, which its basically really is a set of compressed files (rar and zip, respectively) with images in formats such as jpeg or gif inside.

Guide to Stock Photography

So, you have decided to make some money from your pictures and sell them as Stock Photography? Your collection of stock photographs can be very good. I don't know your collections, but there is a huge difference between taking good or great pictures and photos which sell. You can see great pictures in photo magazines and exhibitions, which people admire, but these pictures don't make you much money. Pictures, which make you money so called stock photographs, may not be great, but these fulfill the need of the buyer. Fro example pictures on packaging, in textbooks, leaflets, promotional material etc.

When you are going to take a picture, you need to think not in composition of the photograph itself (by the way, golden rule is better than rule of thirds), but in terms that part of the picture will be filled with the text, coupon or some insert of other picture.

I know, it can be sometimes frustrating, because this may not satisfy your eye for good composition, but this is what makes photography to sell. It doesn't mean that photos are bad, it just mean that you need to take pictures with the buyer in mind. For example to take a landscape picture vertical, instead horizontal (magazines are in vertical format) and leave more sky for buyers to insert whatever they decide. The text will not obstruct your picture in the final form by anything. You will have much better chance to be featured for example on the front page of some magazine instead.

Try to avoid supplying stock photo libraries which offer royalty free pictures or cheap pictures. If you do, this will bring you little income and you lose your copyright to these pictures. There are many other serious stock picture buyers, who will buy your pictures with one time publication and will be willing to pay much larger price for your photos. Don't sell yourself cheap. You can offer cheaper prices on the beginning but you can raise your prices later, when stock photography buyers know you more.

Remember, the most stock libraries take a large cut of the price of each photograph sold. They are in business to make money from photographers. This is ok, as long as these photographers have a good deal. This may not always be the case. So, before sending your stock photos to any stock photo library, read the small print. Choose only those stock photo libraries, which give you satisfactory deal and percentage.