MangaDex Is About to Go Legit

The scanlation site sets its sights on legitimate licensing.

Otaku Voice Staff

The keen eyed on Reddit first noticed a new section in the sidebar on MangaDex. A page for publishing with MangaDex appeared for a brief period of time. At the time of writing, it has since disappeared from here, which now redirects to the front page.

The page indicated that MangaDex is looking to go the way of Crunchyroll and move from being a source of unlicensed manga/manhwa, to a proper & formal licensor of Asian comics. It contained references to formal publishing rights for manga creators directly to MangaDex. Additionally it mentioned revenue sharing potential of advertising and even premium subscriptions. MangaDex does have a direct advertising business currently, but is without a subscription package.

MangaDex was recently the target of a major DMCA strike which purged over a thousand licensed titles from the site. Some major popular titles still remain on MangaDex in the form of direct linking to the official source in the case of manga such as One Piece. The now removed page seems to indicate that this would be a major step forward for the site as the official host of potential comic titles. They have been courting indie comics for some time now, and this is the next step as a proper business entity.

Those who have been around long enough may remember when Crunchyroll was a hosting site for fansubbed anime that never had a chance at official licensing back in the early 2000s. Other scanlation sites have gone legitimate before, such as the adult content site Fakku did. There is precedence for this pivot from from gray-area hosting to billion dollar business. MangaDex is certainly one of the best and cleanest sites for hosted manga, for it to evolve from what is essentially a fansite to a major player in the world of manga makes sense.

[Sources & Further Reading]
[Found via Reddit]
[Image & Information via MangaDex]