Well apparently I managed to squeeze off a short lump in the midst of all the college madness.
My aim is to edit My Steady next (in a poor manner) and afterwards finish Shinigami Alice with the help of Kalevala scanning it (his site's NSFW). He still hasn't hit me up for payment so I'll have to talk with him about that sometime or something.

This is a bit unconventional since this tidbit was apparently left out of the book because Serav's a sneaky bastard. It's the Extra in HTT4 so I'll just have to update the archive and release date of it. Everything else but the Extra remains the exact same. Luckily, the credits didn't have to be changed.

Houkago Tea Time 4 Extra (begins on the page marked 32)
Read Online | Direct Download

Since we're low on polls at the moment, feel free to answer (or ignore!) this thought that managed to creep into my head while sleeping:
Think there'll be a time when we (not us per se, but general scanlation) can kickstart a licensing attempt to a publisher? After that whole deal with Jay-Mango I find it could be harder for both ends of the ocean to get yuri out and about again through the usual means.

last edited at Apr 21, 2013 5:42PM

I guess it would depend on the series that the scanlators try to get and the group trying it. The best way to do this would be trying to get as many groups as possible involved, since there are many people that would back it independently of the series, as long as their favorite scanlator is involved. The hard part would probably be convincing the rights holder to licence it.

I am with fellow NorthernDruid in believe that it would be doable, but mighty hard to.

I think the group/organization attempting it would have to have no obvious affiliation with active scanlation/scanlation hosting. After all, the publishers over in Japan have to maintain the position of disapproving of this sort of unlicensed activity.

Then as for whether the idea is feasible in general...well, you'd probably need some sort of coordinator for the business side. I think demonstrating sufficient standards/levels of professionalism to convince the actual companies would be the most difficult thing. However, if that kind of framework could be achieved in some manner, then I think KickStarter could be a pretty viable mechanism for selecting which series to work on. Basically, a kickstarter could be created for each candidate series, but the project would only be picked up once it passes a certain profitability/sustainability threshhold. You could basically ensure survivability of the venture in that case, although it would be inefficient for high volumes of output.

I think the demands that Japanese publishers would make on how the content distribution must be handled, as they did with "Jay-Mango", would be contrary to the appeals of both the crowd sourcing and scanlation reading crowds.

I'm not opposed to licensing, but I rarely purchase something like manga.If it came down to it I would be sad to see something licensed before it was completed by a scanlating group, the reason would be I would be no longer able to read it,but that's just my problem.

I'll support whatever decision you guys make.