I like a lot of the manga content here; I wish I could subscribe to stuff that was scanlated and converted to pdf ebooks for download (my bookshelves are full and I'd prefer not to have more paper copies anyway, even tho many of my favorite titles are either not licensed and thus not printed in English or seem to release new issues annually rather than monthly (yes YOTSUBA, I'm talking about you).

Have you considered a Crunchyroll model; i.e. sign up subscribers to help pay for scanlators, create the ebooks then just send the authors a cut every month? This would be the 'easier to ask forgiveness than permission' model that seems to have served Crunchyroll well during their early growth period (and yes, I'm an anime Crunchyroll subscriber). I LOVE how subtitled first run anime from Japan is usually available within a week of broadcast via CR. The content is there (way better than Netflix, lightyears beyond cable) and I know $$ are flowing to the authors. I think the 'pray TokyoPop licenses your favorite manga' days are far behind us.

In short, no.

Equating us to crunchyroll before they went all corporate is a big mistake, we do not have the resources to a) contact publishers to get them on board b) we don't have the wide spread appeal considering we are still a focused niche group and reader c) we have a large, large collection of works that aren't ours and profiting from them is not our intent

Just a note from those of us who have at least dabbled in making this happen, Japanese publishers quite don't like scanlators very much. They won't cooperate, which makes such a model quite untenable.