As someone who is witnessing this issue from Korea, I say that, before everyone start hating lezhin completely, please, at lease try to see where they are coming from. Lezhin has been a very good company. What they are bragging about it their FAQs about their competent pay, the opportunities when you work with them, are all true. Problems only started to arise when they established the international site which is the US lezhin. The problem is, South Korea has very different rules as compared to the international laws so they have to do a lot of adjustments. Let's take a look at what happened just this year of 2017.
1. The web novel service was closed. (I wouldn't blame the company for this entirely. THEY are a company. And business is indeed BUSINESS. They aren't charity, so when they saw that the web novels are not profiting and instead, are making them loose money, they stopped it. They went through proper protocol. They gave 30 DAYS notice to all the writers. The problem with this is, they didn't properly pay off the writers with their separation fees and breach of contract fees. Everyone received their pays very late, as opposed to what Lezhin has promised them, and some didn't even received their payments.)
2. Issues with international cut offs from English sales. (A lot of authors are complaining about how they didn't receive their international revenues for months now. Lezhin has already responded to the issue about problems with syncing their financial accounts because of international laws. You see, the authors aren't the only ones losing here, because Lezhin also has to pay a lot of fines due to this issue. What I hated about this, is how the creators took to twitter, instead of organizing a union and directly confronting lezhin authorities. And on Lezhin's side, they didn't even made an effort to talk to the authors, too.)
3. The recent call of authors for even international fans to sign up a petition on tax investigation regarding lezhin accounts. (You see, I mentioned above about the problems with the accounts and financial laws both domestic and international. Lezhin already has a problem about this one since US Lezhin is established. If the artists keep kicking Lezhin while the company is already at its knees, they would also be hurting themselves in the process. And also, I don't know if you have signed up for the petition, but I hope you won't. I hope you make an effort to understand what was written in there first. I don't understand why they do this when a lot of international fans can't even read and understand Korean. Koogi's tweet of calling international fans to sign up and simply copy paste that you agree, is by our law, will not even be counted in the vote ins. This is kind of hypocritical of them also, because back then, they were so aggressive to international fans because of illegal uploads, to the point of them resorting to name calling and making fun of how "international fans" are so thirsty and desperate just because fans don't understand their tweets. I'm serious. Try scrolling back through most of the popular BL webtoon artists and look through the replies. You'll see what I'm talking about.
4. Overall, you would see that majority could be blamed on Lezhin, but it is not because they wanted these to happen, neither it is because they don't care about their artists, like what a lot of people are thinking. Lezhin has 5000+ series and counting. (Korean and English site combined). Provided that there are manga and non-Lezhin exclusive artists included in there, their artists must be numbering around 500~ or even more. It's not easy to cater to everyone equally. Their editing department is even less numbered. That's why a lot of changes happened, like how they established a rule about submitting a completed chapter 2 days before the upload date. This has taken a toll to creators who have a weekly deadline because that just gives them 5days to create. The point with this is, lezhin wanted to make sure that they will be uploading quality chapters. You must've noticed how a lot of creators are retweeting before how they made a mistake so fans should go back to read the chapter again an hour or two after the upload schedule of their chapters. A lot of korean fans have complained about this practice, for a lot of reasons. That's why Lezhin made that move. They didn't do this simply to torture the artists. They did this so they can catch mistakes if there are any. I think they should've consulted and made an arrangement with the authors first regarding this issue, so that every one could've voiced their opinions and planned for necessary adjustments.
What I'm trying to say is, there are always two sides to an issue. And you, as a reader, as a fan, should always be aware of them. This is the age of the internet, so we should make effort to double up our skills in analyzing and awareness. Don't just jump on something that someone said just because you liked their works, and you are so bent on supporting them. The only way to properly support them is to buy their works legally, even if you are reading from a site like this. (Because let's face it, I am also reading from this site.) My references for these are from twitter mostly in the reply sections of main tweets that a lot of fans dont often see. (So please, make an effort. I don't care if you google translate the tweets, just so you will have an idea about the entire picture, not just a very small part of it.)
To people are are syaing "why now?", the removal of Lezhin series from here are only to be expected. They have been filing for the copyrights months ago. Due process only dictates that they have to go through proper processes in accordance to law that's why it took them months to get here now. So yeah. Everyone, enjoy it while it last. Stop giving shit to lezhin, stop giving shit to creators, basically stop giving shit to our fellow readers, because seriously, the fact that we're here reading doesn't give us the right to complain about anything, unless we all go to the official site to buy and then send our complains through the Lezhin feedback system.
Thank you for reading up until here.
1. The web novel service was closed. (I wouldn't blame the company for this entirely. THEY are a company. And business is indeed BUSINESS. They aren't charity, so when they saw that the web novels are not profiting and instead, are making them loose money, they stopped it. They went through proper protocol. They gave 30 DAYS notice to all the writers. The problem with this is, they didn't properly pay off the writers with their separation fees and breach of contract fees. Everyone received their pays very late, as opposed to what Lezhin has promised them, and some didn't even received their payments.)
2. Issues with international cut offs from English sales. (A lot of authors are complaining about how they didn't receive their international revenues for months now. Lezhin has already responded to the issue about problems with syncing their financial accounts because of international laws. You see, the authors aren't the only ones losing here, because Lezhin also has to pay a lot of fines due to this issue. What I hated about this, is how the creators took to twitter, instead of organizing a union and directly confronting lezhin authorities. And on Lezhin's side, they didn't even made an effort to talk to the authors, too.)
3. The recent call of authors for even international fans to sign up a petition on tax investigation regarding lezhin accounts. (You see, I mentioned above about the problems with the accounts and financial laws both domestic and international. Lezhin already has a problem about this one since US Lezhin is established. If the artists keep kicking Lezhin while the company is already at its knees, they would also be hurting themselves in the process. And also, I don't know if you have signed up for the petition, but I hope you won't. I hope you make an effort to understand what was written in there first. I don't understand why they do this when a lot of international fans can't even read and understand Korean. Koogi's tweet of calling international fans to sign up and simply copy paste that you agree, is by our law, will not even be counted in the vote ins. This is kind of hypocritical of them also, because back then, they were so aggressive to international fans because of illegal uploads, to the point of them resorting to name calling and making fun of how "international fans" are so thirsty and desperate just because fans don't understand their tweets. I'm serious. Try scrolling back through most of the popular BL webtoon artists and look through the replies. You'll see what I'm talking about.
4. Overall, you would see that majority could be blamed on Lezhin, but it is not because they wanted these to happen, neither it is because they don't care about their artists, like what a lot of people are thinking. Lezhin has 5000+ series and counting. (Korean and English site combined). Provided that there are manga and non-Lezhin exclusive artists included in there, their artists must be numbering around 500~ or even more. It's not easy to cater to everyone equally. Their editing department is even less numbered. That's why a lot of changes happened, like how they established a rule about submitting a completed chapter 2 days before the upload date. This has taken a toll to creators who have a weekly deadline because that just gives them 5days to create. The point with this is, lezhin wanted to make sure that they will be uploading quality chapters. You must've noticed how a lot of creators are retweeting before how they made a mistake so fans should go back to read the chapter again an hour or two after the upload schedule of their chapters. A lot of korean fans have complained about this practice, for a lot of reasons. That's why Lezhin made that move. They didn't do this simply to torture the artists. They did this so they can catch mistakes if there are any. I think they should've consulted and made an arrangement with the authors first regarding this issue, so that every one could've voiced their opinions and planned for necessary adjustments.
What I'm trying to say is, there are always two sides to an issue. And you, as a reader, as a fan, should always be aware of them. This is the age of the internet, so we should make effort to double up our skills in analyzing and awareness. Don't just jump on something that someone said just because you liked their works, and you are so bent on supporting them. The only way to properly support them is to buy their works legally, even if you are reading from a site like this. (Because let's face it, I am also reading from this site.) My references for these are from twitter mostly in the reply sections of main tweets that a lot of fans dont often see. (So please, make an effort. I don't care if you google translate the tweets, just so you will have an idea about the entire picture, not just a very small part of it.)
To people are are syaing "why now?", the removal of Lezhin series from here are only to be expected. They have been filing for the copyrights months ago. Due process only dictates that they have to go through proper processes in accordance to law that's why it took them months to get here now. So yeah. Everyone, enjoy it while it last. Stop giving shit to lezhin, stop giving shit to creators, basically stop giving shit to our fellow readers, because seriously, the fact that we're here reading doesn't give us the right to complain about anything, unless we all go to the official site to buy and then send our complains through the Lezhin feedback system.
Thank you for reading up until here.
2017-12-10 16:55 marked
As someone who is witnessing this issue from Korea, I say that, before ever...