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So one of my friends, is a letter for 2 manga books, and they want to make this into a full time deal, but the problem is they get a book in December and then won't get another one til February or March. Yes the pay is good but they need more books, if they plan to pay rent and bills, and they think they can easily get into more companies and get more books is this possible? How many books do you receive when you are a letter working with manga companies. Any one else here work doing this line of work?
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Lettering manga can be a full time job but it takes time (a couple years or so) to work up to that level for most of us. As your friend gains experience, they can talk to their editor/project manager and ask if additional work is available, branch out to additional publishers and companies, etc. If they do good work and are reliable about meeting deadlines and expectations, most places will be glad to give them more assignments. But it is important to ask for it, since companies don't necessarily know their capacity for taking on work unless they tell them they have free time to take on more.
It depends on pay and standard of living expectations, but with speed that comes from experience and a typical amount of work needed per book (not fully retouching sfx but subtitling like most publishers do), I consider a full-time pace to be about 1 book a week or 4/month. My first full year as a letterer, I did about 9 books total, but continued to grow from there year by year, until I was at capacity (or actually over, since I can't say no...). I've been lettering for 12 years now and have been full-time for most of those years. In the early years I still had other part-time jobs in addition to lettering, and I think anyone who wants to do lettering should expect to start off doing it in addition to other work.
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