Ever wanted to get your comic/manga creation published in the renowned Shonen Jump in Japan? Sounds pretty far fetched right considering how hard it is to break into Japan’s Manga industry, especially if Japanese isn’t your native language. Now you can as Medibang has partnered up with Shonen Jump +, the digital publication of Shonen Jump, to find two potential manga creations to be published.
The contest, called the Jump Plus x MediBang Manga Contest runs from 17 December 2015 till 17 March 2016 and is open to everyone, no matter which country you come from, not just Japan. The prizes that are up for grabs are:
1st Prize: 1 million yen and publication in Shonen Jump +
2nd Prize: 300,000 yen and publication in Shone Jump +
3rd Prize: 100,000 yen
Now, Shonen Jump usually organises similar contests to scout out new talent but it is pretty hard for non-Japanese to take part due to the language barrier, so you might be wondering, just how would you be able to participate? Now that’s where MediBang comes in. If your Manga submission is in either English, Korean, or Traditional and Simplified Chinese, MediBang will translate your Manga before it gets submitted to Shonen Jump +. Do take note that MediBang will ONLY translate Mangas submitted in above mentioned languages.
According to a representative of MediBang, the co-organiser the the contest, they offered to host the contest and translate English, Chinese and Korean entries so that people who normally wouldn’t have a chance to participate can participate. This will also allow MediBang to raise awareness about their site and services while stimulating the members of their art community.
So how do you go about joining the contest? First you’ll need a MediBang account which you can get here if you haven’t signed up already. That’s the easy part.
The hard part comes next, which is preparing your Manga for submission. Now there are a few rules for submissions.
- The Manga has to be under 50 pages in length and done one-shot style.
- You must have the rights to distribute the Manga for free.
- Most importantly, you have to submit a COMPLETE Manga entry, that means, it’s not a draft, rough sketch, just a script or requires further extensive editing, either in artwork or script
After that all you have to do is logon to MediBang’s page, submit your artwork, and make sure you tag it with ‘Jump＋MangaContest’ tag. Voila, after that you’re in the running to win some major prize money AND get your Manga published. You can also submit your entry via MediBang’s Paint program/application which can be downloaded for Android, iOS and PC/Mac.
One thing to take note though. Make sure you’re submitting your best work as Shonen Jump + would really want to keep the quality of the Manga they’re choosing as the winners for publishing up to par. As we’ve seen on the contest information page, there is a possibility there NO winners for the contest might be chosen either, which is understandable as we’re pretty sure that Shonen Jump + wouldn’t want to be publishing a crappy Manga, even if it is the best of all the submissions.
One other bonus to joining the contest is that even though your Manga might NOT be chosen as one of the winners, you’ll also likely get some pointers and feedback from the Shonen Jump + editors on your Manga. That’s pretty awesome as you’ll be able to implement this advice and pointers should you want to participate in future Manga contest from them or other publishers.
For more information about the Shonen Jump x MediBang Manga Contest, you can head over here and if you’d like to know more about MediBang and their MediBang Paint app, you can head over here.
Shonen Jump + is the digital publication of Shonen Jump and it offers 30 manga for free every month. You can get the app via Android or or read it straight of the web.
