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I've seen it time and again that a mangaka just stops what he/she is doing as he / she loses interest and starts the next project instead.

A very big example includes here "Candidate for Goddess". The Mangaka who created it was and is known for doing that time and again.

What really surprises me is that they just get work again and again despite their tendencies (and they even being KNOWN for that). In other branches (programmers as example) you are a goner from the market when you start doing that.

So my question here is is there any infos available on WHY Mangakas who are known for not finishing their work and instead starting something anew get work again and again seemingly very easily? (is it something cultural I'm overlooking here, or is it something else at work here?)

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    Maybe because people still buy their work?
    – user24016
    Commented Apr 5, 2017 at 23:49
  • Yah, a manga artist will get more work if their previous work sells. Also, given the nature of comic books, published as weekly and monthly serials, it wouldn't surprise if most readers don't actually manage read a series from start to finish.
    – Ross Ridge
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 0:53
  • I feel like part of the reason stems from how a mangaka's job is different from a programmer's job, but I'm having trouble putting it to words so I'm leaving this only as a short comment.
    – Maroon
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 1:45
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    @Maroon I'd say it's because a manga is much more an expression of who the author is than a program. If you need a program that produces some business reports, there are probably thousands of programmers capable of producing it, but each manga, no matter how trite, could only be created by that person. And for a manga to make money, it has to connect with thousands or millions of people on an emotional level. It's much harder to find someone who can reliably make that happen than it is to find someone who can write a program that creates the business report you want.
    – Torisuda
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 18:37

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Business-wise, that is not very important because as long as these mangaka still sells, publishing companies would still like to sign a deal with them. To stop these kinds of mangaka from keep having jobs, then the market must reject their new project. Only then would a publishing company be unwilling to sign them.

Now, most readers are just casual readers. They just read when they like it and are not that attached to a series very much. Only hardcore fans would follow and know everything about a series. Thus for most reader, whether this mangaka is known for being such a person is not very important.

In fact many don't bother knowing who the mangaka is. My sister, who is not an otaku although she ocassionally read manga, knows Naruto, Fairy Tail, Bleach, One Piece, and many other mangas. But if you tell her Masashi Kishimoto, Hiro Mashima, Kubo Tite, Oda, then she'll say, "who's that?" The only mangaka she knows is Fujiko F. Fujio (because it's Doraemon). What they need to know is just the title of the manga and whether it is interesting or not.

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  • In all honesty....I feared that that would be the answer....guess I had hoped for more from humanity^^
    – Thomas
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 15:48
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    @Thomas Well, finding a popular mangaka is much harder than finding a serviceable programmer. Popular works become popular because they create this weird stew of originality, cliche, reappropriation, genre convention, and subversion of genre convention that all come together to create an alchemical reaction with the zeitgeist of an audience. There's so many variables involved that reason can't even encompass it. Manga magazines publish and cancel dozens of manga for every one that succeeds even modestly. It's not that surprising that they'd keep going back to the ones that succeeded before.
    – Torisuda
    Commented Apr 6, 2017 at 18:32

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