I meant I don’t believe a writer organization reviews contracts for free for fantasy since it has so many writers ^^’
But I’ll check still, maybe there’s someone!
So for all those interested, I did review a copy of the document and legally it seems pretty comprehensive, my background is in criminal justice and compared to the legal jargon we had to review, it’s very straightforward but I am getting a second pair of eyes to look at it regardless and I’ll review it several times before accepting or declining.
Alright, I’m just going to keep updating this as a process for anyone whose interested, plus it’s a little more for myself.
After much deliberation, I’ve decided To sign the contract and now I’m working with the company, so we’ll see where this goes. I’m not entirely confident it’s not a scam, (I’m about 80% sure it’s probably not) but for the moment everything seems legit. What I’m doing right now is submitting old episodes that I’ve already posted to Tapas so they can translate to French. In the future I’ll also be submitting New promotional images (my choice because I think my old ones are not as good as what I could do now) Such as banners (vertical/horizontal), character art as well as the fonts I use.
My one recommendation With regards to font, if you do sign with Bonzai make sure you know if your font is free for commercial use or not. There aren’t many font licences that I’ve bought but a lot of them require you to buy a licence if you receive money in any way (this also counts for people who make money on Tapas).
I was recommended using Blambot because it lets indie comic artists use some of its fonts for FREE. I picked up a dozen over last weekend. I can’t recommend it enough if you do want to do comics. I’m very much an amateur in this business, but having a licence for a font is always a good idea.
Also If you are approached by Bonzai and you’re thinking of joining, just be careful to do only what you’re comfortable with. For instance I’m not very comfortable submitting my files with ALL the layers Available. If anything got changed or copied I wouldn’t even know where to start so I send everything In the drawings as one layer And then Anything related to text has it’s own individual layer.
Worth noting that some legitimate publishing houses with print services are also scams. They charge you absurd amounts of money and send you a stack of cheaply bound books with no selling or marketing help, either. Then you're out several grand and left with a ton of books and no reasonable way to sell them and produce art at the same time.
Heya. I also received a message about them and totally sus-ed out. In their message, they say they are from Bonsai Editions, which doesn't come up in google search. The user who sent me also has an empty page on Tapas. There is a French company called Banzai Editions but not sure if they're the same? If they are, why didn't they say so in their initial message?
I've let fan-translations before so this "official translation" is from the left ball park 
OP, how is your experience so far?
Yup, honestly I don't know what to think of it, I'd rather wait to see if the site will actually be up and running in the next few months and read what the contract is on their site before I make any decisions. They can say in private messages that you keep the rights but my pop didn't raise a fool.
Edit: I want to note that I don't think the OP is a fool for testing the waters and answering questions we may have. I'm only stating that one must read the contract rather than have all faith in what the employee of said publisher tells you.
So far I’ve done pretty much everything except seen my work published. I’m not sending any money and as far as legal documents are concerned I haven’t signed my rights away. The legal contract I signed Was fairly straightforward regarding who the property belonged to and what would be expected of both parties. I do have to send over files but as far as the people I’m coordinating with, they’ve been very straight forward. I personally don’t have as much to lose if it does turn out to be a scam because I’m not planning on doing anything with my comic in terms of professional publishing, and anyone who really wants to could steals images from what I’ve posted to Tapas anyway, but so far my experience has been positive.
Note: they’re also supposed to launch their ‘official’ site in two or so months so I’ll be sure to let people know what happens then!
Well I’m glad you’re not saying I’m a fool! Lol I can’t say I’m well versed in the legalities of publishing and contracts but my degree IS in criminal justice and I’ve had to read a TON of Written rulings from the Supreme Court that are full of legal jargon and complex wording. That being said, as long as the contract I signed was legally binding (I retained a copy of it after signing it, just in case) then what I saw was a fairly comprehensive document that did not attempt to defraud or steal my rights to my work in any way.
If people want to wait and see how this works, I’ll definitely be publishing my updates to this page of my experience so far, I totally understand the uncomfortable feeling of these exchanges because there are so many scams out there.
Yeah, I decided to bookmark this topic just in case because I'm curious to see where this goes. Lately, I've been dealing with art theft with Amazon and trying to get them to take anything down is like pulling teeth, the thing that really sucks is it's featuring an OC from my series rather than fanart
-_____-;
So yeah, with this supposed publisher I'm a little more iffy than usual right now. If they were to scam me and steal my work I would just lose my mind.
I got that same message and it reeks of a scam.
I'm sure they are trying to get around "oh you won't find us on google cause we technically aren't online yet."
Get out of here with that noise 
“Website will be made by professionals”
You really have to say that???
Really??
Why not show us the layout. The features and the “professional” work.
@Penni and @jensrichard77 I totally get what you’re saying, But I’ve definitely heard it all previously in the notes. I’m still waiting to see what happens with this site but Rather than just taking people’s opinions I’m going to be relaying my experience and people can ask questions.
Again I appreciate where you’re coming from, but your replies are just going to bog down the actual information I have.
Going further along it’s been a couple of days since I signed the contract they provided
some things they’ve asked for are:
my PayPal email much like tapas will send money you earn to your paypal: I was a little hesitant with This because it’s PayPal And money. However, as far as I researched/experienced people can only send Money with the email and can’t take anything out. i also watch my account like a hawk and if money was taken out I’d have a notification asking for my permission
banners: at a specific size about 2000X3000 for the horizontal and the vertical doesn’t have a set size so I’m not sure what my idea for it is going to be but this stuff is good for me and I get to update my work.
Pages to translate which I’m getting to albeit slowly, I’m still making sure the actual drawings aren’t editable, but the dialogue and word bubbles are.
And the font files I use: again I cannot stress how important it is if you do get any amount of revenue from your comic, to use free or fonts you’ve paid for.
they’ve also asked for character sketches that could be used on social media for publicity, which I have, but I know a lot of people aren’t into that because they save character sketches for the people on patreon or other paid content sites.
I don’t mind handing over this art because realistically publishing scams usually either involve getting you to pay money for services they won’t render or Convincing you to sell your rights away to your work For a small amount of money.
When you publish Art online any rando can steal your art, even on tapas such as screenshooting you’re work coping the image.
I have my reservations about this. Have you asked about their credentials? About past work? Or if there are any big authors that got to agree to their offer?
They contacted me through instagram. You mentioned they'll be promoting comics through social media yet they only have 11 followers
Maybe if I see a the website running I might consider. I'll bookmark this page to stay tuned with your updates
From what I’ve seen they’ve mostly dabbled in selling art, but not in the production of comics. I was provided a link to their website but yah, just art. I didn’t ask about other authors, big or not, I don’t really have a Good knowledge of big creators on here and regardless of work or importance I’m always VERY wary of anyone on the internet, part of why I made this forum so if anyone finds ANYTHING shady on these guys, but for the moment all the research I’ve done hasn’t shown anything off.
There’s an earlier post above where a fellow tapas author posted their Instagram. The Instagram is following 400 people but it’s also got 3000+ I’m not familiar with Instagram at all but I think that’s a reputable number. When you type it in it should be @banzai.editions, from there they have a link to their website where they sell art and whatnot. Maybe the person who contacted you was just a scout?? I’m not entirely sure how successful it’ll be because this seems to be a brand new company in comics but I’m willing to check it out.
Yah, stay tuned like I said, I really hope I don’t come off as a fake account or something Trying to promote a sketchy brand, I just thought it was worth a try ^^’ If ANYTHING shady happens I’ll be on here with all caps screaming about not signing with these guys, but so far they’ve been decent and respectful.
Alright! so my contact at bonzai editions opened a new folder with the translated french pages of my prologue. Unfortunately I'm not fluent in french, but I'm familiar with it enough to know that their grammar makes sense ^^' I got permission to post the page, (I have to ask since I didn't do the translations myself) but for the most part I think it's pretty decent!
and the original page for comparison!
Honestly the translation is not great. It sounds too much like a clunky word by word translation, plus parts are missing (possibly to fit speech bubbles, may be necessary?). But readable.
More problematic is 'faire tomber amoureux une fée'. Fée is not fairy, it's a female fairy only, so not only it is not the original sense, but it is wrong grammatically (amoureux is masculine, fée is feminine), and the kind of mistake no one would make (ie. not just casual or even faulty grammar, but a grammar mistake that you'd never ever hear. Now, because there is no common equivalent to a male fairy, 'fée' is sometimes (very rarely) used in a masculine context in translations but one would absolutely need to specify the male gender and apply grammar properly. And it still sounds strange).
The translator cannot be a good or even average French speaker (it's unlikely that the problem is that they have a bad level of English as 'prince' is the same in French and exclusively masculine, so the faulty knowledge is around the word 'fée'.
It is difficult to know with such a small sample if the translation problem would be a deal breaker, but I thought I would comment anyway, in the light of the worries over this company. It just feels a bit weird a French company would get French translators who do not know basic French words.
That is indeed pretty weird.
@RosesnWater, do you have anything in your contract about final approval of translations?