Manga artists and writers work long hours to provide you with the series you enjoy reading. Because of the serial nature of manga, they have to produce output pretty much every week, while also juggling compilation of completed volumes, future planning, promo art, etc. Ever read on ANN about authors getting sick or taking breaks? This is why.
What you can do to support them:
Buying the Japanese compiled volumes (tankobon) is the best way for you to support their efforts and (hopefully) keep them serializing the comic. While buying a translated copy is better than merely pirating, it's merely a feel-good placebo. Foreign licenses happen months or over a year+ after those chapters were penned. Not only is the royalty they receive that far down the chain a pittance, but it's so long after the fact, it doesn't help keep your favorite manga author employed. The sales are also a drop in the bucket compared to the home market in Japan.
(e.g. Naruto in the US sells 50k per volume, in Japan it's close to 1mil)
Information you should have:
ISBN#
Manga title in Japanese
www.mangaupdates.com is a good place to copy/paste the official name from.
www.amazon.co.jp is a good place to then paste that name and find the ISBN# for your title near the bottom of the page. (Amazon refers to it as ISBN-10)
Two major Japanese book chains operating in the US are Sanseido and Kinokuniya. There are undoubtedly other smaller ones you could probably order from as well. Anyone living in Europe or elsewhere that knows of Japanese bookstores local to you feel free to post and I can add them to this thread.
http://www.mitsuwa.com/tenant/sanseido/eindex.php
http://bookweb.kinokuniya.co.jp/indexohb.cgi?AREA=03
My personal experience is with Sanseido. They can order pretty much any manga or light novel title you can get an ISBN# for, even ones they normally don't stock in the store. They usually arrive in around 2 weeks. You can either pick them up in person if you happen to live near one of their locations, or they can ship them to you cheaply via Fedex or such. The Sanseido online site doesn't have much, so just call them or possibly email them about ordering. Kinokuniya you can also probably call them for specific titles you can't find online.
Why ordering this way is great:
-- You don't pay for expensive SAL shipping. Only local shipping costs.
-- Even with the US dollar devalued against the yen in the past two years, volumes still only cost $8.50-9.50 each before shipping.
-- Directly support your author instead of a fraction of a fraction from foreign licensed translations. (If it's even available)
-- No worries about editing changes or censorship.
Personal disclosure:
My entire manga collection is original Japanese volumes that I all got for less than the English counterparts. (Used to be able to pick them for like $6.50-7 ea when the exchange rate was better) I keep the scanlations archived, but it's also a good learning experience if you are studying Japanese
