Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 2 - Chapter Aft

THE AUTHOR, THE AFTERWORD, AND YOU! 
PART 2 
As I’m sure my readers are aware, royalties are an important part of an author’s income. Kojien, the most authoritative dictionary of the Japanese language, defines the term as follows: 
ROY-al-ties (n.): Payments received by a copyright owner from a publisher or other entity for the usage of a copyrighted work, usually provided on a commissioned basis depending on sale price or circulation. 
—Kojien, 6th edition, © 2008 Iwanami Shoten 
Not that this is paid out to the author in cash, of course. In Japan, what happens is that a company purchases something called a “revenue stamp” for the agreed-upon payment. This represents that the company has provided compensation for the work, for all official purposes. 
This revenue-stamp system has its roots in how copyright and royalties used to work in Japan. In fact, the Japanese word for “royalties” is inzei, which literally means “seal tax.” 
You see, in ye olde Japan, the back page of every book printed would include an official seal stamped on there by the author. The royalties paid to him or her would be based on the number of seals the author stamped on his work. 
This system has largely died out in modern times, but if you take a peek at the older books that occupy the dusty shelves of used bookstores or university libraries, you’ll be able to see these official “stamps of approval” for yourselves. 
Since this system of receiving royalties based on official stamps was the norm for the legal system that allowed publishers to handle author copyrights for publication purposes all the way to the modern age, we still call royalties “seal tax” in Japanese. 
But, considering that system’s a dead relic from the past, nowadays in the twenty-first century, why do we still use such an old-fashioned term like inzei? 
I found out for myself the day my first published work, The Devil is a Part-Timer!, went on sale. 

I was at my local bookstore in order to get an eyeful of my book lined up on the shelves. To my enormous surprise, I walked right past someone who had the first volume in hand as he made for the cash register. 
The great majority of the royalties I receive for writing The Devil is a Part-Timer!, of course, comes from the money spent by my readers with every purchase they make. 
I knew that, of course, but it was when I saw that man in the bookstore that I truly felt it for the first time. 
The royalties that are paid to me, in exchange for the readers’ expectation of the entertainment they will receive from reading my work, are what allow me to stay in this business. 
So what would be the best way to use these royalties paid to me by these loyal readers? 
We often talk about how people who work for the government bureaucracy are “living off the taxpayers’ dime.” I suppose that means writers like myself are “living off the readers’ dime,” then, the virtual seals we stamp on each volume the only thing keeping us clothed. 
The “taxes” I receive in the form of royalties from my readers are what allow me to effectively invest in new projects. I have a duty to use that money to the hilt in order to repay the favor to the readers, in the form of my “work.” 
Amid all the momentous events that occurred in Japan and the world as I wrote this volume, I spent a great deal of time worrying about what a would-be author of light, entertaining fiction like myself should really be doing with his life. In the end, I came to the conclusion that reinvesting the “taxes” I receive in order to produce better “work” and entertain more of my readers was the most logical choice. 
I hope I can continue working toward that goal, too—the goal of making those readers smile. 
I apologize for continuing to irreverently talk about taking reader’s souls and seizing their taxes and so on in these afterwords. I should probably know my place a bit more. 
Despite the tremendously stiff and self-centered thinking that went into this volume, it’s still filled with people living frenetic, exciting, fun lives. 
Finally, I would like to close by apologizing on the Devil King’s behalf to my faithful readers living in Greenland for all of the inappropriate comments he made about your country. Thank you.