@maigo123 said in Where do I go to join J-novel as a Japanese translator?:

get donations.

Just in case you did not know, J-Novel Club is an official localization company that works with Japanese publishers, to translate and release professional grade Light Novels and Manga in English for world wide distribution.

They are not a fan translation hosting website, if you get a job with them (I wish you luck in your endeavors) you will become a freelancer working for them in an official capacity, and get paid for work completed.

There will be no donation system at all.

@rahul-balaggan I actually was thinking of poking you about that. But as you said: it seems to be just between two. If it were more, I recommend a split, so the original topic can continue.

So far the contributions of fellow members are awesome. It shows how much people appreciate the good work at JNC and of course the works of the authors.

My favorites are usually the series I find to be the most immersive, you know the books you lose track of time reading and find hard to put down. For me some examples are Crest/Banner of the Stars, Alderamin on the Sky, Lord Marksman and Vanadis, and Tokyo Ravens.

A mix of paperbacks and digital releases. I read the digital ones on my Kindle or my Samsung phone.

I found the tweet:

https://twitter.com/jnovelclub/status/1197623301964730368?s=21

Unfortunately, Legend Novel's titles are not illustrated. However we are producing some original extra color spreads for our editions of 2 of them for the ebook editions (from the cover illustrators). More info when we get closer to the ebook release!!

@serah said tip I got thanks to @hiroto https://forums.j-novel.club/post/62255 once ~

@Gotrek65 enjoy your stay and just ask if there is any question about JNC on your mind. You can also chat directly with the very friendly forums moderators.

@doomerx said in Please ask Japanese Publisher to make their e-book available outside of Japan.:

I bought an ebook from Amazon.jp a couple weeks ago. Granted I still have a Japanese address still listed on my account from when I stayed there. I don't know if that makes a difference. Though I tried a year or two ago and they wouldn't let me even buy an ebook since my IP was from the US. Don't know if they had a policy change since then. I haven't tried opening it with on anything other than the Windows Kindle Reader. I didn't use any proxies or VPNs to buy or read the book. I'm leaning towards having a dedicated device for my Japanese books, but that may be unnecessary.

They allow for access from non Japanese IP address to certain degrees, because they don't want to block out Japanese customer who happened to be traveling abroad. But consecutive purchase from non Japanese IP address will eventually get blocked until you access it from Japanese address again.

Many people work around that with VPN. I just don't want to risk spending my money on ebook bought like that because it definitely goes against Amazon policy and they have ability to wipe out my kindle books.

@harmlessdave In the second Volume it is more clear.

I’m definitely enjoying it. I didn’t think the humor was anywhere near the line, though.

(For something that does cross the line, I’d suggest Combatants Will Be Dispatched! By the Konosuba author, but a lot more crude and a lot less funny.)

It's one of the rare LN where I think the anime is better but the LN was still really good.
At least the first 5, vol 6 is a bit of a let done and I've been struggling to go through it, the joke are getting kinda repetitive and I feel like the series is becoming what she was mocking, I hope later volumes are better.

I read 196 LN's in 2019, so there is a lot to think about with what I read through the year.

For me, the big winner of the year was Seven Seas getting Mushoku Tensei. This was the first LN/WN that I ever read, and was the one that I wanted to have in my hands the most since I started reading LN's. I still haven't read something that I enjoy as much as I enjoyed this series.

New Series -
YP - There were quite a number of new series from YP this year that I enjoyed. Probably the one that I enjoyed the most was Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World. This one kept getting hyped up, and it didn't disappoint. I can't wait for the second volume to arrive soon. Bonus points to YP for also licencing DxD this year
JNC - There wasn't too many new series that were that good for me. The one that I enjoyed the most was Record of Wortenia War. I didn't know much about it when I started reading and really enjoyed it. Although I'm reading Altina at the moment and still have The Holy Knight's Dark Road to read, so this might change.
SS - Other than Mushoku Tensei, the new one that enjoyed the most was Reincarnated as a Sword. Although I also did quite like Skeleton Knight and Classroom of the Elite.
SP - Rakudai Kishi. This was the other series that I most wanted to see licenced after Mushoku Tensei and DxD. I haven't read it yet since the physicals haven't been created yet, but I read the fan translations years ago. I haven't read any of their other series yet because of their record as a publisher, however their new editor says that they are changing things up there. So this will be my test with them to see if they screw it up or not.

Continuing Series -
YP - Would be a tie between A Sister's All You Need and Konosuba. Reading these series is always a great time with many laughs and usually finish these in one sitting because I don't want to put them down.
JNC - There are always a number that I can't wait to read like Arifureta, Realist Hero, Demon Lord, Ragnarok, etc. But the one that I probably enjoyed the most has been Seirei Gensouki. The longer the story goes, the more I enjoy it, and now I usually finish these books within a few hours of starting because I can't put them down.
SS - Toradora. Only a couple more books to go until the conclusion, I'm looking forward to seeing how the author will finish this off since I went in to this series not now much about it, and have been enjoying it.

Licencing Hopes for 2020
There are a heap that I would love to see come to us in the next year, but here is the short list.
Gamers, Akashic Records, Data a Live, Oda Nobuna, Campione!, Hachinan tte, World Teacher.
I could keep going but it would be a really long list.

Ok then, I just don't want to be the one to piss on people's fun.

My issues with this one are I thought the writing itself was mediocre. The descriptions light, the characters thinly drawn out, the plot and plot structure are derivative of far better books. Furthermore, the basic selling point doesn't really work as

Also the fan service is just super juvenile, super grade school level descriptions of boobies and bubble butts. Embarrassingly so. I'm not against fan service (I recently just finished and enjoyed Busy Wizard), but fuck this fan service was just the dumbest I've read since Battle Divas. In fact this and Divas are probably my least favorite light novels I've read (and I've read several hundred).

However as mentioned I did like the at quite a bit and short chapters made it far easier and faster to finish than Divas. So there are a few pluses.

It's done that way because there have been issues behind the scenes that have delayed a new volume and it's easier to just wait then have mad fans cause delays.
I know that issues Sam has mentioned have included a delay on the cover art due to an artist being sick, Golden week holidays in Japan putting a pause on the contract itself and more than once personal issues for JNC staffers.
So your normal everyday reasons for stuff to delay.

Also if physical books are what you're after, mandarake is cheap and I haven't had any problems with them. They also have a Japanese or English toggle for their website and their customer support is hella awesome. Shipping can be... pricey if you buy just one or two things, but I've found if I spend $20 on books (which can be anywhere from 5 to 12 books depending on sales) the $15 shipping isn't so bad. Aside from really older books, the condition listed on the site is always spot on too (they don't always mention the yellowing of pages or creases in the dustcover).

Members right now can only read volume 5 (part 2 v2) as it is still being translated. Volume 4 (part 2 v1) expired on December 15 according to the expiration thread: https://forums.j-novel.club/post/6325 (you probably aren't able to open it though, since it's members only). The first three volumes expired several months ago.

Sure, I replied to this a month ago when we didn't know how the book was going to go lol

@paul-nebeling I’m more surprised about Smartphone being so low. It’s in the top 3 bestselling series for JNC, so I would think it would at least make the top 10. Maybe a majority of Smartphone sales come from Amazon Kindle, or perhaps the JNC premium, since we have bonus stories.

In one previous thread there were at least 3 Japanese publishers who would not consider licensing if print wasn't an option. One of them was supposed to be a hard no without simultaneous print and digital on day one while the other 2 wanted either print options available or wouldn't contract without Sam also getting the print rights.

This was before the announcement that JNC was starting to do some series in print so the 2 maybe's may have already changed their minds since then.

Having never read light novels in the original Japanese I can only speculate. I expect that generally speaking light novels are not designed to require deep textual analysis of the text to appreciate so only a minimal amount is lost in terms of change of how things are precisely worded.

However, novels that make a lot of cultural or pop culture references will have something lost in translation and we might not always appreciate the wordplay in character and book names.

I also expect that there will be information lost in terms of how characters refer to one another (first name? san? sama?) and their manner of speech (keigo?).