@YooS111

If you only want to buy one book, the simplest thing to do would be to sign up for a free account, then buy enough coins and purchase the book. Most light novels are 699 coins and most manga are 899 coins.

You can think of a coin as about 1 cent in US dollar currency.

However, if you want to get the best deal, I would recommend signing up for a Premium membership for one month. This adds complexity because you have to remember to cancel the membership at the end of the month if you do not wish to continue it. However each month of Premium includes 699 coins and a 15% discount on buying more coins. So you could sign up for a Premium membership, buy one book with the included coins, and be able to purchase more coins at a discount if you want to keep reading more volumes in a series.

A Premium membership would also let you read the catch-up series and the newly translated parts of ongoing series that are updated each week, so you can see if you like any of the other series beyond whichever series initially caught your interest. I have discovered several series that I enjoy this way.

J-Novel Club is an unusual publisher, in a good way. There's a bit of a learning curve to understand how it works, but I have been pleasantly surprised how thoughtful their design decisions have been, with regard to their business model and how they interact with readers.

We're waiting to see if the author is writing more books or not, so we can continue publishing 3-in-1 omnibus editions. As for other Slayers series, we don't comment on possible licenses before they're ready to be announced, so please check out our announcements when they occur to see what we have licensed.

@Perplexed, that’s exactly why I always look for it at J-Novel Club first whenever a novel piques my interest.

I finally 'made the leap'; I purchased a Meebook m7. I had some gift cards for the bezo's site so purchased there (used 'like new" for $159)

ticked a number of boxes for me:

runs Android o/s and supports the JNovel app eInk - so easy on the eyes and long battery life has a browser mechanical page buttons size of a paperback (roughly octavo) usb type-c charging/data (plus wifi/bluetooth) rated decently by sources I trust

just got it and am playing with it now - will post more once I've used it on the train a few times

@TrinaBear sorry, no, but maybe the more specific title will lure in someone who does, while keeping new catch-up readers safe.

I just read The Great Cleric because it was on catch-up, and it might be the most impressive example of falling off a cliff only to climb out of the hole I've personally encountered. It starts off as nothing special, but there are some fun characters and mysteries in the second and third volumes (the first is entirely a training arc), but in the fourth and fifth volumes literally every character besides the MC is ditched along with much of the plot up to that point in favour of a huge new cast that is barely introduced and random political shenanigans. The new characters are soooo boring and one-note. The earlier volumes introduce an obvious love interest and her friends who are actually interesting to have in the party, only for her to become irrelevant for multiple volumes for...no reason. And when this second arc is done, the new cast introduced to replace the old one is almost entirely left behind in favour of a mix of the old and new. I only pushed through to the end of volume 5 because it was free, though the finale was the start of a comeback.

It seems like the author realized his mistake at some point though because around volume 7 all the original characters and the permanent keeps from the second batch keep being relevant at regular intervals, but what saves the series is that the MC becomes a leader that is fun to watch in a crisis. Volumes 7 to 10 are easily the best of the series so far, and far better than the first three, but getting there is a tough sell.

On a positive note, it is the only isekai adventure series I've read so far where most of the regular cast is male. And while there are harem indications (I imagine the epilogue will consist in marrying at least 6 women), there are no harem antics, and one of the girls is clearly in focus.

I would also like to report that Full Clearing Another World Under a Goddess with Zero Believers is one of the rare consistent quality series, and to some extent it gets better as it goes. It's not nearly as good as Bookworm though, but it is good fun.

This is an issue on Amazon's side, and JNC can't resolve it. You should contact them to get the right file, which you did. The store you buy something is who you need to contact if there's an issue with your purchase; if they need anything from us, they will contact us. And if they can't help you, you should absolutely request a refund.

Also, I would like to remind everyone that if you buy directly from our website, you get the premium bonus content, and you can also load your books onto any device you want without restriction, including your Kindle!

@rajbha Because in Japan, that was the release order.

It took a few extra days for Amazon to add the digital edition, but 80,000 Gold volume 7 is now available there along with the other stores.

https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Another-World-Retirement-light-ebook/dp/B0DYWCJYVT

(Not a referral link - I cleaned the tracking stuff off the end)

Sadly Fruit and AWS are gone for now, but Hanashi is still releasing new LNs.

Yesterday's release was Observation Records of My Fiancée volume 2, which completes it. Volume 1 was a fun take on the otome game villainess genre where she's a sweet girl a bit like JNC's Lady Albert volume 1 where she's trying to be the villainess to give others their good ending. It's also all from the POV of the non-isekai prince she's tying to help.

@RobD - the author's Ringer series is fun too, but in a different way. In that one the MC is a total badass not a fool. There's humor but more from the nutty side characters and just how over-the-top the MC is.

@LordoftheNight No announced plans for prints, so at present it'll be ebook only. It could change in the future as it did for these series announced to get prints at the end of last week: https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/8916/january-2025-new-print-announcements, as they haven't ruled out prints for Chivalry, but that could be years away

https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/3478/future-volume-release-schedule

https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/3478/future-volume-release-schedule

It's not a j-novel but I've surprisingly loved 'Beware of Chicken' just as much is I've loved ascendance of a bookworm.

From what I have seen ill health tends to be the biggest cause of LN delays more than other adaptations.

Closely followed by issues with publishers, although I have seen a couple of honest authors admit to delays caused by the release of there favourite gaming franchise.

@n33k5 said in Shogakukan's Novelous to use AI translations:

they are seeming to also plan to change names to more westernized forms because "Japanese names are hard."

The MC is named Steve Jones, Yen to dollars, ramen to cheeseburgers. Back to the dark ages of over-localized translations :(

Some stories might survive this but part of why I read LNs is the different culture. It's the same reason why I watch "foreign" movies and TV shows.

Plus, AI LLMs have only short-term "memory" for their token set with no knowledge of anything outside of that small window into the story. No memory of past chapters, characters, or the overall plot to bring to the translation just predicting what an equivalent sentence would be in English.

@kuali as mentioned, these are in the Isekai Villainess Otome Game list too:

Lady Rose Just Wants to be a Commoner Lady Albert is Courting Disaster