@Weasalopes said in The Originals:

As in, the first work introducing each theme?
I suspect that you might need to settle for the first several, given the question of who first thought of it and who first started posting their WN.
And you would need to go back to the web fiction in a number of cases, given that the first instance of a theme in online fiction may never actually get published professionally.

There'd also be the question of those themes that have also shown up outside of the Light Novel environment prior to appearing inside of it.
When you consider the pulp SF from the early to mid 1900s in the US, a number of those showed up there considerably before Light Novels were a concept. And even there, a bunch of the ideas were taken from still earlier works...

Just about every time travel romance as well. Super popular in the 90s and they were a dime a dozen. Outlander pretty much has time highways but at least those have their consequences. Some authors treat it like a doorway.

Being in an actual video game too like Sword Art Online: User Unfriendly published in the 80s. (Can't remember which author wrote it I haven't read it in more than 20 years.

@SleepyTexan Sorcerer King has such a good mystery to it. Why is the MC so dumb now? Whose spirit is in Gol? Is it the spirit of the little girl who was sacrificed? Or some evil witch who was trapped in the white column. Why is he so oblivious to what's going on around him? Who's that grandma figure? She seems like a Goddess who just got old and tired and can't fight what's going on anymore, so the MC is like a gift from the fates to her.

I think what hurt the story is poor world building, there are hints that bad things are going on, driven by bad people, but not enough to really know. I do find the MC very frustrating; Gol is clear about what she wants, and he just refuses to see it.

I also think that since Gol does NOT have a mana crystal in her to provide power, I think she operates kind of like a battery, and needs the MC's mana to recharge (why she's always clinging to him). Without her he dies, and without him she dies.

@mortcs said in Hell Mode paperback?:

@jpwong that makes me wonder what is the total cost of publishing a run of books? I imagine the per book printing cost can't be that high but there is probably a bit of overhead involved.

I think 'a bit' might be an understatement
a physical copy likely needs a new layout (there's a point where number of pages makes a difference, text justification on the page to fit on page size/book length etc) proofreading, editing not only of the text but of art as well- plus production of covers/cover art, tables on content and other content not needed in an epub etc - money money money- and how many copies (physical) must sell before you recoup that cost? and sell where? amazon and/or brick a mortar outlets need their cut, and a cost of distribution. shipping etc. (and duties if printing is done overseas) it isn't just a matter of sending someone a file and getting a printout.
a publisher has to have an idea is however many thousands of copies are likely to sell over what time frame to take the risk/make the investment to do a print run
edit to add: if the 'soft' cost above are (a conservative) $5,000 and the run of 10,000 copies might 'cost' $30,000 and sell (at wholesale for $8.00/ea- from which you need to pay royalties, an amount that is a mystery to me- for the sake of argument - lets call it $3.00), so JNC has a 'profit' of $5.00/copy of a book that has a cover price of $12-15.00. You don't break even until you sell 7,000 copies, and the potential net profit on the run is only $15,000 - the risk:reward ratio isn't the best
now all that goes out the window (and you have OTHER variables to deal with) if you are working with a boutique publisher that does limited runs (like leatherbound/ author signed/ limited editions etc) where a print run may only be 1000 units and costs might me $100 a book

Up to book 8, I liked the stories.
Book 8: Didn't like it.
This story is all over the place. Slavery is also featured heavily throughout and that's not my thing, plus fate and defeating fate. If done well, fate can work. If done badly, like in this story, it's just an excuse to cover up a random set of weird events. While reading it I was thinking why? again and again. Maybe you'll like the story if you read it without asking yourself questions.
Maybe it's just a set-up for book 9. I hope that book will be better.

Dungeon Busters, MC has a sexual relationship with his Ninja character card.

So just wanted to say that with the exception of the Morgan Trading Company story, all of the short side stories out so far fit in nicely to the existing novel. They provide a nice supplement for anyone who's been collecting all of this. The trading company story is the only one so far that doesn't slot in nicely, and that's mostly because that particular episode ends with them leaving in the main novel, so unlike all the other stories where there's a clear cut gap in the main story where they slot in, this one tries to slot itself into the end of the chapter.

The bonus stories from the first two volumes of the manga are my favorites ones out so far, I'm hoping that we'll either get a side story or a main story that goes into more detail about slime Tabuchi's tale since it sounds like it greatly impacted Ryoma.

@Bamgm14 said in After Pre-pub closes:

@Shiny I was thinking of buying the Prepub and was wondering if I would get the final draft as well. I understand the membership, while a neat perk, doesn't give u access to the final draft unless you preorder. Thanks for verifying tho

Just in case all of the above wasn't clear, I'll word it a little differently:

You can't buy the prepub at all.

What you buy directly from JNC is the Premium ebook (in DRM-free ePub format), which is the final version and often includes bonuses like textless illustrations or some of the bonus stories that the Japanese publisher provided to bookstores as a pre-order or first-day bonus.

In addition to the premium ebook, you also get the right to read the prepub version in a browser or app. That's just an extra feature, what you are buying is the ebook. If you buy a title directly from JNC before release that is a pre-publication-purchase of the ebook not the prepub.

Shin 5 should be next, actually. High School DxD DX. 7 "Your ancestors are tricksters?!" is considered to be Shin 4.5 and just released in March.

@RobD Sadly it seems unlikely, the publisher is basically dead, which is a shame they had some great series.
But the WN is comolete with only one more volume so good ol' Google Translate should be enough to read that.

@jpwong

thats probably the best answer im going to get from any of the forums i have requested infos from thanks mate it helps me alot to get closer to the chapter i need thanks again :D

@pcj Much like Her Majesty's Swarm, which got its next volume specifically because English-language sales were so strong, and which leveraged its overseas popularity in the marketing of V4.

@korppi That entire plot thread seemed to have vanished, much to Ashiya's relief. Still, I can see two three obstacles in the way.

Ashiya pretty much went back to Ente Isla for work. While Rika probably wouldn't have major issues following him, I got the sense that her family kind of expected her to stick around and help with the family business. While not expressly stated, I think we can assume that the "issue" that effected Maou would occur to any demon that developed romantic feelings for a human. Unlike Maou, using the same treatment on Ashiya would not be well received. I really don't think Ashiya was into Rika as she was into him.

ETA:

Chiho was always best girl and the frontrunner to land Maou. How can anyone complain? Chiho's end of story revelation kind of made it obvious that Maou would end up with both Emi and Sukano. Again, how can anyone complain? Both Emi and Sukano would have killed Maou for real if he broke Chiho's heart, especially after Emi removed the biggest reason why they couldn't be together.

The ending definitely felt more "end of part 1" rather than a satisfying conclusion for the series, at least to me...Sadly I don't think we'll ever get more.

I will just redirect you to our pinned post: https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/3477/future-volume-release-schedule

If a series is caught up with the Japanese releases, whenever a new volume is released, the new volume needs to be licensed separately. Licensing can vary wildly in how long it takes, so we have no hard estimates on when the next volume will start streaming, sorry!

@dawnaxis Started reading the series but by the third book I was done. Karl is insane and seems to think the best solution to any problem is violence/murder. He's nothing but a barbarian and I came to actively dislike him. Even his wife fails to understand that her husband has, or is, losing/lost his mind. The first book was a nice break from the typical Japanese LN tropes but by the second book things start to go down hill, and the third is just garbage. Still, thanks for telling me about it.