Upcoming JNC light novel price increases
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@admin The devaluation is of any banked coins/credits from the Premium Membership.
In relation to the 699-799 and then subsequent increase in the subscription price, this is what I meant by the difficulty it causes, because essentially, any active pre-paid subscriptions (E.G Remainder of yearly subscriptions), would be on the receiving end of a bonus 100 coins each month for no difference in what was paid. There is no benefit for the subscriber when exchanging for premium ebooks, but there is a slight benefit when exchanging for other listed products that would cost more. This in effect would be a cost against J-novel for those transactions.
Which is one of the reasons I thought this all just adds uneccessary complexity to the subscription model, and is probably going to cause confusion, as to what a subscription actually gets you. Especially, when you have multi-tiered product, but do not categorize them clearly.
Its quite easy to understand that Manga is a different price to Light Novels, but when you have Light Novels at difference prices (E.G Beatless, I assume this probably won't be the only one like this), it gets confusing.
At present Manga is differentiated from LN very clearly with brown instead of blue and clear labelling. Beatless has no visual difference between itself and other Light Novels.
Maybe, have "Novel" And then "Premium Novel" for those that cost more? Or some other label?
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@admin said in Upcoming JNC light novel price increases:
In other words, raising ebook prices with a coin system does not devalue the coins,
I think the concern is with people who hoard their coins, unlike me who has to keep buying them on top of their membership :)
If you get 699 coins a month for 3 months, don't spend them, but then the cost of books increases to 799 coins then you can no longer buy 3 books with your existing coins.
With the credit system if you bought 3 credits or saved 3 credits, they would still get you 3 books a year later.
That is a loss of a feature, but I'm fine with giving it up in order to allow for selling manga and offering anything else that wouldn't be possible under the old 1 credit = only works for 1 LN system.
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@HarmlessDave Yep, that's pretty much the concern, but it's also as we've been pointing out an entirely theoretically concern at this point. Although I would imagine everyone expects there to be an eventual price increase on the premium epubs and by extension membership costs, that could still be a ways off.
That said now that we have manga purchases and manga prices do not appears to be set to increase, even if your converted coins lose value against the LN publications and you're unable to spend out your balance, you are still maintaining value against the manga catalogue (until that increases in price) which could provide a buffer to "zero out" your coin balance should a price increase be eventually announced against standard premium novels (unless you have no interest in any of JNC's manga).
Also something to note is that the last credit sale was roughly 20 months ago now, so I would imagine that the number of people who still maintain any sort of superbalance that they couldn't spend out if we were given say 3 months notice of a price increase is growing increasingly small.
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@Tremarl said in Upcoming JNC light novel price increases:
Its quite easy to understand that Manga is a different price to Light Novels, but when you have Light Novels at difference prices (E.G Beatless, I assume this probably won't be the only one like this), it gets confusing.
At present Manga is differentiated from LN very clearly with brown instead of blue and clear labelling. Beatless has no visual difference between itself and other Light Novels.
Maybe, have "Novel" And then "Premium Novel" for those that cost more? Or some other label?
I can't say I follow the logic for your example of Beatless. The Beatless volumes were always priced/handled differently from the rest of the light novels despite not being labelled differently.
Beatless volumes simply couldn't be purchased on JNC's website at all before - regardless of membership status or number of credits held. If purchased elsewhere, they were priced at $9.99 (most stores) or at 1200 yen (Bookwalker) vs $6.99 or 825 yen for other light novels.
I prefer having the option to buy them at 999 coins over not being able to buy them at all. I don't see the need to label these rare exceptions as long as they remain rare (about 1 out of every 500 books currently). Also, if many "tiers" come about in the future, I wouldn't want to see a bunch of labels to match - it would quickly get more confusing than just checking prices.
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@TomOrr0W They're basically wanting an at a glance way to tell if something is a non-standard premium LN that's not priced like standard titles. Right now the site only differentiates between manga and novel, but without actually trying to buy Beatless and seeing it's coin cost is 999 instead of 699 there's no way to know in advance that this series has a non-standard pricing.
This is probably not a bad suggestion if there are plans to eventually have other specially priced series in the future. They're probably wanting something like below which would let users know right on the series page that the series has a non-standard pricing scheme.
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there seems to be a lot of 'wringing of hands' that the change of 1 credit = 1LN to 1 credit = 699 coins (where 1 LN costs 699 coins)- and I understand the concern for the rank and file member. This 'opens the door' for JNC (in the future) to devalue banked coins/credits (it also allows use of coins for things that would cost more or less than 1 month's dues, i.e. [hypothetically] manga for 199 coins or an omnibus for 12000 coins)- but this isn't where my rant is gonna go.
[begin rant]
someone complains:
"I bought many credits that in theory might be worth less than when I bought them"
--now I'm not picking on anyone in particular, but it seems to me that this boils down to "I played a game, now they are changing the rules"again - I'm not calling anyone out, but I recall comments in fora past some folks advocating this game/strategy: "get a premium membership, buy credits when on sale, then quit "- because the game to them was to spend the least amount of money as possible to get what they want, and all they want is credits. Well if you are one of these folks, and you think this change will mean that you didn't win the game anymore, or that this change will bite you in the butt; sorry, too bad. I have no sympathy for you.
I believe that ongoing memberships are what bankrolled JNC. In JNC's early days the library/storefront had only a few series, membership dues were an investment in JNC and the credits were the dividends that members got - we hoped that someday JNC would evolve to have more content (in quantity and quality) and that has proven to be true. It is because of the support of members that JNC can do the work to create the content, it's why you want those credits, but you don't care to support the process (or you want to support at the absolute minimum possible) yet you can afford to buy many, many credits (I mean you've got to have a bunch or you wouldn't be worried about your stockpile losing marginal value, right?) well you gambled, gamed the system to your favor, based on speculation, and like all speculations/investments/gambles - sometimes you lose .
I am not Gordon Geko, I don't think "greed is good" You can afford to stockpile credits and not support JNC via membership 'dues' -- I think that isn't 'good', the market isn't always going to be in your favor.
[end rant]I read banned books
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the topic of the thread :
"Upcoming JNC LN price increases"worldwide inflation is at higher rates than seen in decades. Price increases? I'm thankful we didn't see any in so long. I'm VERY happy that so far JNC hasn't passed this on to (increased) membership dues, nor to decreasing benefits.
Take a look at any printed material (physical or electronic) available in 2016 and still available today - are the prices the same? a subscription to a magazine? the cover price for a comic book or manga? the Kindle price for a bestseller ebook?
I wouldn't ask if I didn't know - all of these things (on average) were cheaper in 2016- JNC membership cost stayed the same: $120 a year - for (along with the other benefits) gets me 12 ln's of my choice today and it did in 2017 too.someday I expect JNC to raise the cost of premium membership- the value of the US Dollar, the Japanese Yen, Inflation, labor costs etc. all change over time- and the 'net net' is almost always that things don't get cheaper.
BUT as a consumer what can you do?- Make it as easy as possible for JNC to get you LNs as inexpensively as possible- buy direct, they get more profit (that puts less pressure on pricing)
- Support the creators/industry: be a member. In the long run this allows JNC to continue to operate - and not rely entirely on the cover price of a LN to stay afloat.
- Leverage the benefits of membership- I 'stream' most of what I read. My 'net' membership cost is $5.01/month ($12.00 minus the 699 coins) - for that I read 6 or 7 LN's a month-(that means maybe 80 or so a year for my $120, or $1.50 per volume, that's in addition to my allotment of coins to get 12 premium edition ebooks of my choice)
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Woah, I already don't really care about the coins anymore as I already spent all my credits but the comment really rub me the wrong way.
The credits was bought because of the guarantee made by JNC, not by speculation, not by gamble. Just simple as that. The sales and stockpiling was actively encouraged if it wasn't then it should be limited JNC and should not happened every year. That was not a gamble, that was just participating in transaction. Personally if I just want to game the system, I would have cancelled a long time ago.
Buying membership, buying even more credit so that JNC can have funds and get even more license is just "minimum support"? What more to need to be done?
Supporting a business while picking and choosing what you consume in moderation is greed. This is the first time I heard this to be honest.
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@DarKraD
like I said - it's a rant. not a rational analysis by me - just my visceral responsesome folks game the system (few)
seems like same folks whine that the gains they got aren't permanentan analogy would be wealthy folks lobbying for capital gains taxes to be low (benefiting themselves)...and when there's a change in administration and the taxes get level-set, scream that the sky is falling
I read banned books
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I don’t even know why the subscription is still compared to investment anymore. It’s a product and everyone receives the same thing. It’s not like some have exclusive benefits due to throwing money at JNC.
I guess we can continue that now to explain the problem with not hoarded, but left over credits, like compound interest, for example.
I don’t know about other but I don’t spend my credits as soon as I got them as I read just a few series. And with that, even just 12 credits a year are still plenty for me. Combining with continuous minimal support of buying yearly membership I continue have more credits than I can sometimes spend. If I don’t spend it right away, then it will be devalued later.
I didn’t make myself clear in the previous thread. But others have also voiced their opinion. So I will just drop this. I only made comments due to the rant. That’s all.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in Upcoming JNC light novel price increases:
Well if you are one of these folks, and you think this change will mean that you didn't win the game anymore, or that this change will bite you in the butt; sorry, too bad. I have no sympathy for you.
Well there is that one person who was seeking a refund on their credits because apparently they had it in writing from Sam that credits wouldn't get devalued. But I don't think most people were buying huge amounts of credits as an investment and hedge against future inflation. Most people were taking advantage of the 17% discount on top of the discount their premium membership afforded them and they won't lose the full value on those purchases until LN prices increase to above 817 coins.
It could be worse, if JNC was declaring bankruptcy your credits would be worth nothing if you had nothing you wanted to redeem them for and you would be treated as a creditor near the back of the line meaning there's a good chance you wouldn't recover anything.
I'm curious just how many credits someone who has a genuine issue with this (not yet happening on JNC's site) price increase (as opposed to the people arguing this academically). I'm sitting on top of a small amount of credits still, but that's mostly because as we didn't have a credit sale for Black Friday last year and there's been no indication on when a sale under the new system will happen or what it will look like, I've been trimming back some of my ebook purchases to prolong how long it will be before I have to start buying currency from JNC again.
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While the price increasing is a news that most people don't want to hear, but it is inevitable. Prices for everything is rising, so thinking that JNC will remain same is a statement that'll not hold at all.
And JNC at least informed the increase of prices well before it actually happened, which lets people discuss about that. I have seen many who never inform about the price increase, and the users can do nothing there. So lets take it positively.
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@Jon-Mitchell
100% agree with DarKrad, this rubs me the wrong way so much.Your rant is so backwards and comes off as very snobbish. If I wanted to game the system I'd just torrent the catalogue.
You think its difficult to pirate this sort of media? Let me tell you, its not.
i've only been a member for a few months and that was purely due to Bookworm, which I was originally buying on Amazon (at a lower base price mind you). I actually delayed getting membership, for a whole month, because the membership was a bit unclear at the time, I then bit the bullet, because I really wanted to read more Bookworm and I had caught up with the published series. After, using the membership it then became clearer as to what it provided, and I was actually suprised by how advantageous/generous some of the benefits were (E.G catchup series etc).
This also has nothing to do with inflation, because some of the changes are retrospective to already sunkcosts (existing catalogue). If you want a comparable digital market go look at what is happening to prices of digital media such as Games. Oh wait, absolutely nothing, because its a sunk cost, in a competitive market. Inflation is a whole different discussion and at present barely affects any products, at least in my country the UK.
My main concern was about pre-existing obligations being fulfilled in relation to outstanding subscriptions, and maintaining clarity as to the benefits of membership, because if its unclear as to what you actually get access to, this will invetiably reduce overall subscriptions, which means a reduced catalogue, which is bad for everyone.
This isn't because I give a shit about the $12 difference involved in this change, but its more of a matter of principle as to what I understood to have signed up to. This would have been the same situation for those who bulk bought credits, whether that be 10 credits or 100 credits, for whatever reason.
If you up and went and bought some coupons that were on sale in January, and they said they are reedmable until October, and you got told in June that these can be redeemed for only half the value now, was that you "gaming the system", or was that you making a purchasing decision as a consumer based on a promise by the seller?
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@Tremarl said in Upcoming JNC light novel price increases:
100% agree with DarKrad, this rubs me the wrong way so much.
Your rant is so backwards and comes off as very snobbish. If I wanted to game the system I'd just torrent the catalogue.I wasn't criticizing you , I'm calling out 2 specific observations
- some folks who stockpiled credits without paying membership dues
- complaints that transition to coins would devalue stockpiled credits
it occurred to me that the only people really effected by the change (other than normal inflation) we're those that stockpiled the credits - and those same people (as I mentioned those people were in other forums) did it to game the system- you are a new member, who presumably doesn't have a stockpile of credits, my rant most likely doesn't apply to you.
I have no problem with folks spending their money in any way they want: be a member, don't be a member, stockpile credits, buy from amazon one book at a time or whatever - what annoyed me and caused a rant- was when It seemed to me folks (not necessarily in this thread) were complaining about the choices that they made- that those choices had consequences.
piracy isn't gaming the system, piracy is stealing
I don't want to go to far into the weeds, and I don't have insider knowledge of JNC's contracts with the original Japanese publishers/creators - but games are not a comparable digital media. When one develops a game - it costs a ton before a single copy/instance gets sold, and once you make back that initial production cost, the incremental cost of the game (or any other software product, i.e. Microsoft Office, online games [like World or Warcraft] are a different animal as they have recurring costs and recurring revenue) is nearly zero, just distribution- that's your 'sunk cost' - translated/licensed ebooks are different- the incremental cost is NOT nearly zero. License fees which have term limits - need to be renewed, and royalties still need to be paid on every ebook sold, a class outfit like JNC still occasionally updates epub files in the 'library' = costs, and some of those titles in the back catalog still might not have 'made back' the sunk cost.
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I just want to remind everyone that all this arguing over the devaluation of credits is about a theoretical event. There has been no announcement of a price increase on JNC's site. There is no announced devaluation of any converted credits at this time. Chances seem high it will happen in the next year, but I'm also reasonably sure that JNC isn't going to pull a no notice price increase on us either.
Regarding the actual devaluation, this is also something that goes away on it's own as time goes on assuming people are spending credits faster than membership gives them new ones (and I would assume people who bought a small mountain of credits are chasing enough series that that mountain goes down faster than people who only bought a pile of credits). If JNC waits until say Jan 2023 to raise their site prices, that would be 2 years since the last sale, if someone had purchased 100 credits in the last sale (that would have been $500 as a premium member and was the purchase limit for a single transaction) they would have spent it all if they're picking up 5 ebooks a month. I would imagine that the number of members who bought in excess of 100 credits are in the slim minority.
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@Jon-Mitchell Stockpiling credits is not gaming the system, its purchasing a currency that JNC use. This is called a transaction.
If the intention was to never let people stockpile credits, then they wouldn't be using credits as a currency, they'd be using cash on purchase. The reason why they use credits is most likely as below:
- It simplifies the purchasing process as pricing is standardized and this indicates as such
- (The bigger reason) - It allows people to buy credits they may not neccessarily redeem immediately, which is essentially a pre-sale. [That is, it directly promotes bulk buying]
Pre-sales are prefferrable over normal sales, because they are immediate cashflow injections, and are therefore more valuable.
People stockpiling credits is a massive benefit to J-Novel. In the same way people buying gift cards is a massive boon for retail outlets.
This is not even discussing credits that may never get used, which is essentially free money for JNC.
If you are licensing a product for translation and then sale you'd be licensing it for the life of the copyright which is 75 years after the death of the Author, because you are licensing the ability to modify the product into its own copyright (this is what a translation is). [In fact the copyright of the translation may exceed that of the original]
The only time "renewal fees" might come into play is if you were not translating it, but instead attempting to procure an exclusive license to sell a pre-existing work.
Just so you understand an English Translation of a Japanese Novel and the Original Japanese are different literary works for the purpose of copyright. However, licensing is sought because the English Translation is a derivative work, and so permission needs to be granted to modify the original work.
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@Tremarl - do you have a pile of unused credits that you don't plan to use for many months, or is this theoretical concern for others?
There are many real, existing things in the world to get worked up about without worrying about hypotheticals.
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Hello,
Let’s avoid getting into the any personal details about others.
The conversation has been civil (for the most part), let’s keep it that way.
We want to avoid the discussion like of users themselves, and stick to the context of the matter at hand, often times it does not take more than a single comment to break the proverbial camel’s back.
Thank you
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Personally I was never confortable with people who purchase huge amounts of credits. That's why I always tried to keep the artificial 10 credit at a time limit (we raised it to 25 a little while ago since yes, some series are more than 10 volumes long now!).
However on black friday sales in the past I reluctantly allowed 100 at a time.I believe there are only <10 people who have more than 200 or so credits unused in their accounts. And there was that one time someone wanted to buy 600 credits at a time thinking they would use ~150 a year but they ended up only using 150 in like, 3.5 years.... Which is why I suppose I should have refused at the time in order to protect them.
I offered to help them fascilitate them selling their credits to other users if they felt they would never be able to spend them but...Maybe we should implement some kind of cap to the total number of coins someone can hold in their account. Like 50,000?
If people are hell bent on using JNC as some kind of hedge against inflation I suppose they can make multiple accounts and we can't really stop them though... -
@Tremarl One thing I think I should clarify: Unused credits are not free profit for JNC.
A credit held by a user is tracked on our accounting as a liability (currently set by fiat at $6.03, which is the average price the person paid for that credit). It's not counted as profit for JNC until that credit is used and that liability is removed from the books. We have quite a large liability on our balance sheet from these unused credits and by law we can't actually expire them easily (it depends on the state, but most states would require filing so-called unclaimed property forfeiture paperwork, and since we don't even know the address of people that's not possible).
It does provide a benefit to our cash flow, and cash-on-hand, but it's not "pure profit" for us, that's not how accounting works. It would be better for us if everyone immiedately used all the credits/coins they bought.
For coins however once we get a few months in we should be able to model a usage rate/purchase rate and I plan on "booking" some of the unused coins' value as profit offset by the amount of newly purchased coins, but only so much as to fuly cover the theoretical debt.
