Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!
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I love J-Novel Club premium ebooks!!! First, they are completely drm free, so I really own them and not only have a illusory feeling like with different ebook publishers/platforms. Second, the overall quality is superb, the image quality is really good and I love that. Third, there are often some nice extras like bonus stories included and for fourth, it doesn‘t take any space.
It‘s a really good marketing strategy, so why don‘t other publishers like for example Seven Seas Entertainment or Yen Press adopt this too?!
I am especially disappointed at Seven Seas Entertainment for not offering something similar at least. They have so many novels I would love to buy as premium ebooks (and most of the times, they get the especially good novels on top of it). Since they are also rather long series and buying them in print is rather expensive on the long run (and it‘s not always clear, if you can even get them), I don‘t have much other choice but to buy the books I want for the kindle. Don‘t get me wrong, the ebook quality is quite decent and easy and comfortable to read, but there is always the lingering feeling in the background that I don‘t really own them, at least not like with J-Novel Club‘s premium ebooks... -
For the no-DRM bit, that might be a contract issue. It's entirely possible that in order to do so, Seven Seas and Yen Press would have to revisit every series they've ever licensed, and request the right to sell it directly. JNC (and other new publishers who've followed suit) have done their direct sales from the beginning, so it's already something they would've negotiated if necessary.
As for the bonuses, well I assume that JNC aren't given those things for free (when stories, I fully believe the translation team don't work on them for free), so it's about whether or not they think purchasing such additional materials would lead to an overall profit.
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Also, IIRC the JNC manga premiums aren't DRM-free, because that was part of the manga publishers' requirements for Premium Manga to become a thing. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
My grasp on sanity remains absolute.
Oh, right, the poison, the poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison. ...That poison?
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@TheGrimLich There's no DRM on the manga downloads (just regular epub files, same as the LN downloads).
I believe there is DRM on the online copies, though.
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@GeorgeMTO Thanks a lot for the explanation, it helps a lot to understand the different circumstances of the publishers. Still, I hope Seven Seas Entertainment and Yen Press will offer such drm free (and high quality) ebooks for their light novels someday in the future at least. I wouldn‘t complain if there weren‘t even any extras included like there are with J-Novel Club‘s premium ebooks. That said I already knew that this part is something J-Novel Club extra negiotiated with the original publishers to get. In that sense...
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I agree. DRM-free ebooks with bonus stories is great, and that's what got me to sign up to J Novel Club in tbe first place.
Another light novel publisher that has DRM-free ebooks is Cross Infinite Worlds. They don't sell directly, but I have bought some of their books DRM-free through Kobo. Kobo lists the type of DRM on the product page for each book, so you can see whether a book is DRM-free before buying.
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@strangeattractor Okay, thanks. I didn‘t know that. Maybe I will try it out in the next days.
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I just with more publishers did direct sale of ebooks; it allows one to circumvent Amazon and such delisting titles, and while a great offender, Amazon isn't the only one to do so.
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"Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!"
well they probably can but they don't/won'tthe OP posed 3 questions
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why do other publishers use DRM?
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why is overall quality and image quality specifically not as good outside of JNC?
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why don't other publishers include 'extras'?
as someone else already mentioned, DRM might be part of the contract, or something their legal team is insisting on (because they are paranoid) for the rest - the answer is money. Better image quality, extras, etc. cost money. JNC has decided that the return on that investment (in goodwill to members, marketing, additional profit on ebooks sold direct etc.) I'm guessing some other publishers just have a different strategy/philosophy about getting to a better bottom line - do whatever amazon wants, spend the least amount in production possible
I read banned books
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@Jon-Mitchell said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
I'm guessing some other publishers just have a different strategy/philosophy about getting to a better bottom line - do whatever amazon wants, spend the least amount in production possible
And this, kids, is why monopolies are bad. Unbuxom needs to dissolve.
My grasp on sanity remains absolute.
Oh, right, the poison, the poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison. ...That poison?
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@TheGrimLich said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
And this, kids, is why monopolies are bad.
I'm trying to be nuanced here, but I'll apologize in advance as I'm pretty sure this will come out wrong
agreed monopolies are bad- but the strategy/philosophy about the bottom line is about profit and maybe caring a little less about the quality of the final product, if a sufficient product can be made that will sell adequately
for example if higher res art costs more to include, but doesn't increase sales why bother? (might be the attitude of a particular executive) if 90% of sales are via kindle, making your ebook 'kindle friendly' is smart
I'm not saying this is a good thing (for art or customers) but is a reality where businesses need to make a profit to continue to produce - and where different companies have different strategies, that IS a good thing. competition breeds innovation (Hello JNC! and your innovative premium content) Amazon is a near monopoly in many of the markets it's tentacles slither into- but 7Seas vs JNC vs one peace vs cross infinate worlds vs yen press (before jnc partnership w/ Yen's parent company) is kinda the opposite of that, yea?
side note - yea Amazon needs to be broken up for a whole list of reasons off topic that I won't enumerate here
I read banned books
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@Jon-Mitchell Oh, I'm not arguing that companies that feel (if we're being honest, almost certainly somewhat rightly) that they have to be on Amazon are in the wrong. No, I lay all the blame for Amazon being a crap company at the feet of exactly one company, and that is Amazon. They are the reason they suck, and blaming the companies that are the target of either their piss-poor content moderation or their staff dislikes is, in my opinion, victim-blaming — because they are most certainly victims of Amazon's bullshit.
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To be fair, "making the most money while spending the least money" is just what most companies do; Amazon was simply being used as a common denominator that represents a convenient yardstick to define the floor of what is necessary when it comes to ebooks.
One thing I don't think has been mentioned when it comes to contracts is that the original/current contract usually contains everything from royalty rates to what happens to the rights after X amount of time to copyright text requirements, and of course can include what platforms the product can be sold on and what kind of digital security is necessary. Trying to remove a DRM requirement could require renegotiating the entire contract, and that's something both sides dislike doing.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros
Right.
If you are going to offer DRM free products, that had best be part of the initial contract.
Contracts can be renegotiated... but if you open a contract for renegotiation, in general that means every clause is up for renegotiation.
One really wants to avoid doing that. -
Yen Press's titles interest me more than J-novel Club's, but I have yet to buy a single Yen Press ebook due to DRM concerns. And because physical copies are so expensive, I only buy those I'm certain I'll like.
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@Cid said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
Yen Press's titles interest me more than J-novel Club's, but I have yet to buy a single Yen Press ebook due to DRM concerns. And because physical copies are so expensive, I only buy those I'm certain I'll like.
There's nothing wrong with being anti-DRM, but as bad as Amazon is about yanking titles form smaller publishers like Hanashi and JNC, the Kindle app runs on everything.
Also, even for the titles they de-listed you can still download them if you bought them. The only title I know of that they actually removed from devices was an edition of 1984 that was published by some scammer who did not have the publishing rights.
There's no chance of Amazon dropping Kindle publishing, so anything you buy there will be available for at least your lifetime.
(Google? Who knows, they love to cancel apps. Apple? Not going anywhere but app support on non-Apple devices is less certain.)
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@HarmlessDave said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
@Cid said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
Yen Press's titles interest me more than J-novel Club's, but I have yet to buy a single Yen Press ebook due to DRM concerns. And because physical copies are so expensive, I only buy those I'm certain I'll like.
There's nothing wrong with being anti-DRM, but as bad as Amazon is about yanking titles form smaller publishers like Hanashi and JNC, the Kindle app runs on everything.
Also, even for the titles they de-listed you can still download them if you bought them. The only title I know of that they actually removed from devices was an edition of 1984 that was published by some scammer who did not have the publishing rights.
There's no chance of Amazon dropping Kindle publishing, so anything you buy there will be available for at least your lifetime.
(Google? Who knows, they love to cancel apps. Apple? Not going anywhere but app support on non-Apple devices is less certain.)
Amazon actually removed copies of many books, 1984 is just the most widely reported because of the irony of Amazon remotely deleting copies of 1984 without warning or consent. At the time, Amazon's policy was that they would let anyone publish any manusccript they wanted, without even the most cursory automated plagiarism checks, and they let that go on for a while despite knowing about the issue, until they started pissing off some of the big publishers by illegally publishing huge name recent releases that were still making the publishers tons of money like Harry Potter (this was back when the books were still being published or had just finished publishing but the movies were still releasing).
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@Cooper-Cummings-gk5u8qq said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
@HarmlessDave said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
@Cid said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
Yen Press's titles interest me more than J-novel Club's, but I have yet to buy a single Yen Press ebook due to DRM concerns. And because physical copies are so expensive, I only buy those I'm certain I'll like.
There's nothing wrong with being anti-DRM, but as bad as Amazon is about yanking titles form smaller publishers like Hanashi and JNC, the Kindle app runs on everything.
Also, even for the titles they de-listed you can still download them if you bought them. The only title I know of that they actually removed from devices was an edition of 1984 that was published by some scammer who did not have the publishing rights.
There's no chance of Amazon dropping Kindle publishing, so anything you buy there will be available for at least your lifetime.
(Google? Who knows, they love to cancel apps. Apple? Not going anywhere but app support on non-Apple devices is less certain.)
Amazon actually removed copies of many books, 1984 is just the most widely reported because of the irony of Amazon remotely deleting copies of 1984 without warning or consent. At the time, Amazon's policy was that they would let anyone publish any manusccript they wanted, without even the most cursory automated plagiarism checks, and they let that go on for a while despite knowing about the issue, until they started pissing off some of the big publishers by illegally publishing huge name recent releases that were still making the publishers tons of money like Harry Potter (this was back when the books were still being published or had just finished publishing but the movies were still releasing).
I'm not surprised, at first they were as bad about checking things as they still are for no-name sellers offering 20,000 GB USB sticks for $5 (hint: actual capacity 256 MB). Were any of them not plagiarism / copyright violation like with 1984?
They've de-listed books permanently (just like app stores like Steam do), but I can still download the Sol Press titles and Hanashi's first version of Another World Survival.
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@HarmlessDave said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
@Cooper-Cummings-gk5u8qq said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
@HarmlessDave said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
@Cid said in Why can‘t other publishers offer premium ebooks too?!:
Yen Press's titles interest me more than J-novel Club's, but I have yet to buy a single Yen Press ebook due to DRM concerns. And because physical copies are so expensive, I only buy those I'm certain I'll like.
There's nothing wrong with being anti-DRM, but as bad as Amazon is about yanking titles form smaller publishers like Hanashi and JNC, the Kindle app runs on everything.
Also, even for the titles they de-listed you can still download them if you bought them. The only title I know of that they actually removed from devices was an edition of 1984 that was published by some scammer who did not have the publishing rights.
There's no chance of Amazon dropping Kindle publishing, so anything you buy there will be available for at least your lifetime.
(Google? Who knows, they love to cancel apps. Apple? Not going anywhere but app support on non-Apple devices is less certain.)
Amazon actually removed copies of many books, 1984 is just the most widely reported because of the irony of Amazon remotely deleting copies of 1984 without warning or consent. At the time, Amazon's policy was that they would let anyone publish any manusccript they wanted, without even the most cursory automated plagiarism checks, and they let that go on for a while despite knowing about the issue, until they started pissing off some of the big publishers by illegally publishing huge name recent releases that were still making the publishers tons of money like Harry Potter (this was back when the books were still being published or had just finished publishing but the movies were still releasing).
I'm not surprised, at first they were as bad about checking things as they still are for no-name sellers offering 20,000 GB USB sticks for $5 (hint: actual capacity 256 MB). Were any of them not plagiarism / copyright violation like with 1984?
They've de-listed books permanently (just like app stores like Steam do), but I can still download the Sol Press titles and Hanashi's first version of Another World Survival.
I don't know if any of them were for reasons other than plagiarism, it is hard to find a ton of info because this was 10+ years ago, but remotely deleting books from devices people own was hardly an appropriate solution. The previous precedent for how to handle publishers completely disregarding copyright laws and publishing stuff they have no rights to publish was that they have to pay the actual rights holder monetary damages amounting to something in the ballpark of the amount of revenue they made off the illegally published books + some punitive damages to prevent them trying again in the hopes they don't get caught.
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@Cooper-Cummings-gk5u8qq I can't say Amazon is aggressive about deleting spam titles from user accounts anymore...
I have been waiting for a certain series to become available in the US. Watched it on a "third party" (cough, cough) site for over a year. Suddenly it showed up on Amazon, at an aggressive price, $3/volume, and under the name of the main person doing the translation for the 3rd-party sites.
I bought it, confirmed it was the scam site version, and immediately wrote a review of it, pointing out that it was put out by someone not associated with the author or publisher. I figured that was the best I could do.
Amazon immediately removed the title from sale. My review stayed up for maybe a week. But the title is still in my collection.
I'm still waiting for an official translation.
