January 2023 Livestream!
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@Windsagio During an internal town hall presentation we had a few weeks ago I shared some genre based sales data from sales 2021->2022 to around ~80+ freelancers attending (all under NDA, but I mean, people talk).
JNC Heart does "good enough" but is unable to break into the top ~30% of best sellers no matter how popular the series, and the top sellers within the category like Tearmoon and Bakarina are arguably crossover titles and not exactly Heart. Strong correlation is seen also with heart with anything that has too "shoujo" looking art on the cover, knocking sales down strongly.
Romcoms universally sell poorly. The best-selling romcoms we have seem to be ones with the sexiest art on the cover. No romcom has broken into top 50% of selling volumes. Anime adaptations give sales a temporary 3-4 times boost, but 3-4 times still barely makes them profitable, if at all.
Classic series like full metal/slayers sell terribly, 100% of the time. Only print editions sell for those. Later volumes of classic series can sell <100 copies each digitally. So our ability to license classic series is tied to our ability to put out print editions (otherwise we're looking at 5-figure losses for longer series.)
"Classic" seems to apply even to series from like, 2015 or 2016.
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Wow, that’s… understandable, but still rough. I guessed that the shoujo genre would be tough to attract fans because the same shit happens in manga, but damn.
The whole thing about classics suck too. Could it possibly be due to the fact that series that old may have fan translations already?
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@Torka They only buy print editions and/or there aren't that many of them to begin with. It's a classic "vocal minority" issue.
One thing that's interesting is that looking at bookscan numbers, even the MOST popular light novel series like overlord seem to have a pretty low sales ceiling compared to manga (in print).
In my opinion the overall market size for light novels in print is actually smaller than the digital market. We've seen multiple series selling 25K plus copies digitally, but I think only sword art online ever reached that physically, and that was over like 10 years + of sales. So who are these digital light novel buyers? They aren't the same people who are buying print editions of things like slayers. They are people who enjoy reading novels online, like webnovels, or people who enjoy genre ficition in general on kindle, for example.
They are people attracted by google play or amazon's algorithms with "if you liked this, you'll love this" suggestions. They are people who are looking for the cheapest/easiest way to read the story of an anime they watched to see what happens next, etc.Here's a simple fact: oversummoned is (as a certain reddit mod would say) an "axed" light novel series. When we announced it people derided the choice (and somewhat correctly deduced it was mostly because we wanted the manga, which is also selling some of the best of any manga we do).
(that being said, the official status of these novels is "unscheduled", aka they could publish future volumes if they want to.)
This status was known to the community, certain people definitely crowed very hard about it.
And yet, for some reason, vol 1/2 sold extremely well. They are still selling 4-5 copies every day.This tells me basically, that the community of people actually buying the epubs is quite different than the the community which is complaining about axed series or series that "are too new", for example.
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@admin That all sounds very logical and practical, but where is your SOUL?
On a more serious note the cohort of webnovel/genre fiction reading Kindle casuals despite their numbers sound like a very fickle lot that you would have to throw stuff at twice as hard just to retain in the same numbers like a Red Queen effect because of how much other stuff competes for their attention, compared to the fanatics who will just buy everything reliably as long as it isn't what they consider beneath them
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@Microdynames So you are making a chase after the fickle masses vs. satisfy your base argument? JNC has always at least attempted to walk that tight rope, and we will continue to do so.
Sometimes it seems we are leaning one way or the other but yes, I understand the necessity of frankly, doing both. -
@admin not really chasing an argument, just trying to observe why the volume of "trash" may be necessarily so high for the thread in general, in a "man, that sounds rough" sort of way. Wasn't directed antagonistically at you specifically, sorry. The SOVL thing was just a shitpost, I'm sure Discommunication had enough soul in it to make a Philosopher's Stone
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@admin That's amazing information, thank you for sharing and being so open!
It's a weird unique space, sounds like.
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@Microdynames said in January 2023 Livestream!:
ls despite their numbers sound like a very fickle lot that you would have to throw stuff at twice as hard just to retain in the same numbers like a Red Queen effe
This again is coming from a slightly different industry (but still fully online), but taken in mass fans generally are not fickle, but are incredibly predictable.
Some of the info @admin gave us makes a ton of sense in that realm, I can definitely feel the 'sexy art' thing, we use that shamelessly in games too at certain moments. Similarly the shojo/romcom thing. I'm kind of impressed there's any market for that in English speaking regions at all (and some of my favorite works on here are in that genre!)
Vocal superfans are very tricky to cater to, they're often substantially out of sync with the market as a whole.
Logic is out, Unreasonableness is in!
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@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:
Vocal superfans are very tricky to cater to, they're often substantially out of sync with the market as a whole.
That sounds an awfully lot like movie critics vs. actual audience opinions...
Green's Theorem
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@piisfun It's a little different, in that critics are supposed to be experts, but there's also a gap there.
What's good and What sells are not necessarily related (this is made worse because 'what's good' is super subjective).
I'd compare it really directly to the <insert fantasy series> megafans who get mad when a beloved character isn't presented truly enough to the source material. From a business perspective those people are gonna buy either way, even if they claim otherwise, so you don't worry about them. You make your product for everyone, not just the ones that are already sold.
In movies it's tricky too, because there's a lot of hype and a lot of perceived value. I've worked with a lot of former LucasArts people for instance, and the reality was that anything with the Star Wars IP will sell and will make big money, as long as you hit some basic levels of quality. Fans of Star Wars will buy it, and many (as with the movies) will convince themselves it's good because they knew it was good before they saw it. That rule doesn't directly apply to LN's because at least over here most people don't know and certainly don't have special loyalty to a series coming in, but it's def a thing to movies. Avatar 2 was going to make a ton of money whether it was good or not, and because of Avatar 1.
Logic is out, Unreasonableness is in!
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@Windsagio Maybe there is a bit of the above, everyone seems to have known that Seventh was by the "Side character in an otome game" guy, dunno if it actually drove any sales though (most of what I saw was "Man why does he hate sisters so bad?")
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It's always interesting to hear what the gulf is between what the community that discusses things thinks is popular vs what really sells.
So far everything discussed does tell me that I'm obviously not part of that group that buys all the trendy series.
I actually wanted to buy some series in print, but I just have no bookshelf room so I've been buying all my LNs digitally.
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@Windsagio I was thinking more fickle in that anything, not just Japanese light novels, could scratch that same itch, causing lots of movement towards Chinese webnovels for example.
EDIT: And, if the livestream prediction is correct, potentially AI-written OELNs in the future.
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@Microdynames Could be, but Japanese pop culture has a penetration that Chinese (or Korean) stuff doesn't.
A few of the other publishers have published some Korean or Chinese stuff, and I'd bet real money that sales are noticeably lower, just because people are so accustomed to the Japanese style and everyone now (almost) has grown up with Anime and Manga being a major force.
Logic is out, Unreasonableness is in!
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@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:
A few of the other publishers have published some Korean or Chinese stuff, and I'd bet real money that sales are noticeably lower
Have you heard of danmei? That stuff is burning up the charts >.>
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@admin Thanks for sharing this fascinating information!
I am curious to hear if there is a large difference in sales among the top 10 highest earners, say between the 1st and the 5th top sellers whether there is a huge gap in the number of sales or if it's a small gap
(I am doing research into the English speaking light novel market as part of my graduate school studies, so I very interested in the minutiae, besides it's fascinating to get of better picture of the marketplace)
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@myskaros I was under the impression danmei is a slightly different kettle of fish (market demographic)
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@myskaros I haven't, I'll have to look :p
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@piisfun said in January 2023 Livestream!:
@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:
Vocal superfans are very tricky to cater to, they're often substantially out of sync with the market as a whole.
That sounds an awfully lot like movie critics vs. actual audience opinions...
Honestly, I think movie critics are often more in tune with actual audience opinions than superfans are.
Critics focus on storytelling technique and ’art’.
Superfans focus on fictional universes, continuity arguments, and fan service (in the broader sense).
Average audiences just want to be entertained.
...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.
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@admin said in January 2023 Livestream!:
Classic series like full metal/slayers sell terribly, 100% of the time. Only print editions sell for those. Later volumes of classic series can sell <100 copies each digitally. So our ability to license classic series is tied to our ability to put out print editions (otherwise we're looking at 5-figure losses for longer series.)
"Classic" seems to apply even to series from like, 2015 or 2016.It's too bad you aren't able to negotiate conditional licenses for these, then use crowdfunding like Right Stuf did for Dirty Pair, Aria English dub, etc.
There are a few I'd chip in way more than 699 coins just to find out what happens after the anime, and read what was cut from it.
5 figures isn't that high a bar for crowdfunding if you can attract enough minnows like me plus a few superfan whales.
