Exactly how popular are these light novels?
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Is it just me, or do most of J-Novel Club's books all look the same? License suggestions for anything different are often met with "horror doesn't sell" or "old books don't sell," as if readers check the copyright dates of everything they buy. What I'd like to ask is, do the majority of these 92 isekai really make enough money to offset the costs of translation? I just can't believe the market is large enough to accommodate so many series in the same few genres. When a business wishes to make money in a saturated market, the solution is to expand to other markets.
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@Cid said in Exactly how popular are these light novels?:
What I'd like to ask is, do the majority of these 92 isekai really make enough money to offset the costs of translation?
The answer is, in general, yes. Isekai sells far better than anything else in the light novel sphere, at least in terms of what little public info we have regarding JNC's sales (and light novel sales in general). There's a reason so much of it gets produced and licensed in the first place.
I've made the "it's too old" comment a few times in the past, and I'm not trying to shut anyone down from making recommendations; you should cheer for what you want. I'm just offering info to set expectations. And occasionally they even do throw us a curveball, like Earl and Fairy. But at the same time, last we knew, E&F is selling below what they had hoped.
The good news is that there's 120 titles with the isekai tag, out of 306. Therefore only around 40% of what JNC has is isekai, meaning there's still plenty of other stuff to dig into. So if you're asking "why does everything look the same", it may just be that you haven't dug deeply enough into their library. (Or maybe because even the non-isekai stuff leans heavily on fantasy...but fantasy also sells. :P)
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@Cid If you had access to the numbers I think you would fall into a deep depression and question society.
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@saffire said in Exactly how popular are these light novels?:
The answer is, in general, yes. Isekai sells far better than anything else in the light novel sphere, at least in terms of what little public info we have regarding JNC's sales (and light novel sales in general). There's a reason so much of it gets produced and licensed in the first place.
Even so, they've already translated more than anyone has time to read. Why sell 1 copy of 100 different works when one can sell 100 copies of a single work for a fraction of the effort? Is JNC like a freemium game developer where their profits come from whales?
I didn't expect Earl & Fairy to sell well. I will be holding that over everyone's heads the next time I'm told my requests are unpopular. "That didn't stop them from licensing Earl & Fairy."
Most isekai are effectively indistinguishable from other fantasy, as the protagonist's original life rarely has any relevance to the story. My problem isn't the traveling between worlds. It's that I dislike the style of fantasy that is most prevalent in the light novel industry. I did buy a few volumes of Slayers, but I'd rather read more by authors like Miyuki Miyabe and Nahoko Uehashi.
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@Cid said in Exactly how popular are these light novels?:
Why sell 1 copy of 100 different works when one can sell 100 copies of a single work for a fraction of the effort?
Because your assumption is that all works are comparable in sales. I'm sorry you don't like isekai and think they're all the same, but each individual isekai series tends to sell orders of magnitude better than series like ones you've stated you do like.
At the end of the day, we need to be able to pay for new licenses and for translators and editors and graphic artists to localize the content, so we will place a much greater focus on licensing and selling content that consumers are paying for.
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Isekai is just the current big thing like how girls-doing-cute-things was the big thing like 10ish years ago, battle academy schools before that.
Do alot of Isekai series look the same? Ya, it's a genre that's over-saturated with a lot of authors using the exact same tropes and themes over and over. If you think it's just an issue at JNC, try looking at the world of WNs / Manga. Tons and tons of WN / Manga are essentially the same using the same recycled tropes.
It'll fade away in time and another theme will take it's place (hopefully mecha).
It makes sense for JNC (and other companies) to license what's selling.
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Keep in mind that isekai stories are fairly easy to set up; the codification of tropes & cliches into a recognizable narrative structure means that they are basically starter kits for newbie writers. As such this leads to a greater number of these types of stories being written.
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I'd rather read more by authors like Miyuki Miyabe and Nahoko Uehashi.
The majority of Miyabe's fantasy works (unfortunately, I'm not familiar with English mystery/thriller sphere to know how her crime books did) were published under Haikasoru, VIZ Media imprint focused on publishing fresh, innovative sci-fi and fantasy Japanese books. Which underperformed, to put it lightly, with only notable sellers being All You Need is Kill/Edge of Tomorrow (because of the movie) and Legend of the Galactic Heroes (the only series they did not discontinue after 1 or 2 volumes).
In comparison, it is not unusual for isekai and fantasy from JNC catalogue to be in top 20000 Amazon rankings a month after release, which is a very good result for niche fiction. -
I don't want this topic to be focused only on a cynical answer like "what sells sells, and what doesn't doesn't, sorry!" so I'll post what I've said before about other genres that people say they want more of but don't get a lot of attention:
Even if anime and manga are closer to mainstream these days, light novels are still incredibly niche. The general population doesn't really know what they are, and they're shelved with manga in big chain bookstores, so your typical western reader who looks at the traditional genre sections will rarely get exposed to them. Even among anime fans, most typically only know that big name series have LN sources and many don't go looking for other books to read.
Publishers like JNC are doing what we can from our side to increase interest and visibility, but readers can also contribute in their own way. If you're discussing anime with other people, make sure they know that there's frequently a source manga or light novel too. If you're discussing books, recommend some light novels that might appeal to your peers. If you have a blog or post a lot on twitter or just hang out in a given Discord server a lot, you can talk about what LNs or manga you're reading and try to generate interest that way.
Popularity trends don't always have a specific origin or cause that can be definitively stated, but instead of waiting for the trend to shift and hoping it becomes something you like more, simply increasing the number of consumers in the market can make the prospect of licensing a less-popular genre less painful for publishers. You're right that it's important to expand our product diversity to avoid stagnation, but trust us, we've been trying and the market just has not rewarded our efforts.
In short, if you want to see less popular genres get licenses, it's important to get what's already available more visibility and more sales, and that's something an average reader can do just by talking about the LNs you like to your friend groups or in online communities.
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@myskaros I don't think you understood my question. I'm wondering why a company would translate both popular and unpopular isekai. Unless fans are reading everything, I expect the less popular series to steal sales away from Shield Hero and Bookworm. I don't mean to single out JNC; I wonder the same thing of Japanese producers who make more anime than anyone has time to watch.
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@Cid I guess I don't really understand where you got that conclusion from. Setting aside the subjective nature of "popular" vs. "unpopular" isekai, I don't believe light novels have such a high monetary and time cost that a given reader will choose to only read from one or the other. In fact, most people I interact with constantly look for more stuff to read beyond what they're already reading.
We license new series because we think or hope that they'll sell. The "saturated market" from your original post is not something we believe has happened yet; there is no indication that we have reached a cap on consumers such that we have to worry about sales cannibalization occurring. I don't have any information to comment on the anime part of your inquiry, though.
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@Cid From what I understand JNC sometimes picks up some series as a gateway to the series they really want from a publisher, or the publisher bundles a bunch of licenses. There's really no point in licensing something and then just sitting on it because it's not the title you were really after, so you're going to translate those other series on the off chance that it becomes a sleeper hit or something.
Here's the thing, just because something is popular in Japan, doesn't mean it will be popular in English. And while there's ways to make educated guesses about stuff, I'm sure it can be a bit of a dartboard when going after licenses that don't already have wildly successful anime series.
I don't think licensing one series is going to steal away fans/sales from another series. It's like TV, there's more stuff being broadcasted on TV than any single person could ever hope to watch, but TV producers don't say "we're only going to broadcast the most popular NHL team so that other teams don't steal away the fans from the most popular team" despite the fact that hockey essentially follows a formula that repeats itself over and over the same way stories of the same genre do.
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@jpwong said in Exactly how popular are these light novels?:
Here's the thing, just because something is popular in Japan, doesn't mean it will be popular in English.
And some licenses have proved the opposite is also true; just because it wasn't popular in Japan doesn't mean it might not be in English audiences.
Isn't that the case with Blacksmith? -
@Village-Idiot brother mecha time was the 80 and 90. I believe the next trends is cooking and slow life. I keep seeing it slowly creep it way up the popularity chart. However I expect isekai to be popular for another 10 or 20 years.
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@admin 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
ETA:
@Cid Way back when, I used to read every series JNC translated. Then the catalog exploded and there was more than I could manage to read in a week's time. Which is not to say that I've stopped reading new licenses. I'm just a bit more selective about what I pick up. I read isekai, fantasy, slice of life, romcom. I'd say my choices are kind of balanced. As for what titles get picked up, I'm thinking JNC's acquisition by Kadokawa was helpful on expanding their available list of titles. I keep hoping that they will pick up the older and generally popular in Japan title Ergomanga Sensei. Unfortunately, it's considered to be a perverse dumpster fire by most Americans. -
@JRPG-Nation I know, but as a mecha fan, one can dream, lol.
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@Paul-Nebeling said in Exactly how popular are these light novels?:
Unfortunately, it's considered to be a perverse dumpster fire by most Americans.
Even companies have to take baby steps. You start with the perverse.
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@Paul-Nebeling most people are degenerates. That they refuse to recognize it a different matter. One look at the female western popular books sales will prove my point. I remember trying to read some of the books few years ago. Felt like I was reading Gilmore Girls on steroids. Never mind all the naked covers of men.
