Should Fully Fan Translated Series be licensed?

Zing

Oh, this went off the rails... Sorry.

Malloc

Thank you, I was not aware that Bookwalker got an early release. I've noticed that Shield Hero sometimes get digital only releases on bookwalker before other digital distributers get it.

Sometimes the physical book is out way before Amazon and other sites get digital while Bookwalker already has the digital.

Jon Mitchell

The more I read the concerns about the business angle of why not to license The Familiar of Zero, the more it makes me think that Sam might have heard the same things about Rokojouma. (When he first starting licensing it) I wonder if the Kickstarter campaign goes well that will presage other projects being feasible that otherwise would’ve been to “niche” to a particular fan base. Of course the cases aren’t congruent. JNC already has licensed Rokojouma and I don’t know if a publisher/author would provisionally license a work for a kickstarter project (or if kickstarters are good business)

Definitely food for thought

smashman42

@jon-mitchell I thought Sam (or someone involved in JNC) had previously said Kickstarter et al would only work for extras for already licensed stuff (like a physical print run for an already published digitally book) not to start something from scratch.

I mean, think about how that would look to the original content holder? Not game to put your money where your mouth is to bid, waiting on the customers to pre-pay - pretty much says you think their content is shit & won't sell.

Paul Nebeling

@jon-mitchell I'm thinking Sam took a chance on Rokujouma, and it looks like it paid off. JNC's relationship with HJ seems solid with a promising future. I'm going to be interested to see how the kickstarter turns out.

the green death

I doubt my favorite LN, Empty Box actually would have been released if it hadn’t been for how popular the fan translation was, so I don’t know if things are completely binary with fan translations making it doable or not. I’m certainly happy Yen took a chance on that because I’d have never read it if it hadn’t been officially released.

renofury

There will be a segment of the market that will just not reread a title that they already read.

However there are also other market segments that could support the official release, like people avoiding fan translations or people that want to re read the material.

In my case I read the Overlord fan translation, but also bought all the physical copies of the book. Still I never read the books and they been just collecting dust on my bookshelf