Does JNC have too much on their plate?
-
@catstorm said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
Bookworm: Last Release August 22nd, 27 days since last release.
They recently said (possibily) multiple parts of the new volume will be released very soon. (I suppose they're being edited?)
How Not to Summon a Demon lord: Last release August 17th, 32 days since last release.
No idea about this one, licensing/contract issues maybe?
Jinrou: Last Release August 7th, 42 days since last release.
This is on hold since the translator is currently working on Arifureta + Arifureta Zero. There are respectively 3 and 5 parts left so Jinrou will probably start back in about ~1 month.
Potion Loli: Last Release July 2nd, 78 days since last release.
No idea about this one either.
Bakarina; Last Release June 28th, 82 days since last release.
Sam said on discord the volume is kinda strange and is about 35% manga. They are tackling all of that before they start releasing the parts for it.
Welcome to japan ms elf: Last release June 17th, 93 days since last release.
Sam mentioned recently on Twitter that the new volume's translation is starting soon.
-
From a resource management perspective it makes sense to me to have translators working at capacity with a queue of extra work waiting for them, rather than hiring extra translators that then sit idle sometimes.
If you don't have enough work for translators to keep them busy, they need to find work at other companies, which leads to commitments at those other companies, which means they are unavailable when you need them.
In general, If you're happy with an employee or contractor's work it's better to keep them working for you than to go through the work to find additional people, try them out, and have some of them fail. At the small company I work for we treat people well partly because we're good people but mostly from self interest since hiring and training replacements is such a pain.
That's a long-winded way of saying that having translators backed up sometimes makes business sense even if some releases take longer to happen.
-
I'm also curious of the state of editors. In case of Bookworm, it seems editors are stretched thinner rather than the translator. Somebody mentioned that print schedule is very much cast in stone long time before due to reserved slot with the printer. We saw that they have very tight deadline between e-pub and print, and that period always coincide with starting of the next volume. Sounds pretty tough to me and this will continue on for 5 years! I wish them luck.
-
@hiroto said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
Sounds pretty tough to me and this will continue on for 5 years! I wish them luck.
The tight schedule is only for the initial volumes in order to have something printed when the anime airs as far as I've understood. Once the anime is done I think the pace will be a little slower, maybe 10 (or more?) parts per volumes.
-
@terabyte
If you look through Quof's post on twitter he said that this quick pace will be until we caught up to the Japanese releases. SO this will truly continue on for 5 years.JNC LN Ranking:
1st - Rokujouma
2nd - Realist Hero
3rd - Bookworm -
@bartzbb Oh, thanks for the heads up then. I don't check much twitter these days.
-
He'll not catch up to Japanese release. With my estimate of Part 5 being 12 volumes, Japanese edition will complete on Dec 2022 (they spend three months on each volume). With our current pace, English edition will complete on Sep 2024 at two months a volume.
-
@hiroto
I really don't know how many years needed to catch up and the only reason I said 5 was because your post above also said 5 so I thought that it was already an estimated year.I thought the current Part is Part 4? Or are you talking about the WN?
-
My point is Quof was wrong to say "..until we caught up to the Japanesereleases...". He only "catch up" when all the volumes to the end of the wholeseries is completed, because Japanese LN release will be completedlong before that.Thus Bookworm will be quick paced all though to the end...
BTW, I just noticed that Part 2 Volume 1 print edition sales date is set to March 3, 2020, and Part 2 Volume 2 print edition is set to June 2, 2020. That is three months gap while all the release interval up to 2-1 are two months. So seems like they have a little break after 2-2 is done? Or it maybe just the way turned out due to printer availability.
EDIT
Ok, I looked for that quote and I don't think Quof said that. He just said:
I'm pleased to announce that I will be translating the Ascendance of a Bookworm light novel. It's quite a special series and it blossoms into something that I really love, so I'm thrilled to be working on it.
Each volume is quite the tome in comparison to your average LN, but I nonetheless specifically asked to translate it at a rate of one volume per two months-ish, rather than per 3-4 months, due to how long the series is.
I would like to keep releases at a brisk pace since this is a series that just gets better and better and better. I really can't wait to have this whole series available to the West. Thanks for reading, and I hope you tag along for the journey!
https://twitter.com/Mr_Quof/status/1107206242043416576
So, he was committed to brisk pace all the way from the beginning.
-
@harmlessdave said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
That's a long-winded way of saying that having translators backed up sometimes makes business sense even if some releases take longer to happen.
It makes good business sense if you're producing fungible goods. If you're not, then you run the risk of customers not coming back.
-
I actually find this whole situation pretty interesting. It is necessary for JNC to license more more titles on a regular basis both to have new content for their subscribers and also to attract new people to the site. However since light novel series have a tendency to be long and ongoing new licenses will be picked up before previous titles have been finished translating resulting in the site having more and more title to translate each month. With this in mind its kinda understandable that some title would have delays since JNC's resources aren't infinite.
-
@hamsterexastris said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
@harmlessdave said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
That's a long-winded way of saying that having translators backed up sometimes makes business sense even if some releases take longer to happen.
It makes good business sense if you're producing fungible goods. If you're not, then you run the risk of customers not coming back.
I might agree if JNC starts to approach Slow Press levels of non-delivery. But even with them, if they ever manage to get 80K volume 2 into e-print I'll pay them despite their glacial release rate.
If you're a fan of series X and you want a professional translation that supports the writer, you don't really have a choice other than wait for the license-holder to deliver because the goods aren't fungible. KonoSuba is not a drop-in replacement for Abilities Average :)
-
I'm not sure if it's too much on JNC's plate, but in the past year, I've gone from reading all of the catchup titles and waiting for new parts to be released to being legitimately challenged to read all of the parts that come out. I'm unable to read all of the LN and manga. It certainly speaks of a huge increase in JNC's output. I personally am not seeing any slowing of the speed that titles get translated.
Keep in mind that there are several titles that are on their final volume. Without trying hard, I can think of three: Daimao, Little Apocalypse and Middle Aged Businessman.
-
ok I think we can officially kill this idea that JNC isn't living up to whatever expectation because they took too much on "their plate" -- have you seen what was released this week? I'm going to have a blissful weekend just catching up with the pre-pubs
now this issue w/ ios 13 and pagination screwed up - that needs to be addressed but not a result of to many projects
