Are we at Jnovel Club's limit?
-
This post is deleted! -
Doubt it, the thing is licensing is a complicated thing as it is already. What I think is going on is finding a LN that's still interesting enough to be licensed is harder than it looks, as JNC would have to hope the subscribers will be interested in whatever gets licensed and actually hope they can license it as well. I do hope it's like the 3 titles we got in a small period of time again. But I also wouldn't rule out what you said as a possibility as well, it's just more unlikely as some of the current LNs (2 that I at least know) have about only 3-4 volumes currently out. I'd assume that in the future we will have LNs that are caught up with the most recent release in Japan that they would have to take a break on that specific LN until the next volume comes out. So that would probably lead to licensing more LNs. Than again I might be wrong.
-
@eternal-wanderer said in Are we at Jnovel Club's limit?:
it feels like its been a long time since anything has been announced or even teased
It's been a little over a month since Clockwork, which I don't think is too long. But as far as teasing, it may be open to interpretation, but I thought Sam teased something would be announced soon'ish with the following quote:
sam-pinansky said in New Acquisitions Speculation General:
When it comes to press, why announce during Anime Expo if we're not there? All it would do is get our announcement scrolled off the headlines faster.
Better to wait the week after. -
Well, this is kind of like a circle really. But I think that to keep the reader interests in jnovel, either each of us has to have several titles in reading list roster every week/month. Of course the number and period depend on each individual but as a bit heavy reader myself, I expect to see something like 6 titles update per weeks or even more depends on my state. And this there is also the state of giving up title and want something as fresh air too (switching genres etc.), so new teaser of every possible genres also a very strong incentive. Abit of this has been mentioned by @Hyferzftw. This feeling of wanting more also gets intensified as each update is also not that long too.
However, current jnovel could not support that due to various reasons (licensing troubles, lack of staffs etc.). So whatever someone says, I'm sure we have reached our limit for now (or forever lol) as I doubt many people have that much title on the roster per weeks. Waiting for the right moment for new announcement asides, providing something like progress checkup on month/bimonth basis will also give us subscriptors more incentive to support the publisher, and also the sense of what @Sam direction would take concerning about the main genres, diversity and the level of story each of us want to see. Another thing that I see is that the novel request does not see that many feedback from the leader himself too, so whether the title we want is all up in the air so is the direction @Sam want really. @hatguy12 Open interpretation means nothing, it's the same as empty promises. Without any direction that also mean no more room for improvements (now and may be forever).
As a side note, running after hype things will also soon come to end, expand along the request of majority without even knowing how many of them willing to stick is a serious stupid move. In addition, all publishers of course actually don't want to try the risk of bringing not-yet-established things over, which is understandable. But, there are also much bigger fishes do the same (hello YenPress), whether jnovel can compete with that is very iffy. I something love to think jnovel as a dark horse worth invested into to have "hidden" good titles. So far, I have not been betrayed by Heroines and Rokujouma (I was waiting for these for long time). But Faraway Paladin blow my expectation away. Jnovel needs to identify which kind of publisher it is soon I think.
p/s: what the heck did I type out...
-
@regex said in Are we at Jnovel Club's limit?:
Another thing that I see is that the novel request does not see that many feedback from the leader himself too, so whether the title we want is all up in the air so is the direction @Sam want really.
Well the Novel Request Topic is an unofficial forum topic made by a user that doesn't even frequent the site anymore...
Also speculating at all on series that negotiations haven't started on at all will just lead to the disappointment of many whose hopes were raised by a comment.
Also the majority of stuff requested in that topic are all from publishers that JNC at this moment does not have access to so as of right now there is absolutely nothing that can be done about that.
We wait and when the publishers wanna work with JNC (like kodansha just started) there will be growth.
-
However, current jnovel could not support that due to various reasons (licensing troubles, lack of staffs etc.). So whatever someone says, I'm sure we have reached our limit for now (or forever lol) as I doubt many people have that much title on the roster per weeks.
I am sure that J-Novel Club hasn't reached any limits yet. There are some licensing troubles due to well... Competition but lack of staff? How do we know Sam hasn't already hired more translators? We didn't know about Warnis or Fofi before their projects were announced. And I am pretty sure Sam is solving the licensing troubles by contacting more publishers ;)
Another thing that I see is that the novel request does not see that many feedback from the leader himself too, so whether the title we want is all up in the air so is the direction @Sam want really.
Sam is really busy, working on the app, website, finalising e-books, getting licenses, etc. He doesn't really have time to answer every request I am sure. I made a request a few months ago and the novel I requested got licensed a few weeks after. This is of course a coincidence but I am sure Sam is taking notes on what people request.
I am pretty sure that J-Novel Club has just started.
-
@Hakomari
Lack of staffs mean many things :), one such thing is that Sam himself should not be the one to be burdened with working on the websites. And I don't remember directly mentioned lack of translators. But for sake of argument, you're also not sure we have enough translators too aren't you. (Except Sam himself).About the request, I have already said it in my post. I repeat it here, how can you sure that he is taking note? Provide me hard evidences then. Understanding that he is doing his work correctly is a subjective matter, like you and me believe but that not the case for that many more people. And just starting does not guarantee it will stick.
@Rahul-Balaggan
I know that too mate, but be disappointed is much differ from being in the dark. For all intents and purposes, we could wait forever to see some growth too. And there are more ways than just pointlessly comment into the thread really. -
@regex said in Are we at Jnovel Club's limit?:
@Rahul-Balaggan
I know that too mate, but be disappointed is much differ from being in the dark. For all intents and purposes, we could wait forever to see some growth too. And there are more ways than just pointlessly comment into the thread really.If we are being left in the dark regarding new license acquisitions then by all standards of common businesses practices JNC is doing everything right.
Until they have sorting tangible to share then undue hype will make people angry (at least I hate overhyped stuff)
They gotta license it, then assign a translation team, and then they have to translate a few parts before they can announce the book lots of time for a lot of stuff.
Not to mention he still has to go back and license the new volumes of series they have already worked on the new Occultic Nine, new Mixed Bathing, new Realist Hero, and all the new Rokujouma books.
-
I hope that JNC hasn't reached its limit. I like the business model. I like Sam. I want this to succeed. However, I don't consider new acquisitions to be the standard to judge that by. The standard should be whether the company is making a profit.
Each new license allows for more opportunities to profit, but there's a significant upfront cost to that. Sam needs to pay the Japanese publishers, translators, editors, etc. There's a risk that acquiring a new series will only bring loss. Even if it is profitable, it may take awhile to receive the revenue. He needs to have enough cash on hand to cover his costs while he's waiting to get paid.
So, I don't mind if there aren't any new licenses for awhile. I want JNC to profit and expand when it's the right time. I trust that Sam will make the right decisions, because he has more invested in this than any of us.
-
I don't have any worries. JNC is still less than a year old. Despite that there are 18 titles already, some close to being caught up. That rate is really impressive.
Money is of course the biggest factor for how quickly JNC can expand. Bite off too much too quickly and you spend all your finances on titles that you don't have enough translators to work on. License too few and people will forget you exist entirely.
I don't know how many paying members JNC has. What I do know is that all of their ebooks are on Amazon, and they all show up for me on the "recommended for you" list when I look for series on there. Anime News Network has reviewed the first volume of quite a few series, which always helps to stir interest. And to me the biggest sign of success is that a larger company is printing physical copies of JNC releases and announcing them at places like Anime Expo. That is HUGE.
TL:DR, I have no worries about JNC's pace. Sam is being smart about his licensing pace, and from an outside perspective everything looks positive.
-
My original business plan has us releasing somewhere between 30 and 60 volumes in year 1. When arifureta 3 gets started a little later today that will be our 60th volume, and it's only been 9 months since we launched.
So we are growing a bit faster than my original plan.I am extremely cognisant about the trap that happens when licensing too many things too quickly, especially when there is an expectation both of the users and the Japanese companies to continue to license and publish all volumes in every series. So although there are definitely a few more licenses up our sleeves, you will probably need to get used to a slower pace for new announcements for a little while. 13-15 series at once is a good level for us, and I will gradually increase it to 16-20 over the course of the next 6-8 months.
That should increase the ebook publishing pace to 8-9 per month on average.
I'll re-evaluate whether the market could handle much more than that as we go... -
@sam-pinansky Thanks for the reply, sorry if I sounded a little like a brat in my original post but I guess I felt a bit spoiled considering how many licensees you were announcing when you guys were new. Whatever you guys have coming next I'm looking forward to it.
-
@sam-pinansky
Thanks you very much for the input. It's very nice that there still more titles to come this year.
And I'm very sorry for everyone, you especially since my comment were coming off very offensive. I didn't think it will get that reaction thought. Well, I have lots of expectation for jnovel so aside from my worry above, which turn out to be not that serious, I have already braced myself for your decision ever since boarding this train anyways. -
@regex And I'd like to thank you, regex, for saving my butt countless times.
Whether it's converting subtitle timecode formats or correcting inconsistent indentation, or fixing straight quotes to smart quotes, I'd have wasted 100s more hours of my life if it weren't for regex.
-
@sam-pinansky said in Are we at Jnovel Club's limit?:
My original business plan has us releasing somewhere between 30 and 60 volumes in year 1. When arifureta 3 gets started a little later today that will be our 60th volume, and it's only been 9 months since we launched.
So we are growing a bit faster than my original plan.I am extremely cognisant about the trap that happens when licensing too many things too quickly, especially when there is an expectation both of the users and the Japanese companies to continue to license and publish all volumes in every series. So although there are definitely a few more licenses up our sleeves, you will probably need to get used to a slower pace for new announcements for a little while. 13-15 series at once is a good level for us, and I will gradually increase it to 16-20 over the course of the next 6-8 months.
That should increase the ebook publishing pace to 8-9 per month on average.
I'll re-evaluate whether the market could handle much more than that as we go...While it was the answer that I was expecting (since myself I thought that 60 volumes was a target you tried to achieve in first year), but certainly there is something that made me anxious about j-novel I mean among your currently novels there is only one title which made me register as premium user, and if we count other "popular" novels it maybe three (I think besides realists kingdoms it also arifureta - good knows whats good is in there and grimgar) that i catch from comments, other titles we might consider as average light novels (although there are some that I enjoyed some among them but I know they are at most slightly above average - Big sister, Mixed Bathing, Infinite Dendogram, Smartphone, Rokujama - but only laters volumes), the others I either tried read and dropped them (Little Apocalypse, For my daughter, Demon King, Arifureta). The others are novels that I never feel like even trying to read.
But my main Point is that one of most popular novel - Realists Kingdom "slowly" approached amount of volumes released in country of it's origin (Japan if someone has some doubts), so with this I would believe that we would need to wait some time for next volumes, which practically one of the reasons i become premium member stopped existing.
So my question is if there would be any new "popular" to fill lack of updates for Realists Kingdom, also to be truthful I would love to see any novels which has a present aspect of management in there, since it was that what catch my interest in this novel but I have no problems if there would be any other novel types as long it would properly help to popularize j-novel because i want to have a stable supply of new chapters for realist kingdom (and maybe other novels i buy/read but truthfully it's all because you licensed realists kingdom i become your member, others i could wait few months between released volumes) -
@dullman Well I happen to have some pretty good info that Overlap has Realist scheduled in Japan on a very fast publishing pace.
You won't have to wait very long for new volumes to come out (at least until it catches up to the web novel release). -
@sam-pinansky I had a job for 6 months where I had to learn regex for my interview and subsequently just write regex inquiries all day every day. In hindsight, it's been pretty much the most useful thing I've ever learned and I use it constantly in the 5 years since. Hooray for regex!
@dullman All I can add is my own perspective, which is that I disagree with your assessment of available novels. I subbed due to a completely different set of novels than you, and I think you're projecting too much your own opinion onto what's good or popular and getting worked up in the corner.
-
@sam-pinansky said in Are we at Jnovel Club's limit?:
@dullman Well I happen to have some pretty good info that Overlap has Realist scheduled in Japan on a very fast publishing pace.
You won't have to wait very long for new volumes to come out (at least until it catches up to the web novel release).I checked the publish date of those four volumes and it seems that new volumes is released about every four months (one was shorter?) so you are right they are pretty tight on schedule, but certainly it's good for us that they are keeping those kind of schedule so maybe we would not wait few months between released volumes.
Also I wish you to achieve planned success with j-novel since it's something that brings things that I do enjoy.
@myskaros said in Are we at Jnovel Club's limit?:
@sam-pinansky I had a job for 6 months where I had to learn regex for my interview and subsequently just write regex inquiries all day every day. In hindsight, it's been pretty much the most useful thing I've ever learned and I use it constantly in the 5 years since. Hooray for regex!
@dullman All I can add is my own perspective, which is that I disagree with your assessment of available novels. I subbed due to a completely different set of novels than you, and I think you're projecting too much your own opinion onto what's good or popular and getting worked up in the corner.
I basically joined because of realists kingdom, and the other two i said about being popular i get only from comments on this forum, since myself i can't phantom why they are popular, if it would be more comments about other works i would probably change those title but it's not (there were time where faraway paladin was popular but recently i heard some disappointed voices so I didn't add it here).
By saying popular I meant popular not only for me (but those are welcomed) but popular to broad group of people. For me getting Realists Kingdom in readable language is something enough for me (at least for now).
So my assessment of being popular novels here on j-novel was only done through reading comments so pretty subjective thing so everyone can disagree with this. -
Limit? Limits are meant to be broken.
-
@sam-pinansky Same. I joined J-Novel club because of Realist light novel and was amazed to find other books like Outbreak Company, Smartphone etc. It was like coming for a pearl and finding a huge treasure. Anyway thank you for all your hard work and hope we get to see more awesome releases in coming future. I just love reading these LNs on my Kindle.