"VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love
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I am curious:
I am assuming that JNC gets some profit from memberships, and doesn't rely entirely on ebook sales for revenue. If my assumption is correct, can a title be popular without selling well? i.e. if lots of members read the prepubs. Does JNC have an idea of how many views a particular series gets vs other series? are FMP, Slayers, Brilliant Park, IS etc. popular by that metric?and tangentially is JNC missing a opportunity to advertise on streaming services (either on the broadcast, or the sites) I imagine lots of viewers of older/complete series want to know 'what happens after the events in the anime'...and would be potential customers/members
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https://curiouscat.qa/jnovelclub/post/929401988
So we know prepubs do get royalties based on viewing numbers (with manga getting slightly lower rates). I seem to remember this sort of question being asked before either on CC or Discord, and Sam said with very few exceptions, prepub numbers fall very similarly with ebook sales rankings. So if something isn't selling very well, then more than likely people aren't reading the prepubs very much either. -
My personal rule is if I finish reading a prepub then I buy it.
It's an ironclad rule for volume 1 of a series, but there have been a couple of long series where I disliked a prepub to the point where I decided I'd supported the series enough and I could skip paying to own that volume. That was only for a later volume of Little Apocalypse (after buying 10 or so) and Magic In This Other World (when the comedy farce level exceeded my tolerance).
@Jon-Mitchell said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
and tangentially is JNC missing a opportunity to advertise on streaming services (either on the broadcast, or the sites) I imagine lots of viewers of older/complete series want to know 'what happens after the events in the anime'...and would be potential customers/members
It could backfire, at least if premium membership is advertised. People don't expect Netflix or Crunchyroll to offer only the last 1 episode with the sub (i.e. prepubs). Any ad would have to be for buying the novels with membership only mentioned as a way to get access to premium epubs.
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@HarmlessDave said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
It could backfire, at least if premium membership is advertised. People don't expect Netflix or Crunchyroll to offer only the last 1 episode with the sub (i.e. prepubs). Any ad would have to be for buying the novels with membership only mentioned as a way to get access to premium epubs
leave membership out of the ad
do a roll call of a dozen titles, say they are available for purchase on Kobo, or other book outlets - those ad spots are like 20 seconds longheck Kobo might even co-sponsor an ad
notice which outlet I didn't mention
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@LegitPancake said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
https://curiouscat.qa/jnovelclub/post/929401988
So we know prepubs do get royalties based on viewing numbers (with manga getting slightly lower rates). I seem to remember this sort of question being asked before either on CC or Discord, and Sam said with very few exceptions, prepub numbers fall very similarly with ebook sales rankings. So if something isn't selling very well, then more than likely people aren't reading the prepubs very much either.Sam replied about: 'royalties from subscriptions [memberships] are split evenly among active pre pubs' and manga are at a lower rate.
which I am having some difficulty parsing. I can't tell if that means that as an accounting metric they are saying (whatever % of subscription revenue) is used to pay for pre-pubs, or they assume "x" % of revenue is due to pre-pubs, or something else, other than whatever allocation of money is divided equally among active projects .
'royalties' are something that JNC has to PAY to the original creators/publishers ( a cost) not something they earn from memberships (income) ...it sounds to me that they negotiated a deal with the copyright holders to pool royalties (they get a cut of membership dues) for all pre-pubs instead of paying more to titles that are viewed more (and less to those that are read less) ??
if my assumption is correct, the more popular a title is as a pre-pub doesn't change the amount of $$ JNC makes on membership/spends on the royalties of that title (as a pre-pub), maybe?
something like if 10% of membership revenue goes to fund all royalties owed for all pre-pubs that are active, and a copyright holder would then get 1/x of that fund for each of their projects being in pre-pub (where 'x' is the number of LN's active in pre-pub) Manga are at a lower % of the fund to be divvied up...
well, before I went down that rabbit hole I had a point...
yea, regardless of how popular/unpopular a particular pre-pub is doesn't seem to change profit/cost to JNC ---so I seem to be wrong in my thinking that reading a pre-pub financially 'supports' that title in any way (other than maybe signaling popularity)
so let me say this: as a premium member, I believe the difference between standard membership/ and premium membership is my financial 'vote' for the pre-pubs I follow and the titles I choose to use credits on...so I hope that somewhere JNC has viewership data granular enough to know how many premium members read Slayers or whatever, and that even if the population outside of JNC doesn't buy many copies they continue to take on these types of titles. Maybe Baka and Test or (insert your wished for title here) or some other titles that are complete/not current anime/different will continue to be considered...
I read banned books
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@Jon-Mitchell said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
@LegitPancake said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
https://curiouscat.qa/jnovelclub/post/929401988
So we know prepubs do get royalties based on viewing numbers (with manga getting slightly lower rates). I seem to remember this sort of question being asked before either on CC or Discord, and Sam said with very few exceptions, prepub numbers fall very similarly with ebook sales rankings. So if something isn't selling very well, then more than likely people aren't reading the prepubs very much either.Sam replied about: 'royalties from subscriptions [memberships] are split evenly among active pre pubs' and manga are at a lower rate.
which I am having some difficulty parsing. I can't tell if that means that as an accounting metric they are saying (whatever % of subscription revenue) is used to pay for pre-pubs, or they assume "x" % of revenue is due to pre-pubs, or something else, other than whatever allocation of money is divided equally among active projects .
Seems most likely the former but I would still think they have access to who (or how many) read the pre-pub, so if my assumption holds then you're not quite voting with your wallet so much as readership but I'd also assume that people who read the pre-pub with some regularity purchase the ebook as well.
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There's also the interesting question of how much the pre-pub matters in comparison to the actual book sales with regards to what JNC does. I could believe that a series would easily be considered a failure by JNC if the actual books didn't sell well even if a lot of people were reading the pre-pubs. The pre-pubs are a cornerstone of their business model, but I expect that they do ultimately need to sell the actual books to do well. That being said, I would think that in general, the pre-pub numbers and the actual sales of the novels would correlate fairly strongly in practice.
Personally, I never do anything with the pre-pubs and just buy the actual books. Similarly, I never stream anime. I just buy the Blu-rays. So, sometimes I wonder how much someone like me really affects the statistics that anime, manga, and LN companies look at for making decisions. They probably make more money from me, because I directly pay for their stuff, but at least in the case of anime, I get the impression that it's the streaming numbers that really matter these days.
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@sea_stones said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
assume that people who read the pre-pub with some regularity purchase the ebook as well.
I guess that encapsulates where I am coming from. I don't typically purchase the ebooks if I've read the pre-pub. There's so much new stuff (in other pre-pubs) that I have little tolerance for re-reading something when I already 'know what happens'.Yet I want JNC to know what I've approved of so how do I "vote with my wallet'? Yes, I could use premium credits (and I do, but pretty much only to get extras that I find appealing, not as a signal that I approve of a series)
I read banned books
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@Jon-Mitchell said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
@sea_stones said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
assume that people who read the pre-pub with some regularity purchase the ebook as well.
I guess that encapsulates where I am coming from. I don't typically purchase the ebooks if I've read the pre-pub. There's so much new stuff (in other pre-pubs) that I have little tolerance for re-reading something when I already 'know what happens'.Yet I want JNC to know what I've approved of so how do I "vote with my wallet'? Yes, I could use premium credits (and I do, but pretty much only to get extras that I find appealing, not as a signal that I approve of a series)
Well, I don't re-read most of the ebooks I buy; I mainly buy them just to show support to those particular titles, as well as how I like to "own" the volumes anyway, as well as looking at the color illustrations and extras.
I mean, if you want to "vote with your wallet", you have to, well, open your wallet and pay up. While subscriptions do provide some extent of royalty payment back to the creators, it's most likely nowhere near as much as if you buy the volumes themselves. There are ways to "support" a title without using your wallet, but when it comes down to it, if you want to show financial support, you might have to learn to be okay with buying an ebook you might never actually read.
Though there is one other way you can show support without actually buying the books yourself: try to convince other people to buy the books. Promote them on social media, recommend them to friends, start a blog and review them, et cetera. Yes, it's extra work, but consider that the "money" you pay to show support if you don't want to actually buy the books yourself.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
@LegitPancake said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
https://curiouscat.qa/jnovelclub/post/929401988
So we know prepubs do get royalties based on viewing numbers (with manga getting slightly lower rates). I seem to remember this sort of question being asked before either on CC or Discord, and Sam said with very few exceptions, prepub numbers fall very similarly with ebook sales rankings. So if something isn't selling very well, then more than likely people aren't reading the prepubs very much either.Sam replied about: 'royalties from subscriptions [memberships] are split evenly among active pre pubs' and manga are at a lower rate.
which I am having some difficulty parsing. I can't tell if that means that as an accounting metric they are saying (whatever % of subscription revenue) is used to pay for pre-pubs, or they assume "x" % of revenue is due to pre-pubs, or something else, other than whatever allocation of money is divided equally among active projects .
'royalties' are something that JNC has to PAY to the original creators/publishers ( a cost) not something they earn from memberships (income) ...it sounds to me that they negotiated a deal with the copyright holders to pool royalties (they get a cut of membership dues) for all pre-pubs instead of paying more to titles that are viewed more (and less to those that are read less) ??
Agree. My reading is that a proportion of what people pay for their subs goes into a royalty pool. If X% of the content available as prepubs is from a publisher then they get X% of the royalty pool. I'm guessing this means that if a publisher's book is on catch-up that they get a much larger proportion of the pool but there could be separate arrangements for that. As a publisher using the available percentage has the advantage of being verifiable and hard to game.
@Kalessin said in "VOTING WITH YOUR WALLET": how to support series you love:
There's also the interesting question of how much the pre-pub matters in comparison to the actual book sales with regards to what JNC does.
I believe that JNC get most of their profits through Amazon sales, but that everything else helps. People who subscribe give JNC a guaranteed income and are exposed to many series that they might then go on to buy (and potentially review). Plus it allows translators to get feedback in advance of a release which can improve the quality of JNC translations.
