[Suggestion] Novel Pricing
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@sam-pinansky People who reads on and off like me don't really mind paying for memebership, but we are I think your most important customers for this site to advance in the future. So what I suggest is agree on a minimum price and don't divide members and premium members (like Netflix does). You could use opportunities to better promote other novels, better yet, try to promote the writers and then sell the readers back to the writers.
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@mianli Well there isn't actually any division between member and premium members: both can read the same content at the same time. Premium members is like "normal membership + discount ebook credits". It's more of a bundle than a "better membership".
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@hak0 I agree that times are hard and selling novels is really hard, but that is not an excuse to raise something above its true value. Such a system will sustain a product but it will never thrive and usually dies out quickly. A good solution is to find alternative, explore the main issues, not give excuses to raise price because the market demands it
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@sam-pinansky If that is truly so then the idea of a premium membership is weird, why not establish a credit system, or a discount system instead?
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@sam-pinansky I mean it would be great if you monitor trafict on specifict novels, total the number of people who read and buy it and sell that number back to the writers or licensing companies. Acts as a promoter and sell your service to them, demand some kind of funding. Use that funding to improve your page, crypto is dead now anyway.
I think what I really want to say is that spending money on membership and still having to buy expensive volumes on Amazon is not a good marketing scheme to target people like me. Trafict and cost efficientcy aside, it doesn't attract new potential reader to the genre and with the massive increase in licensing going on, I don't see a future for Japanese novels.
A product without a good promotion scheme doesn't last very long no matter how good an idea it is. This type of low priced simple product only really survive with support from new people who are attracted by marketing schemes. If your wish is to pioneer a way to promote Japanese Novels then I suggest choosing a different route of doing this.
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When we get about a dozen new series in the next couple weeks your subscription will be a lot more worth it.
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You can't find any book translated from Japanese cheaper than this unless they were printed in 10000s of copies. Especially not light novels. J-Novel Club's light novels are already 2-4$ cheaper than all the other companies. They cost pretty much the same as the Japanese version and that market hasn't died yet, but only expanded in the last few years.
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@hak0 Does the market truly expands though, say, do you see an ads on web novel? If not then they truly have not made any progress in promoting their product. The illusion of being able to connect to an audience or fan base that already exists is not truly expansion.
I don't really care about the pricing on market, numbers change, it's how the market works, what I'm emphasizing is that this marketing scheme does not work, if it is carried out in its current form.
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@legitpancake Well, that only happens if I stick around really. If people like me doesn't then whether or not something new comes out is of no consequence. This is not to criticize the site, I think it's great, very daring to do something like this but its marketing scheme needs to be fixed if it wants to survive
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@mianli what needs to change? Have you compared J-Novel to other companies? Yen Press has no membership program, but they offer physical books which are available in bookstores and online retailers for $14 retail, and most of their books cost $8 for ebooks. But they are very slow in their translation.
J-Novel is ebook only at the moment (although they have partnered with Seven Seas to offer some printed versions of some of their best selling novels), but the membership is very much worth it if you read just 2 series each month. I follow about a dozen series on this site, and to me the membership is awesome. If you don’t like the membership, that’s fine, just cancel and buy Amazon Kindle versions or whatever. But don’t come here and start threatening that the business will collapse, even though you have no idea as to the financial situation J-Novel is in.
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@legitpancake The most important change is the way they promote novels, currently there isn't a way to promote reading novels. Pricing is only so expensive is because they can't sell enough and have to make up for that by increasing their value in hope that their loyal customer will give them a helping hand.
This is fine if you wish to only act as a kind of independent retailer or part time promoter but to promote and attract new reader to the genre, to novel, you need a little more art to it.
Giving people a service they want is not promotion, it is simply reaching out
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@mianli They have a very active Twitter, and they will be hosting a panel with Japanese authors at Anime Expo in California during which they will announce quite a few new license acquisitions. Not to mention every one of J-Novel’s licenses get announced on Anime News Network and a good portion of their novels get book reviews on ANN since they provide free copies to reviewers. I’d say all in all that is a pretty good advertisement.
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@legitpancake I'm not here to argue what makes numbers go higher but the thing is, making people pay for membership, creating weird normal membership and premiums then directs them to a retailer on Amazon is not a good image
This system of letting people read for a bit then turns it off is not good for new people. That's what I see, that's what I say, but if I'm wrong then there is something wrong in the way they put everything together
I don't really do the whole fan thing, I only see value to value. And if their whole scheme is to create short term fans then I don't have anything to say.
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@mianli you have said previously that marketing is important and such, so you have been talking about what makes numbers go up....
The memberships don’t necessarily drive people to amazon the only way to buy the DRM free, high resolution e-books with bonus content is to be a member of this site.
So members can buy at $7 each just like on amazon (and $1 cheaper then the cheapest LN competitor) and premium members can get them for $6 each.
As for, “letting people read for a bit then turns it off” and how that’s not good for new people, JNC is frequently offering catch up months where all volumes are put back up for the subscribers. That value is unbeatable, if for instances someone wanted to read all of, The Faraway Paladin that’s 5 volumes, but this month for $4.95 they could have read them all...
Last thing I had to say
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@mianli harry potter volumes brand new used to cost 15 to 25 USD. Most western physical/digital books range from 6.99 to 11USD so the fact that a translated novel only costs 7USD (especially compared to other companies) is rather cheap.
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@mianli Sorry, but what do you meant that we get redirected to Amazon?? They simply display all the links for their various retailers AND sell the premium version on their own. I mean, that makes total sense, if you didn't have a membership, you still see all the outlets where you can buy the book, but then you see this little "premium" button with a totally awesome DRM-free, high resolution epub with bonus material, but it only works with a membership. That's how I got my membership. And the premium membership is pretty much just a discount. Since you get a free credit every month (which cost only 6$ for premium members) the actual membership ends up still costing only 4.95$, and you get to buy more credits for less than the amazon price. It's pretty damn great IMO.
Basically, if you are already a member, and already buy at least one premium epub monthly, you are better off getting the premium membership, you'd be saving 1$ at minimum, with a extra buck saved for every extra book you buy that month. So yeah, premium is by all means worth it.
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@paulnamida If you buy from Amazon, that means you get redirected to Amazon. Amazon offer same kind of discount to their premium user really, maybe not as much but the idea is quite the same. Give some money, maybe get discount to give more money.
I'm not here to attack this site or whatever, but this is kind of right infront of my eyes. If the cost is so high, you really need to wonder what the hell is going on with this industry. Volumes are not that long and it costs almost as much as a whole book? And it is digital? If you are fine with this kind of pricing then sure, go ahead.
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@rahul-balaggan I respect your commitment, but the thing is, what they need is to be able to reach out to new audience, doing new things maybe, I'm not sure how much support they give back to writers but $10 for a volume is a bit much don't you think. If you're from a country with currency of higher power of purchase then that's fine but say if you're from somewhere else then it's just weird.
Japanese currency is not that high in terms of its power of purchase yet it asks you to buy a single volume for $10. That is just weird to me, especially when Japanese novel is trying to reach out to readers
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@mianli this is just my personal situation, but books in my country, well, at least not-bootleg ones, are quite damn pricey. Paperbacks on average cost 15$+, hardcovers are 30$+. You might say "that's a normal price", but for a place where the minimum wage is 250$/month, it's quite high. That's why bootleg books are so popular in my country. Then these e-books are just 6$, just a little bit over the price of bootleg ones (around 4$). I find them to be dirt cheap.
Now, other ebooks are cheaper, yes. But those are primarily first party releases. LNs on the other hand have to deal with licensing AND translation. That's what cranks up the price. And even then, JNC's prices are lower than other companies in the same medium.
