Alternative Means of Future Licensing
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I like the idea- I think something else that would be interesting would be to publish a quarterly "magazine" / Bunko? articles, one and done stories, samples, reviews, - is there a publisher in Japan that would want to license content? (or a straight up entire volumes) of a periodical? you could include alternate content/ multimedia/ audio whatever - I would use credits to pay for that
I mean I know it's j 'novel' club but, to me, JNC is my source for light novels/the LN industry in the USA (and I don't read/speak Japanese)
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Personally I like how J-Novel is licensing and translating books right now. I would hate it if they translated just the first book with no real intention to continue translating more books. It would really suck if the novel I really liked didn't get the sequels translated.
Because I believe that once J-Novel starts a series they are most likely going to continue translating at a breakneck pace, sharing their translations with their subscribers as they come out is why I subscribe.
However J-Novel is free to change how they do things but to me it wouldn't make them stand out as superior to all the other light novel translation companies. I still like the other companies but I really love J-Novel.
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@Sam-Pinansky I'm not entirely sold on the idea, it might send the wrong signals to both the consumers and the licensing entities and be interpreted as a lack of commitment on J-Novel Club's part.
My primary reason is that we've been burned too many times by LNs being dropped after only one or two volumes by companies like Del Rey, Tokyopop and Viz (Zaregoto, Kino's Travels, Shakugan no Shana, and so on) angering and frustrating readers, and this would bring back echoes of those days and lead to a potentially severe trust deficit on both sides. Whatever negative things one may have to say about Yen Press, at least they committed to a series once they began, even a series like Book Girl which sold perhaps a dozen copies was completed, and this creates trust. Dropping a series after one volume citing poor sales (even if this was made clear as a potential outcome from the beginning) will undoubtedly be interpreted by frustrated readers as callous and money-minded and damage brand goodwill and PR.
There are other ways to gauge customer interest in a title such as surveys, Kickstarters, and generally paying attention to what's getting fan translated.
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@microdynames said in Alternative Means of Future Licensing:
There are other ways to gauge customer interest in a title such as surveys, Kickstarters, and generally paying attention to what's getting fan translated.
Yes, but those ways tend to cater toward the genres and authors that are already popular. The expression "If you build it, they will come" works best in reverse here: "If you don't translate it, it will never be popular".
Fan translation is unreliable since it barely covers anything other than the top web novels, while the LNs that Hobby Japan/Overlap release are frankly, almost never fan translated when they are volume 1s of new series.With our built in platform of ~4000 members translations of a much wider swath of what's getting published would definitely expose people to more works that could get an audience they otherwise wouldn't.
But in the same way inevitably that will lead to some people getting disappointed when a series they personally enjoy doesn't do well and we don't continue it.
It's a tradeoff between publishing more "diamonds in the rough" but at the same time allowing for a possibility of cancellation. Obviously the end-game is like what we have with anime now: publish everything. Wouldn't it be nice if there were 2000 people who would buy every ebook? Then I could basically publish ALL THE THINGS (up to translator capacity). -
@sam-pinansky said in Alternative Means of Future Licensing:
Yes, but those ways tend to cater toward the genres and authors that are already popular. The expression "If you build it, they will come" works best in reverse here: "If you don't translate it, it will never be popular".
Fan translation is unreliable since it barely covers anything other than the top web novels, while the LNs that Hobby Japan/Overlap release are frankly, almost never fan translated when they are volume 1s of new series.To what extent is it possible to predict what new titles will become popular and commit to them based on similarities to existing popular translated (fan or otherwise) titles?
But in the same way inevitably that will lead to some people getting disappointed when a series they personally enjoy doesn't do well and we don't continue it.
It's a tradeoff between publishing more "diamonds in the rough" but at the same time allowing for a possibility of cancellation.Absolutely, and what frightens me is that the mere possibility of cancellation is already going too far, on the basis of the fanbase having been disappointed so many times before on cancellations. Being known for being the only current-era LN company who drops things for not selling/holds titles hostage for sales could turn very ugly.
Obviously the end-game is like what we have with anime now: publish everything. Wouldn't it be nice if there were 2000 people who would buy every ebook? Then I could basically publish ALL THE THINGS (up to translator capacity).
At which point Netflix will swoop in and edge you out of the market, Amazon having already tried and given up. :^)
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At which point Netflix will swoop in and edge you out of the market, Amazon having already tried and given up. :^)
Hey Netflix I'd be happy to sell at a very reasonable price give me a call.
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@sam-pinansky But I don't want to live in a world where 40 volumes of Rokujouma in English are dumped at once as a "Netflix Original" after the series has concluded because Netflix exists in an alternative timeline where the content wasn't being released serially in Japan via other channels for years before they created it.
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@sam-pinansky There was a question on Curious Cat a while back asking if you thought sales of a translated work would be enough to keep the series going, despite sales in Japan. Should you decide to experiment with single volumes (not necessarily V1s), do you think sales of the translated works would be enough for the JP publishers to want to do V2s?
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@tremorc I don't think we're close to that level yet really in sales where the western sales alone could make the difference, but as one of many factors, I think we're already kind of there.
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