Membership Flexibility
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For this subscription model to work for me these conditions need to be fulfilled:
- More than 5 volumes (8 for premium membership) a user is interested in must be released per year.
- Prepubs need to be as good as the final release.
I understand the service is just getting started and just won't have that kind of output or license catalogue, but you must also understand most of us will not spend 54+ a year on 1-2 volumes. Also if you sell lower quality ebooks to non-members I would not like that policy, but at the end of day it's about the text and not the pictures so it won't stop me from buying your releases.
Now that I have shared what I think of the subscription service in probably the wrong place, to get back on topic I think that if you are going to have multiple quality levels for your releases you are only really hurting your own bottom line by not offering the higher quality releases for extra alongside the inferior version as suggested.
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@redmaw Well the quality issue with image resolution is a limitation from Amazon's service itself. It's not possible to sell high dpi illustrations through kindle store as they recompress everything before they send it to you.
And they charge us per MB of the download file too, so it would get prohibitively unprofitable as well at some point. To do high res images we'd have to put books on comixology instead...But thanks for the feedback! J-Novel Club subscription is designed as a service for people who like to read light novels "in general", and aren't just looking for 1 particular book. I bet you that pretty much anyone like that can find 2 series you enjoy.
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@Sam-Pinansky Thanks for the reply. Yeah I got the feeling the subscription service was not for people who are looking for specific series, and honestly I think it 's great the option exists I just don't have time to read stuff "in general" anymore :(
I know this does not deal with membership, but i have a few more questions about how this works. Not sure you area allowed to answer these but I would definitely appreciate the increased understanding of the process.
- For premium ebooks do you still go through distributors (Amazon, Kobo, Apple, &c.) or do you sell direct to members?
- If you sell direct to members, why is it restricted to members?
- If you are required to use DRM for distributors, how do you get around that for the premium ebooks?
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@redmaw Premium ebooks are only available directly from us!
They include extra content that we create or that isn't part of the normal Japanese releases, so think of it as extra perks for members. We're not "crippling" the normal release.How do we get around DRM restrictions? Well, the epubs you download from our site are personalized. So I would know who was distributing it if you uploaded it somewhere.
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@Sam-Pinansky I did not mean to imply that J-Novel intentionally "crippled" releases. I was suspicious about the image quality since I hadn't seen the explanation else where.
Since I did not phrase my questions quite correctly let me re-phrase one of them. Since you do you have a mechanism for selling direct to customers, why have you decided not to sell regular releases to non-members/subscribers?
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If you like that one you will like Grimgar, and probably How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom.
Give those a try for a 1 month subscription.
Personally I was in a similar boat as you before since I only cared about Grimgar, but ended up liking 70% of the LN's here.My personal taste on this site being:
Grimgar > Paladin > Realistic Hero > Mixed bath > Saved too many girls > My big sister
(Not all LN"s on this site are on my list due to either I didn't read them, or didn't continue, or they were one volume only) -
@Bryan I don't have an order, but I like Big Sis Lives in a Fantasy World, Grimgar, Realist Hero, and Faraway Paladin. 3 of these are Isekai, though I wouldn't say I'm a huge Isekai fan normally.
I did not like Little Apocalypse that much, and My Little Sister Reads Kanji and Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension aren't really my cup o' tea, though they're ok. Haven't read enough Occultic.
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Honestly, I've liked pretty much everything here except Brave Chronicle and Mixed Bathing. Paladin is far and away my favorite, but everything else ranges from solid and fun to damn good. Honestly the biggest problem is finding the time to read everything. I've dropped Mixed Bathing but there's nothing else I want to drop and yet only so many hours in a week and I like to read other stuff too. I have the newest Occultic 9 and Grimgar to read but am otherwise caught up, but how long will that last? Outside of "regular reading" I'm also over halfway through "Asterick War vol. 2", "Psycome vol. 1" and volume 3 of the "Isolator". Such a hard life to be surrounded by so many riches that there's not enough time.
Just a side note, but three years ago the idea that there'd be so many new light novels out per month that it would be challenging to keep up would have been inconceivable. I love where we've come! Thanks to Yen Press, Sam & crew and the others for making it happen!
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@the-green-death Yeah, without a text to speech program reading this stuff to me, it'd be really difficult to get through them in time. Staring at the computer screen can be just a bit too eye straining for me. I'm still falling behind though (really need to finish Paladin, and I can't even start Occultic with all the new stuff coming in).
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@the-green-death I actually found mixed bath quite fun to read after getting through the initial part. It's not unlike other mmorpg scenarios in him going to help other ppl or save the world, and the MC isn't completely dense on what he wants. So as long as you are okay with some fan service that isn't over the top, since he is technically using his gift however he could, it's still a good read.
Personally the one Light Novel I couldn't get into really was My little sister can read Kanji. Even though I like fan service... I like people to act similar to how real people act instead of how they act in that LN.
@Terrence Try to get a phone with night mode. Read on your phone app with night mode does help with eye strain. Otherwise dark mode on your pc and maybe just don't do it after a long day lol.
Also careful! You are starting to sound like the Isekai fanatic in Big sis! haha jk -
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@sync The easiest way is, Subscribe to premium - Get the book you want - Unsubscribe, that's all.
