Does JNC have too much on their plate?
-
Firstly, I have an obligation to point out that no new licenses is never good. Especially when I don't have much to read from JNC. Your laxity made me try absolutely god-awful debuts and read an even god-awfuler volume 4 of Bakarina. I'm not sure how I survived. Maybe I didn't. Now I'll have to continue Daimaou. Have mercy. Send help.
Secondly, Otakuthon's JNC panel was trumpeted about a decent lot but in the end we don't even know what happened there. Guess Sam gave a speech that wasn't interesting enough for a quick summary LoL
Thirdly, where's my effing Altina, Sam is maliciously hiding the only recent interesting announcement to make it look like there's still something relatively nice in the pipeline. That plan doesn't work Sam, your shady schemes are revealed for all to see.
on the bright side, at least I still have FMP & Kokoro Connect and I don't remember them getting delayed.Fourthly, if I never post anything again, know that I have been silenced by the myskaros' burning spirit. He gets scarier by the day, I fear for my safety.
-
@novurdim said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
Thirdly, where's my effing Altina, Sam is maliciously hiding the only recent interesting announcement to make it look like there's still something relatively nice in the pipeline. That plan doesn't work Sam, your shady schemes are revealed for all to see.
At Otakuthon, Sam made comments that made it sound like we're waiting on Kadokawa to proceed with the launch, unfortunately.
As far as bigger things from Otakuthon, I'll post links to the streams on the con thread, I wasn't sure if I was allowed to or not. In summary, there wasn't much news, updates on print releases, a new LN localization company in France whose first title will be Infinite Dendrogram.
-
I'd say, the more licenses they get, the better. There seems to be an increasing number of LN anime adaptations in each new anime season. Surely a company like JNC can capitalize on that.
-
@chrollo said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
I'd say, the more licenses they get, the better. There seems to be an increasing number of LN anime adaptations in each new anime season. Surely a company like JNC can capitalize on that.
As long as the anime is a good one. Let's forget about Arifureta (and Ragnarok before it)... 😅
-
@terabyte At this point an anime is still a pretty huge advertisement and the best chance a Japanese LN has to get any exposure outside and inside of Japan. There will still be plenty of people that watch even the bad anime. The Arifureta anime might not be great, but it still generated a lot of interest, currently 132k people have it listed on their MAL accounts, and out of those 70k are currently watching it. I know these aren't the most accurate stats to use, but it gives us a great idea of how much interest an IP can have.
And sadly most LN adaptations don't end up being that great, so there's not much we can do about that.
-
Delays are going to happen regardless of the quantity of titles. It's just natural. Not only are there going to be slowdowns in having access to source material, but there are also going to be the standard "life issues" which mean staff aren't going to be able to devote time to work. Nobody would want a job which doesn't allow them the opportunity for vacation or illness without fear of repercussions. Life happens irregardless of work.
Likewise, while there are things outside workflow which can effect production, workflow isn't always going to be standard either. I'm hoping that Sam doesn't mind me mentioning this, and it's more than slightly embarrassing for me personally, but I've talked to Sam about the prospect of translating for JNC in the past. I knew that I needed to practice on my vocabulary and reading (I had been back in the US for about a year and hadn't really practiced at all) when I spoke with him, but wasn't looking for any immediate work anyway. After I mentioned that, he offered up several helpful suggestions of how to go about that. The most obvious was "read Japanese light novels".
I had a particular anime I'd watched and wanted to know more of the story of, so I decided on that series. The goal was just to practice, and there was some grammar which gave me trouble, but I'd managed to finish the 12 volume series in a couple of months while working around normal daily life.
This is where the real challenge started. While understanding the Japanese was actually relatively easy (there are always going to be vocabulary which you have to look up or sentences which don't feel like they flow well with the rest of the story), putting the same into English is a MASSIVE challenge. After finishing the story, I wanted to know how well I could do that, so tried to make a translation of the first book. I also learned my own shortcomings as a writer by doing this.
I'll start by saying it was a "train wreck". Things that aren't normally thought of while reading, or even when writing short stories, become painfully obvious when trying to get the same emotion or thoughts from characters which someone else created. Character voice/personality and even differences in the sort of vocabulary used by different characters makes a difference in the way the feel of each character is viewed from the perspective of a reader. Recreating that while trying to remain true to the story/character is a major challenge which I still can't do well after a year of practice. Even trying to objectively read my own writing feels flat, and that won't work for anything in mass media.
Having done both writing and editorial work professionally in English, and business and technical translation professionally in Japanese, I feel that I have an understanding of those aspects. However, to have an end product which is entertaining enough to be considered usable and still attempt to remain true to the characters and story is a skill which deserves respect. The amount of work that goes into that, and JNC seems to do this quite effectively, is more than most people should ever need to think about.
-
@pleco_breeder said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
Delays are going to happen regardless of the quantity of titles. It's just natural.
Would be nice to have actual updates on the delays though. J-Novel have become somewhat tight-lipped, in the first years delays (not counting the "no new volumes" issue) were so uncommon that every case had been thoroughly explained to the members. Now it's more in the vein of "just shut it and wait, you impatient pig".
-
@novurdim Just a thought, but maybe it was determined that giving out the reasons publicly was actually a pretty bad idea? It's none of the public's business if someone working on the novel is sick or has some kind of personal reason to take time off, and it's not professional to blame an employee or a business partner if they make mistakes or there are unforeseen complications.
Yes, it sucks to have to wait and not have any information, but usually we don't give information because we can't give information.
There's a good reason I worded this line on the first page in this manner:
- For anything else, all I'll say is there are complications preventing us from starting those volumes that have nothing to do with our capacity to handle series.
-
I get the impression that JNC is very much a "growing" enterprise
I'm not pointing fingers at any folks who comment specifically, but there seems to be a ton of criticism around time between parts being posted, scheduling changes, times to publication, app revisions etc. I'm guilty of this as well (I try to be constructive in my criticism but sometimes fail)
JNC has the advantage (and the curse) of being a small shop (Seven Seas has backing of Macmillian, Yen of Hachette and Kadokawa) In general smaller companies can be more nimble in decision making, streamlined in business practices and scale more rapidly....but smaller companies also typically have fewer resources, and capacities for redundancies (If project "a" is person "x's" gig, and person "x" gets paid time off for whatever reason...the project is on hold until "x" gets back.) And a small company can't just request $$$ from their parent corporation for a web/app developer, additional staff etc.
Even without the resources that Yen Press or Seven Seas might have - JNC is putting out quality product at a respectable speed. The editing/proofreading evident in the final product is comparable. The production quality is very good, and overall the translation rates of prepubs is FAST (maybe not as fast as some webnovels get translated/ or as some fan translations happen-- but certainly as fast/ or faster than any other organization that licenses the work)
I would MUCH rather JNC obtain licenses (or secure options for licenses) on works that they might not yet have capacity to produce (it's called having a pipeline) and put out the excellent quality product they are now vs. compromising quality/choice for speed (at least that what it appears they are doing, which I approve of)
pretty much any questions about why this and not that? or why does this take so long? or whatever - I get that we might not get answers to because:
-
folks are entitled to their privacy, and have lives outside of their jobs at JNC
-
JNC might not want to share a decision making process, or internal business discussions with the public (which would also be sharing w/ JNC's competition)---ask Benno about this if you don't get it ;)
-
JNC may have contractual obligations that prohibit them for sharing certain information, or releasing content before a certain date
-
-
@jon-mitchell said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
JNC may have contractual obligations that prohibit them for sharing certain information, or releasing content before a certain date
Even more than this, saying anything about a partner that could be taken as negative is bad business that can damage your relationship with them.
I'm a software developer at a smallish company that partners with many other companies. One of the first things we teach support staff is to never badmouth a partner even when something is their fault. You say "we're working with X to update support for Y" and never "X screwed up on their QA and broke Y, blame them."
-
@jon-mitchell said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
I would MUCH rather JNC obtain licenses (or secure options for licenses) on works that they might not yet have capacity to produce (it's called having a pipeline) and put out the excellent quality product they are now vs. compromising quality/choice for speed (at least that what it appears they are doing, which I approve of)
My biggest problem with JNC is that their pipeline is too short. In my ideal world, they would have volume N+1 up for preorder by the time volume N comes out. N releases; I finish it; I order the next one; the cycle repeats.
If I have to keep checking back every few days/weeks, series will eventually get forgotten.
For stuff where they don't have the next volume licensed, obviously they can't do that. But for something like Rokujouma I don't understand why they didn't keep that cycle moving to keep people engaged.
-
@hamsterexastris said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
My biggest problem with JNC is that their pipeline is too short. In my ideal world, they would have volume N+1 up for preorder by the time volume N comes out. N releases; I finish it; I order the next one; the cycle repeats.
If I have to keep checking back every few days/weeks, series will eventually get forgotten.
For stuff where they don't have the next volume licensed, obviously they can't do that. But for something like Rokujouma I don't understand why they didn't keep that cycle moving to keep people engaged.
Rather than immediately place up for pre-order, which could create issues with publication dates having to be projected months in advance, I'm curious if something like a subscriptions service could be added to the member profile. This would allow members to manage which final versions they would like to receive, and still track which series they're actively reading without risk of getting bogged down in new releases. At the same time, members subscribed to a series would be an automatic "sale" of the publication on release day in exchange for one of their credits. If there are no credits in the account, you don't get the volume.
I think it sounds like a good idea, and could easily be polished to be a win-win for both JNC and subscribed members. From a member standpoint, I would hope that it be integrated not only in the profile to manage subscriptions, but a separate section/shelf added to the library to manage what's recently been added by subscription. Otherwise, books could easily get lost in the shuffle of older volumes and still be forgotten about as they're added to the library. Something along the lines of if you're looking for something new to read, go to your subscription shelf, transfer it to your library to download. In this way, it's sorted, you know it's there without getting lost among the other volumes, and should be able to easily keep track of.
The most obvious advantage to JNC would be the guaranteed sale of those volumes with only a small bit of SQL code necessary to track user generated subscriptions and possibly a separate file for the subscriptions shelf in each member library. Given that it would have to be tracked via membership to download to the library anyway, it could also be listed among the membership perks for paid members thereby potentially increasing site membership. It also creates an incentive for those members to buy credits as the number of series subscribed to increases. At the current release rate, a premium member can reasonably expect to keep up with two active series based on the monthly credits without purchasing additional. Subscription caused by pre-pub interest has the potential to multiply that, or risk being forgotten by the time final publication happens. At the very least, it would force some difficult decisions about whether to continue specific titles.
Of course, this is all just suggestion, and I'm not going to tag anyone to bother them with my ramblings. However, I do think something like this is overdue given the digital nature and the sheer number of volumes/series which are started and forgotten about before publication ever happens.
I personally can't count the number of series which I've started and forgotten about because I get wrapped up in either reading something else while waiting for the next, or "life issues".
-
Lest anyone accuse JNC of being needlessly tight-lipped about delays, let none forget that @Quof only recently declared, very openly, that the reason for Bookworm's schedule slippages was that he had taken two weeks off to go gallivanting around canyons in Las Vegas.
-
@microdynames There's a big difference between exposing your own life details, and your employer doing it.
-
@pleco_breeder Yes, I agree.
-
@microdynames I wasn't trying to be contradicting. More of an "I'm glad that JNC recognizes this".
-
@myskaros said in Does JNC have too much on their plate?:
Just a thought, but maybe it was determined that giving out the reasons publicly was actually a pretty bad idea?
Who knows, me mate, opinions vary.
-
I don't think J-Novel Club has a lot on their plate other than some of the series done by the same person but none of the things i follow are delayed. If they were I can understand and not expect every series to get all caught up with the release in Japan.
-
So thought i would bump this just to illustrate where i was coming from with what i was saying earlier.
This is a list of series that J novel has licensed that have additional releases in Japan that have been delayed (for whatever reason) from getting an English release as well as the time since the last content release by J novel club.
Bookworm: Last Release August 22nd, 27 days since last release.
How Not to Summon a Demon lord: Last release August 17th, 32 days since last release.
Jinrou: Last Release August 7th, 42 days since last release.
Potion Loli: Last Release July 2nd, 78 days since last release.
Bakarina; Last Release June 28th, 82 days since last release.
Welcome to japan ms elf: Last release June 17th, 93 days since last release.The first 3 are understandable and are barely delayed at all and can fall under the banner of things happen, though i feel Jinrou is starting to leave that category. The last 3 are at or bordering onto 3 months with no releases, no word, no nothing but silence as to why they are seemingly on hiatus.
I'm not trying to start anything here but i really feel a simple "sorry for the delay, we are working on it" would suffice.
I know this is going to come off to some as aggressive and entitled ( Maybe it is), but really I'm just getting frustrated and looking for some sort of confirmation that some of my favorite series haven't been quietly shelved by J novel.
-
I feel like 3 months isn't actually all that long all things considered. Could there be a problem? Sure, JNC is still small enough there's probably plenty of things that can only be handled by a single individual, but I think it might be a bit of a stretch to think that they're involved in so many active negotiations that it's actually backlogging things by months on JNC's side.
That said, I'd love to hear some updates on some series myself, but as was pointed out upthread, there could be be obligations as part of the negotiations that prohibit that. I'm not sure what Japanese business culture is like, but it may be considered rude to be posting any sort of update until they're essentially finished with the agreement in which case it could be bad form to piss of your business partner for your customer's conveniance.
