Books/Preorders missing from Amazon
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@myskaros said in Books/Preorders missing from Amazon:
@AerosAtar-2z6y0sp said in Books/Preorders missing from Amazon:
Will there be any recourse for those of us that have purchased the books on the now banned Amazon entries, since we cannot receive any updates, etc?
You will have to take that up with Amazon. The listings have been completely banned on our publisher page, so we aren't allowed to update them period.
So, after a lengthy (and extremely circuitous) conversation with Amazon 'customer support', they have refunded me the 12 volumes of How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord "as an exception". I'll pick them up from somewhere else once the refund actually processes.
I really don't think the rep understood the root of the problem, and I sadly wasn't able to tease any further information out of them regarding the bannings (they just kept stating that sometimes stuff gets delisted and put under review, but without actually saying that was the case here), but that is to be expected I guess.
Interestingly, before the refund was offered, they were able to manually update all volumes except the five listed in the original post (3,6,7,8,10) as updates were available, even though the updates weren't showing on my collections page. The updated ones all had the images in the back, as expected. Not sure if that information is useful in any way, but I found it interesting at least.
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@AerosAtar I would recommend possibly using that money to get a J-Novel premium membership for a month or two and get as many credits as you can. Then you'll never have to worry about banned volumes and many series have bonus content not included in the Kindle versions.
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Of course, this is Amazon, a private entity so it has right to take down things on will, but won't affect much outside of it.
However, should any j-novel property be subjected to the Australian ban which is a governmental action, would that mean j-novel would have to choose between either implementing region blocks or taking down their presence there, outside of taking down the title altogether? Of course, this is entirely hypothetical as it hasn't happened(yet), but, just asking out of curiosity.
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Is this why the Grimgar vol 1 LN is messed up. When you go to the page of the light novel and select kindle version it send you to the manga instead. Was a little tricky finding vol one LN for kindle.
If there is a argument of whether private entities have the right to censor, yes they do but its still censorship which is immoral, unethical and unjust.
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Infinite Stratos and Lazy Dungeon Master also seem to have vanished from Amazon Australia. I can still see Japanese physicals for IS.
Infinite Stratos - Amazon Australia via Chrome incognito mode:
Lazy Dungeon Master - Amazon Australia via Chrome incognito mode:
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@Swiftnissity Australia has gone on a banning binge.
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Multiple kindle volumes of Arifureta have vanished from Amazon Australia.
V1-V3, V6, V9The JNC link for V1 gives an error now too.
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This is the inevitable result of a mega corporation starting out by acting "nice" and "convenient" to kill all of its competitors. Once there is no major competition left, it can just do what it wants. They start with fringe niches and slowly get to more reasonable things. I'll echo what other people are saying: I urge you to buy premium directly from jnc. As for other publishers...
Bookwalker isn't exactly putting amazon on the ropes (plus, that annoying DRM makes it a hard pass for most I imagine), so we'll need a sane alternative for other publishers.
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@acallos
Buy physical, it’s yours forever and no one can take it from you.These days the only series I buy digital are ones I can’t get physical or that have bonuses like j novel clubs, even then I’ll still buy the j novel club physical releases at a later date.
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Kobo is a solid competitor for Amazon, but not enough people know about it, and Amazon has far too much of the market. Unfortunately, Kobo has also had some titles removed, but it's been nowhere near as bad as Amazon (mostly just some ecchi manga from Seven Seas). It would certainly be way better though if all of the publishers just sold their books directly without DRM.
@catstorm said in Books/Preorders missing from Amazon:
Buy physical, it’s yours forever and no one can take it from you.
That's why I insist on having all e-books that I buy be DRM-free (either by being DRM-free when purchased or by having their DRM removed afterwards). At that point, you own them just as much as you do physically. There's certainly something to be said for owning books physically, but digital doesn't have to mean that you don't own and control access to your books.
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@catstorm said in Books/Preorders missing from Amazon:
@acallos
Buy physical, it’s yours forever and no one can take it from you.These days the only series I buy digital are ones I can’t get physical or that have bonuses like j novel clubs, even then I’ll still buy the j novel club physical releases at a later date.
I think I'm going to start doing this myself. It's about time I started a library! On the other hand, people that move around a lot or don't have a lot of physical space are still going to run into problems. Plus there's the whole issue of how much of JNC's revenue is tied up at amazon. I only got introduced to their titles via amazon after all. It's a grim future and the best JNC can do is work within amazon's system. I imagine they're going to think a lot harder about which titles they pick up in the future, sadly.
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@acallos You never have enough space for physicals. I have a whole floor full of books and still get space problems. And if I see my bookscase besides my bed I get the fear it is screaming because there are too many books on it.
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@saskir ah. But you can greatly increase the amount you can store if you use tracked mobile shelving. Why waste all that aisle space?
Morning and Mourning sound alike for good and sufficient reasons.
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@Kalessin I actually decided to steer clear of kobo because its based in canada(contrary to its mother company being based in japan), which by the way has censorship laws albeit probably not as bad as Australia. The only big online shop that is "probably" safe I found so far is google play. Its a shame honestly because at this point its basically just google and bookwalker, and Ive heard terrible thing about bookwalkers reader app in general with how it lists titles in shop and other clunky features. I gave it a short go and can confirm they'd need to gut and rebuild half the app to be on par with its competitors
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@jcochran Partly I have something similar. I have my Manga collection in a closet where I can pull out the shelves. Still from my grandfather and was thought for shirts etc but works like a charm. With a small spring at the side that the books can not open themselves and everything is tidy. I can store 45 volumes of a normal sized Manga per shelf (3 rows and 15 per row). This 6 times per side for a total of 3 makes around 800 volumes I can store (granted my old Manga were slightly larger so this is not exact). And dam I get again sidetracked in this thread.
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I can't say I really see Google as being that much safer than Amazon unless we get some clearer idea about why they're taking down LNs in the first place. Almost any reason they would have been removed on Amazon could be applied to Google as well. Digital content from any platform is fairly risque in the first place because most storefronts consider a digital purchase a license which they can revoke for almost any reason at any time.
Every country out there has censorship laws too, it really comes down to how far will the courts enforce them and how easily groups can submit content they contend is obscene, immoral or strait up illegal and how they'll rule, especially in regards to content where the characters are generally speaking minors.
In any case, since I had asked about it earlier, the only real difference between Google and Kobo is image quality apparently, so if you're limiting purchases to LNs and image quality isn't one of your priorities, Google should be just as good as Kobo.
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@jpwong The Google Book app is archaic. You can't even make folders for series so everything shows up on one long vertical list by individual books. You have to hope and pray that the publisher enters the metadata right so the series goes into the correct sub-folder and in the right order.
Yen Press is infamous for not entering the metadata right because apparently it's really hard to just copy the metadata from the previous volume(s).
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@Village-Idiot said in Books/Preorders missing from Amazon:
The Google Book app is archaic. You can't even make folders for series so everything shows up on one long vertical list by individual books.
There are 2 tabs in the app, Your Books and Series.
The Google Book App automatically creates folders for series under the Series tab and adds all purchased books from the series in its folder.
The folder will also include links to purchase the rest of the books in the series. -
@sniper_samurai The issue, like I said, Yen Press tends to have issues entering the correct metadata for their series.
For example, apparently Sword Art Online consists of volumes 2, 3, 4, and 15.
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@Village-Idiot App is bad, but if you do it through the web site you can shelve you books however you want including the epubs you upload to the site yourself (doesn't translate into anything in the app unfortunately though).
But purely from the standpoint of buying and downloading the epubs, I asked a few pages back and someone mentioned the only difference between what the play store will sell you and what you buy through Kobo is that the images are lower quality on play store.
That means if you're coming at this from the perspective of how at risk is the digital storefront of your choice potentially going to get hit with government censorship like in Australia, Play Books is a reasonable alternative to Kobo if you have no real preference on the image quality.
