Illustration suggestion
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Hello, is it possible for JNovel Club to include the colored illustrations typically found at the beginning of the novel, available when reading the novels?
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@lethalsquirt They are available in every epub, I'm yet to see any without them available.
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They are available if you buy the volume.
For prepubs which you can read online, I don't think they will include those color illustrations. -
@tgquan67 oooh ok, i see, I was reading the prepubs and was confused on why they weren't there. is there a reason for the prepubs to not have the colored illustrations?
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@lethalsquirt Because the colored illustrations often require lots of typesetting work that is done as the ebook is finalized, as well it creates an incentive to buy the books.
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There are a few, the main one is that the color illustrations need to be translated and type set, meaning the whole process would take some time.
It is best for the whole book publishing process if the color illustrations are done after the prepubs are done, for the completed books.
Even for Black & White images with text (as few as they are), the text is left untranslated until the final ebook. In that instance usually a translation is posted on the forums in their respective discussion topic.
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ok, thank you all your explanations.
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Another reason that was given at some point (by Sam I think?) is that color illustrations often are huge spoilers for what happens in the volume.
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@Rahul-Balaggan said in Illustration suggestion:
There are a few, the main one is that the color illustrations need to be translated and type set, meaning the whole process would take some time.
It is best for the whole book publishing process if the color illustrations are done after the prepubs are done, for the completed books.
Even for Black & White images with text (as few as they are), the text is left untranslated until the final ebook. In that instance usually a translation is posted on the forums in their respective discussion topic.
Is there any reason why untranslated images can’t be included in prepubs though? I get the arguments for having them as a bonus for purchasing books, but they’re in the free previews anyway... As it is right now it only forces prepub readers to look up an alternative free source if they want them, which is just an unnecessary inconvenience imo.
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@Lake As was mentioned before, the color images can be spoilery, and while not everyone will be bothered by that, some will be, so it's probably best for prepubs to just not have them at all.
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@stardf29 said in Illustration suggestion:
@Lake As was mentioned before, the color images can be spoilery, and while not everyone will be bothered by that, some will be, so it's probably best for prepubs to just not have them at all.
The exact same applies to the finished ebook too, and there’s no issues including them there...
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@Lake In an ebook you can use the digital table of contents to skip past the color images. The option isn’t quite there for the prepubs.
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@stardf29 said in Illustration suggestion:
@Lake In an ebook you can use the digital table of contents to skip past the color images. The option isn’t quite there for the prepubs.
Ok fair enough, I never thought about that from the perspective of someone actively avoiding those images. Still, if that is the only other reason it’d be extremely simple to add a toggle in settings for displaying them (In the new version of the site/app, whenever that is).
At this point I think most prepub readers are used of having no color images, but I do think it’d be really nice to have untranslated versions in prepubs if there’s no extra licensing fees or royalties associated with including them.
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@stardf29 I know Kindle even does this by default when you open the book, and as someone who likes looking at them anyway, I always have to page back a few pages to see them.
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@Lake There are 3 problems I see with including artwork in the prepub.
- Minor one: The traffic of the server would go exponential higher the more "color" pages are included
- the japanese license holder would have problems accepting this. Especially as every change to the original artwork would need their approval (if I recall a topic 2 years ago). And as the right holder they would surely detest to see them in prepubs as the one is not seen as buying the license and can be fairly easy copied.
- if they include artwork they would even need more time to release the prepubs as I assume redrawers are not assigned per series more like for all of them
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- Pretty irrelevant now that they are (ab)using cloudflare for images
- I guess it may be kinda awkward that you'll have to put it in the free part 1, but it's the same at retailers like japanese bookwalker and most of western ones anyway
- Inserts with text still exist and are still posted either with japanese or translation
One point no one mentioned is that the reader is pretty broken in regard to images, especially wide ones.
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There's one other potential issue specifically with having untranslated color images in the prepubs: I can pretty much guarantee there will be several people complaining about "why aren't the color images translated" and how "I expect more from a professional translation company!"
Overall, there just seems to be way too many potential hassles to be worth it for way too little benefit... a "benefit" that people really should be just buying the books for anyway, and if it's inconvenient to find the color images through alternate means, well, that's the "price of inconvenience" you pay for not paying for the book.
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@stardf29 said in Illustration suggestion:
There's one other potential issue specifically with having untranslated color images in the prepubs: I can pretty much guarantee there will be several people complaining about "why aren't the color images translated" and how "I expect more from a professional translation company!"
Now that's just grasping at straws. I have no doubt you are right and people would ask that, but as it stands it's no different from people asking why they aren't there at all, such as this thread. The same goes for "expecting more" since you can say the same about them being excluded.
Overall, there just seems to be way too many potential hassles to be worth it for way too little benefit... a "benefit" that people really should be just buying the books for anyway, and if it's inconvenient to find the color images through alternate means, well, that's the "price of inconvenience" you pay for not paying for the book.
So far the only additional hassle I've seen of including untranslated color images is that the reader being broken for some images mentioned above, and the possible implementation of a feature to hide them, which would be very quick to code into the new app/site. If there are actually any additional licensing issues then I'd agree with you and happily drop this subject.
As for the benefit being small... that's very debatable. This is something that would effect all prepub readers, and I'm pretty sure the majority would be in favor of if given a choice between the two options (untranslated color images with an option to hide them vs no color images at all). It's probably not something that'd make or break whether a person subscribes, but it definitely falls into the nice to have category and would improve a lot of readers experience. This benefit would still apply to those who buy the book too. Unless you are reading the book twice it'd make more sense to have the images when you are actually reading it, not close to a month after.
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@Lake said in Illustration suggestion:
So far the only additional hassle I've seen of including untranslated color images is that the reader being broken for some images mentioned above, and the possible implementation of a feature to hide them, which would be very quick to code into the new app/site. If there are actually any additional licensing issues then I'd agree with you and happily drop this subject.
Since we have no idea what actually is part of the licensing contracts (and are in no way entitled to know as such), let's just say there are licensing issues and drop this subject.