All these new volumes...
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Feels like the slow boat from Japan pulled in carrying a bunch of new volumes for us to read. Still feeling a bit Rokujouma deprived, but, hey, Kickstarter. Which reminds me. I need to order a copy of volume 33 with the drama CD from Amazon Japan.
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@Paul-Nebeling Indeed, all these new volumes at once is going to slow down my progress in catching up with Rokujoma. Currently half way through volume 30, once I'm caught up I'll have read every J-Novel release so far.
Don't forget there will probably be another 2-3 new releases later today after the panel as well.
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@sniper_samurai I'm not expecting any announcements today, since it wasn't mentioned on the panel ads/etc., plus the lack of hints.
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@Crimson-Wise We've had no hints, but it isn't like we haven't had surprise licences before.
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@sniper_samurai Fair enough, I'll be pleasantly surprised if that's the case.
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Seems we will be getting some announcements. Whether they're new titles or print releases is another matter.
https://twitter.com/jnovelclub/status/1294786012749733896?s=19
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We're getting EVEN MORE announcements!?
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@shrike_al said in All these new volumes...:
We're getting EVEN MORE announcements!?
Well, IIRC, last time they made announcements, they said that more were coming, and JNC is licensing new stuff kind of all the time. It's just that it's most common to announce new licenses around the times of the big anime conventions. So, the fact that more are coming shouldn't be surprising, but the question as always is what they're licensing and how many licenses will be announced.
Since I'd prefer older titles (primarily series that had anime adaptations years ago but where we never got the books), and that's mostly not what JNC licenses, I expect that I'll at least be initially disappointed with whatever they announce (I almost always am), but some of them will probably turn out to be quite good even though I've never heard of them, and they weren't what I was hoping for. Either way, it's great that we're getting more titles so long as JNC is able to keep up with load and stay profitable.
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This is why I been a loyal paying premium member for JNC. Since I’m not trying to spend too much money all my saved up credits pay off when I have nothing to read. Just go to a random title and redeem my credits on a couple of volumes I haven’t read.i have far to many credits saved up to last me a while.
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And there were series announcements at the end, although planned by the end of the month.
Even so, among what was mentioned, the fact that DRM-free manga is being worked on makes me happy.
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@Crimson-Wise said in All these new volumes...:
Even so, among what was mentioned, the fact that DRM-free manga is being worked on makes me happy.
Where was this mentioned?
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@BartzBB On the Q&A of the panel, Sam said they would look at it once the new website has been released, and for publishers who give the green light (so no DRM-free manga for all series.)
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@Crimson-Wise said in All these new volumes...:
@BartzBB On the Q&A of the panel, Sam said they would look at it once the new website has been released, and for publishers who give the green light (so no DRM-free manga for all series.)
I assume they will get problems with the japanese publishers with a DRM free release. I recall reading an article about this around 3-4 years ago which mentions this. Although I would be all for it. I really dislike some comic plattforms.
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@Crimson-Wise Was the Q&A recorded anywhere? I was in the theaters seeing the Made in Abyss movie and missed the panel.
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@saskir said in All these new volumes...:
I assume they will get problems with the japanese publishers with a DRM free release. I recall reading an article about this around 3-4 years ago which mentions this.
There are problems with getting almost any publisher to go DRM-free. Even just talking about American novels, very few publishers release their books DRM-free. If anything, it's kind of amazing that Sam has managed to get so many LNs DRM-free for JNC.
As for manga though, publishers have been talked into it before (e.g. DMP has sold manga DRM-free and FAKKU manages it for hentai manga), so it's not like JNC would have to be the first to talk a manga publisher into it, but I expect that it's rarely (if ever) an easy sell. If nothing else, publishers tend to be paranoid about the possibility of piracy even though it's going to happen whether you sell stuff DRM-free or not.
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DRM free manga would probably get me to pick up the tiny handful of JNC manga series I'm interested in, but I have to agree that I think getting the Japanese publishers on board is going to be troublesome.
I guess the real issue is what exactly the publishers would be taking exception to. Would it simply be the ease of someone being able to put the stuff online? Because I don't really see that as being a huge barrier. People have been able to rip CR's manga series which are also digital only and put them up because I've seen them on manga aggregator websites. Shonen Jump in Japan has even been put online before the publication dates a number of times and that requires the physical procurement of the magazine to scan.
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Scanlations have existed for decades. The lack of digital editions is nowhere near enough of a barrier to piracy to actually pose much of an issue for anyone looking to pirate. They just get a worse copy than they'd get if they took it from a digital copy, since the scans (especially of magazines as opposed to tankoubon) are never as good as what can be done digitally. If a manga is sold via the normal e-book publishers, then the DRM has been cracked, and someone will make it available for others to pirate, and even if it's only sold via a specialized platform whose DRM hasn't been cracked, someone can always just take screenshots.
The publishers can't stop piracy. At most, they can slow it down, and I think the situation with scanlations shows how pointless that is. Ultimately, for better or worse, you rely on the honesty of your customers to actually sell books. All of that should be fairly obvious when you actually examine the situation, but convincing publishers of that is another matter entirely - especially if you're dealing with older executives who aren't internet savvy.
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@Kalessin Which is why I'm interested to see if the current Shonen Jump strategy is working well. I know that the simul-release of the English translations by Viz along side some legal pressure ended up shutting down the main scanlator of SJ titles and it's resulted in the official version being the only version that are out there for quite a few series now.
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@LegitPancake unfortunately, not aware of any.
@Kalessin to add, Kaiten (new publisher) currently sells DRM-free manga from Overlap and Futabasha so those should be fine. Kodansha occasionally has some Humble Bundles (all DRM-free) so perhaps they may fine with it as well.
