Multiple contents missing from Arifureta: Short Story Collection
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What I want to really know is why the parent company won’t let J-Club publish all the bonus stories in software like kindle. They still get paid I assume.
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It's an incentive to buy them from here. Plus they would take less of a cut from other stores as places like kindle will take a % of the sale for them selves.
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@Tahu said in Multiple contents missing from Arifureta: Short Story Collection:
What I want to really know is why the parent company won’t let J-Club publish all the bonus stories in software like kindle. They still get paid I assume.
My understanding is that you can't get these bonus stories in the Japanese Kindle releases either. These are stories that were in all or most cases released as store exclusives in Japan. As such, I think that making them only available from the JNC store is at least somewhat to maintain good relations with the stores they gave the exclusives to in Japan and the Japanese readers who may have to buy multiple copies of the book to get all the bonus stories. This means that it's supposed to be exclusive and not available as standard, maybe at least partially to make it harder for Japanese readers to buy the English edition as a means of circumventing the Japanese exclusivity system. We already get a benefit over Japanese readers by having the bonus stories collated in one reasonably priced edition which is never out of stock.
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Still doesn’t make sense. I doubt they would lose and money.
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Amazon charges massive commissions. Amazon charges either a 30% base fee plus $0.15 per MB delivery fee, or a 65% base fee with no delivery fee. The Arifureta short story collection is $6.99 and 20MB, meaning that Amazon will take a minimum of $4.54 and give J-Novel Club only $2.45. From that $2.45, J-Novel Club most pay the Japanese publisher's royalties and fees, as well as all of their own costs and expenses, like the translator, editor, and other staff.
If you buy the book directly from J-Novel Club, they charge $6 or 7 and they must pay only a relatively modest payment processing fee of 2.9% + $0.30. J-Novel Club thus gets $5.53 or $6.50. I think you can see why J-Novel Club needs to do whatever they can to entice customers to buy the books directly from them, and exclusive bonus content like short stories and illustrations are all they really have available.
Further complicating matters is that publishers must sign a contract with Amazon that forbids them from pricing books more cheaply than what they charge on Amazon... which would actually prevent J-Novel Club from selling the books for $6 to premium subscribers. The workaround (which I've seen other publishers use too) is that the book you buy from J-Novel Club isn't the same book. It's a different book because of the bonus content. So they're not selling the same book cheaper than on Amazon, they're selling a different book cheaper.
EDIT: Let us also not forget that Amazon is capricious and frequently bans random light novel ebooks without explanation or recourse or appeal. Convincing customers to buy directly helps ensure that Amazon won't drive J-Novel Club into bankruptcy by letting an algorithm ban all their books with no human appeal process. This is a very real possibility and a process that is already in progress.
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Ugh my head hurts
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To put it simply, JNC makes significantly more money from one premium ebook bought directly from them than they do from one ebook bought from Amazon, because Amazon takes a significant amount of their ebook sales from themselves.
Therefore, if you take one of the incentives to buy ebooks from JNC like bonus stories and make them available on Amazon, some people who would otherwise buy directly from JNC for those bonus stories will instead just buy them from Amazon. Thus, JNC loses money on those sales. And because of royalties, that means the Japanese side also loses money.
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So sad these companies are more concerned about squeezing out as many pennies as possible than spreading art.
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@Tahu Spreading art doesn't feed the people who work to actually bring the art to you. Money does.
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You can't spread art if you go bankrupt. Publishing translated novels is not a high-margin business, and Amazon very nearly did drive light novel publishers into bankruptcy when they started their arbitrary banning shenanigans.
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I think that's why the memberships to J novel are a good idea as it provides a constant predictable baseline income allowing planning ahead and a hedge against a few series that doesn't pan out...
It's a.tough business with narrow margins alas
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@Guspaz And the fact that they were able to do so with their shenanigans suggests that Amazon needs to be broken up. To quote noted philosopher Kanye West (yes, that Kanye West), "No one man should have all that power."
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Are all ebooks from other publishers like Yen Press missing content?
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@Tahu As far as I know JNC and tentai books are the only 2 publishers to have their own stores with extra content.
Tentai books are just starting up and World Teacher is going to be the first book of their's digital with extra content from their store. Their physicals have the extra content I believe, but I do ebooks.
Sol Press has their store, but I have never heard of them doing extra content.
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@jdmmis I think the question is more what are other publishers doing in regards to retailer exclusive content that was released in Japan. The options really come down to they're including it in their ebooks/print books, they're opting not to license the material at all and simply publish the series as is without regard to extra content or no one else is licensing any series that has those considerations.
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@jpwong I dont think I've seen any other publisher aside from Tentai that licenses those store exclusive short stories.
@Tahu so probably yeah, a lot of releases by Yen Press ARE missing some content. There's just no way for you to get them in ANY store, unlike with JNC.
How do these bonus stories work? A specific store has a collab with the series, so when you buy (during a limited time event) the volume from this store, it includes a clear file or small booklet with a short story. Different bookstores might have different stories, so in Japan, you'd have to actually buy the book multiple times to get all the stories. Once the collab is done, you're not getting these stories anywhere. So even if you bought the volumes in Japan now, you'd probably not get them. They are not part of thebook itself, they were freebies. The fact that you can get them all buying a single book was something that JNC probably had a hard time negotiating, so I can't fault them for using them as bait for their subscription, it certainly worked for me.
You can always wait for the next short story collection... which I should remind you will probably have its own set of bonus stories, like this one.
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@paulnamida said in Multiple contents missing from Arifureta: Short Story Collection:
You can always wait for the next short story collection... which I should remind you will probably have its own set of bonus stories, like this one.
If they even decide to make another one.
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If there is a money issue. Couldn’t at least that be fixed by Amazon and others charging the ebooks for the same amount as the print?
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@Guspaz said in Multiple contents missing from Arifureta: Short Story Collection:
Further complicating matters is that publishers must sign a contract with Amazon that forbids them from pricing books more cheaply than what they charge on Amazon... which would actually prevent J-Novel Club from selling the books for $6 to premium subscribers. The workaround (which I've seen other publishers use too) is that the book you buy from J-Novel Club isn't the same book. It's a different book because of the bonus content. So they're not selling the same book cheaper than on Amazon, they're selling a different book cheaper.
