Kadokawa goes.... Direct!
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@xdrfiredogx
My biggest thing is that you have to buy everything piecemeal, and not the entire volume itself. They said they might do volume bundles in the future, but they are making you buy the parts as they are released. While this works for manga chapters to a point, I don't know how they will make this work for the light novel side of the business. -
@lighthawk96 Maybe buy all the parts of a volume and you'll automatically get the digital LN volume on Bookwalker when it comes out?
Buying the parts will be cheaper than buying the completed LN but the parts will be removed once the LN volume comes out?
That or they go subscription based like JNC for parts.
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@lighthawk96
Publishing manga chapterwise on the many services in Japan(and in West too, MangaPlus) is common enough it might as well be the default by this point.
But do they practice dishing out novel chapters piecemeal even back in Japan? Well, granted, it's default for webnovels, but that's another matter entirely.J-novel does something similar yes, but those are pre-pubs, closest I'd compare that would be what webnovels are to light novel releases.
The model might be successful, or it might not, it works for fan-translations so I won't dismiss it out of hand at least... -
@village-idiot
I haven't seen anything as far as a subscription goes as of yet. As to the other questions, I have absolutely no idea. It would be nice that if you bought all of the individual parts of a manga you could get a complete volume all put together for nothing. We just don't know how they are going tonplau this yet.@Korppi
As far as I read on the Q and A they did, they aren't doing prepubs like JNC, but actual releases piecemeal. Again, I don't know if you'll be able to get a complete volume to download if you buy all of the individual parts, but as far as I read and understood, these will be completed translations for purchase. I did hear that they have farmed out these translations to another company, so.... I don't know how well this will work out as far as quality control. -
It would take something remarkable to get me to partake in this, I have very little interest in buying LNs one chapter at a time.
They would need to license a series I really want for me to try it.
For new titles there is zero chance.
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@catstorm
It's Kadokawa. They already own the licenses. They will just be doing the Japanese to English translation themselves. This, for the moment, seems to be how they are preferring to conduct their business. Hopefully, we will get more information as things continue to move forward and develop. -
@lighthawk96 said in Kadokawa goes.... Direct!:
They will just be doing the Japanese to English translation themselves
Was it confirmed that they will be doing the translations, “in-house” because they farmed out their recent manga acquisitions to 3rd party agencies.
They used 2 agencies for the manga translations, MediBang & Lapin, I can’t speak about Lapin because I am not too familiar with them (the manga they were hired to translate were not something that indicated high quality work, but maybe that was a one-off), however I am fairly familiar with MediBang, and I am not looking forward to them handling any LN I have my eyes set on.
Sorry but J-Novel Club does not publicly comment on any potential licensing decision or acquisitions.
J-Novel Club, Future Volume Release Schedule
Manga FAQ
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@rahul-balaggan
As far as I was able to gather, they are farming the translations out to another company. I think, "Think", that some of the bigger titles may be handled in house, but for the most part the translations are being farmed out.In fact, I do believe that MediBang was the company mentioned as the company they farmed the translations out to.
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I really hope we aren't entering the era of low effort work here with this and what AlphaPolis is doing with their manga. I'd really hate to end up back in the situation where the pirate fan translations are better quality than the official products.
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@jpwong yeah i.would have hoped the industry has matured enough to be past that now, but if it does happen hopefully it bombs so they learn to.adhere to the new quality standard's
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https://twitter.com/frog_kun/status/1424154225295052803
I have doubts about the translation quality. MediBang pays their translators shitty rates and expects them to even sometimes do the additional jobs of typesetting and lettering themselves.
What's worse? A series you want remaining unlicensed and untranslated or it getting licensed with a poor translation full of mistakes? I'd rather it not be translated then.
Luckily, none of the licenses here particularly interest me, but I hope they don't release something I really want. Unless someone independently verifies the translation is good or MediBang changes their ways.But I know there are quite a few readers outside of these forums and the light novel subreddit who don't really care much about translation, as long as they have something in English to read. Which is a shame. I would want a professional translation I'm paying for to be accurate and flow smoothly without mistakes.
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@myneferd said in Kadokawa goes.... Direct!:
But I know there are quite a few readers outside of these forums and the light novel subreddit who don't really care much about translation, as long as they have something in English to read. Which is a shame. I would want a professional translation I'm paying for to be accurate and flow smoothly without mistakes.
If I'm paying money for it, I want something better than poorly edited MTL...I can do that myself (poorly edited MTL, that is), thank you very much!
I share @jpwong's sentiment, it'd be a shame if things slipped back to official translations being worse than fan translations... especially ironic considering a number of the better official translators got their start as fan translators.
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it looks to me that Kadokawa is trying a bunch of different things to drive sales, this isn't new. 'Penny Dreadfuls', and novels sold by the chapter have been a thing for many decades (at least since Dickens' time- the 1830's! +/-)
it seems to me that the concept of letting folks get a taste (cheaply) to decide if they like a novel before buying the entire volume might drive sales/interest (and traffic to Bookwalker) - it also might lead to more 'orphaned' series- "if there aren't enough subscribers of volume 1, why greenlight volume 2?"
basically I don't know enough (and Kadokawa hasn't released details) about the nuts and bolts of how this will work/cost to form an opinion
the good (?) news - now that they have a partnership w/ JNC they know (or can find out) how to do it correctly (serial translations)
regarding Kadokawa 'keeping the best titles for themselves', weren't they already doing this? (with Yen Press) - I believe that Kadokawa will send titles to wherever they think they will get the most net profit :
- current/recent popular anime? (or marketing vehicle for Bookwalker)- keep that 'in house'
- looks like it'll (primarily)do well in print/on amazon?- have Yen Press do it
- hidden gems, more demanding translations, back catalog, and a carrot or two- JNC
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@jon-mitchell that certainly sounds good... Although that relies on common sense which certain Japanese companies are notorious for.lacking alas...
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another thing that just occurred to me: If Bookwalker starts a model of selling LN's chapter by chapter as they are being released- can they/would they sell JNC translated titles? (easier for Kadokawa intellectual properties (IP)'s, might be a sticky wicket/ need to re-negotiate licenses for other pubs IP's )
I read banned books
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@jon-mitchell They already tried to do Demon Lord Retry chapters on bookwalker quite some time ago, if that is the question you are asking.
So there is definitely the capacity to do it, just it probably wasn't profitable enough for it to work considering it hasn't been done with other titles. Or maybe it would work better with different series, but who knows. -
This whole thing stinks, imho. If I wanted to read low quality MTL I would still spend time on NU.
If this was an in-house project, or if Kadokawa was using a better 3rd party, I might have hope.On top of that I won't buy individual chapters. Too much hassle with my poor memory. I have a number of series that I have dropped because it's just too much work to follow it.
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@jampodevral said in Kadokawa goes.... Direct!:
This whole thing stinks, imho. If I wanted to read low quality MTL I would still spend time on NU.
If this was an in-house project, or if Kadokawa was using a better 3rd party, I might have hope.On top of that I won't buy individual chapters. Too much hassle with my poor memory. I have a number of series that I have dropped because it's just too much work to follow it.
Yep, I don't want the hassle of dealing with 8? separate parts per book instead of one.
I'm also not going to pay if I'm forced to use a browser instead of my Kindle, and there will need to be a very strong collection of titles to get me to buy a second e-ink reader just for this.
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Maybe there is a lurker from Kadokawa on j-novel who can see that there are several problems with what is proposed. That fans with the $$ will look else where for quality translations and a proper DRM that respects the $$ paid.
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It sure would be nice if Kadokawa could just host the Novel chapters on J-Novel Club for subscribers, in addition to selling them on other stores. Similar to how Kodansha offers their simulpub manga with a subscription on Crunchyroll, Comixology, and that new subscription service Azuki, in addition to the chapters also being sold individually on the usual digital manga stores. Though not sure if the extra work for the JNC staff for titles that JNC does not represent nor have any control over may be too much of a headache.
