Kadokawa goes.... Direct!
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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 )
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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.
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@legitpancake yea, then we would not have to deal with Amazon or Bookwalker. less slices of the pie to give away
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ok - so that I could actually make informed comment I took a look over at Bookwalker.com - they are giving away the first 3 chapters (as a 'promo') of each title and charging 200JPY/ 200coins ($1.91 US) for each part thereafter - just the economics of this seems ill-advised. I've commented before (in the benefits of JNC membership forum, the Tentai press forum etc.) that my expectation is for an e-book of an LN to cost somewhere abound $6.00 to $10.00 (less than the cost of a mass market paperback)- this model makes these e-books cost anywhere from $10.00-20.00 (longer books cost more) -or roughly double the cost of buying whole volumes at a time. A quick look at the most popular titles on Bookwalker site bears out my expectations - most titles are $7-10 (side note- congrats JNC looks like 1/2 of the most popular series are JNC titles!)
Demon Lord Retry is in the top 10 and is being sold by the chapter --at 100JPY/ $0.97 us - 1/2 the price of the new Kadokawa 'direct' titles
buying LN's this way isn't my taste - but that aside - it certainly isn't something I'd pay a premium for (and DOUBLE at that!)
If they tweaked the model a bit, like included the full ePub, and gave a significant rebate in coins, if you purchased all the chapters, it might just work. However, the way it is now just seems dumb.
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I do not buy mangas by chapter and I would certainly not be buying a novel by chapter either. To me, the books should be sold as volumes or complete.
This idea of separate chapters is an idea which I do not think will ever be deemed as a prevalent business model in the West. I cannot think of a single western publisher which uses it either.And I was looking forward to Hige wo Soru
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IMO they should've just went with a subscription system like what JNC and Crunchyroll does. It makes more sense and it won't scare off potential customers since it wouldn't be that expensive.
If a customer buys it per chapter then buys the completed volume again then that is just stupid and wasteful. At least with a subscription you don't really own the chapter so it's acceptable if someday you won't be able to read it anymore like what JNC does but in exchange you can read everything that is available in the library.
They really should just copy the system of either JNC or Crunchyroll. Preferably JNC so that they could lock the released chapters in a vault when they release the complete E-Book and then earn profit from it.
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@bartzbb
or just licensed those half dozen titles to JNC and sold the pre-pubs on bookwalker for .97/chapter like Demon Lord Retrywe'd get more titles
Bookwalker gets better translations
titles get (maybe) a different/wider audienceeveryone wins (?)
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I think the end game is still a subscription service at some point. They have it on Bookwalker JP. But they gotta build up the catalog for it stateside (unless you're going to sublicense out already existing manga / LN from other publishers on the service, like the JP one eventually did).
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If a subscription service is their end game, it sounds weird that they'd be starting with per chapter purchasing as the initial rollout. That's way more likely to turn people away from their "service" especially given the pricing Jon Mitchell quoted above. Plus it would become messy when they do convert over to a subscription based service because at that point per chapter sales makes absolutely no sense unless it's titles outside of their subscription service catalogue.
I can only hope they release more details here, because I think they're going to need to bring their A game to the table if they want this to succeed. Farming out the process to companies of questionable quality doesn't sound like a winning solution for a new product launch if they end up going that direction.
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@lighthawk96 My assumption was that once you purchased all the individual chapters, you could get the complete volume, since we are talking fully released parts and not pre-pubs. But you (and a bunch of other folks) are right, nothing they have said so far establishes that to be true. Even if the premium price wasn't a big deal - and to be honest, for the right title that I've been waiting on and can't get any other way that price wouldn't stop me - having to track individual chapters with no final volume is just too icky to consider unless it was out of desperation.
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@xdrfiredogx The manga "Domestic Girlfriend" is available electronically as "chapter by chapter" and "full volume" over on Amazon. There doesn't seem to be a way to convert the individual chapters to full volumes, and even though the series is "complete" now, they still sell the chapters separately. Must be a market for that.
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@someoldguy said in Kadokawa goes.... Direct!:
@xdrfiredogx The manga "Domestic Girlfriend" is available electronically as "chapter by chapter" and "full volume" over on Amazon. There doesn't seem to be a way to convert the individual chapters to full volumes, and even though the series is "complete" now, they still sell the chapters separately. Must be a market for that.
For manga I can kind of see it, if we think about it like comic books with each manga chapter being the equivalent of a comic issue and the completed volumes as the equivalent of TPBs. The analogy breaks down a bit when you think about release schedules but it's close enough.
Though I wouldn't think it's a big market for it being released that way.
It's so different from how novels have been released here in the US after the collapse of the serials and pulps that I do wonder how well it'll work. What few examples I can think of are so niche that I wouldn't think the sales would be there.
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it'll be interesting to see what happens with Crunchyroll's manga subscription service now that the Sony buyout is final
