Need membership to buy credits.

chippy502

Maybe I am missing something but why do I need to have a membership to buy credits? I used to be a premium member until I decided that I just wanted to own all the books I was reading. So I bought credits and bought all the books I had read, then cancelled my membership. Now that my membership has expired I went to buy more credits for it to say that only members can buy credits which I did not realize before. So if I have this right, I have to give you money just to be able to give you more money? If this is correct it is a very off-putting business practice.

I came to buy directly from your site because I like what you are doing and wanted to support you more. Figured buying direct puts more money in your pocket rather than a reseller taking a cut.

Shiny

@chippy502 said in Need membership to buy credits.:

Now that my membership has expired I went to buy more credits for it to say that only members can buy credits which I did not realize before.

https://j-novel.club/howitworks explains how getting credits is a Membership benefit: "All Members can buy Premium Credits to redeem for Premium ebooks!"

@chippy502 said in Need membership to buy credits.:

Maybe I am missing something but why do I need to have a membership to buy credits?... So if I have this right, I have to give you money just to be able to give you more money? If this is correct it is a very off-putting business practice.

I think it is 'members only' to keep the publishers and other retailers happy (and to give an additional incentive to be a member).

Premium books sometimes include bonus short stories that were sold in Japan as limited edition store-specific exclusives, so we're lucky JNC got the license to translate them at all. I think in some cases it helps JNC to negotiate premium content to be able to say that the credits are only available to members of the JNC 'club'.

Jon Mitchell

I also believe (but do not know for certain) that the whole "need to be a member to buy credits" thing is part and parcel of how JNC negotiated for the licenses from publishers. i.e. "we don't sell directly to the public, only to our members- so let us put up pre-pubs, let us have premium content that only DonQ would otherwise have *(after all we don't technically compete with them) etc.

also, yea you need a membership to buy credits, "club" is in the name - you need to pay for a membership to shop at BJ's wholesale club, or Sam's Club etc. Maybe this is a USA centric thing, but I think JNC wasn't hiding anything.

if you need a workaround- wait until 'black Friday' (or 'cyber Monday'), join on 'month to month' plan, buy a bunch of credits, then don't renew in December. The discount that usually is there for that weekend more than covers the cost of membership (break even is like, 1 credit, if you compare the cost to buying an inferior version form Bezo's and Co.)

Khaos

@chippy502 said in Need membership to buy credits.:

So if I have this right, I have to give you money just to be able to give you more money? If this is correct it is a very off-putting business practice.

While it may seem like this at first glance, personally I don't see it that way, for a few reasons, even if you're just buying the epubs and ignoring prepubs...

DRM Free
Uncompressed images
Bonus content
1 "free" epub monthly (premium)
$6 epub vs $7 everywhere else (premium)
Your last point - "directly supporting"

My thoughts:

Premium at 1 year price = $120

Take into consideration your "free" epub...which if you strip down, you are really just prepaying $72 for 12 epubs over the year, and now you're left with only $48 for a yearly membership (less than a regular membership btw).

So for me, $4/month is more than worth the price for the list above, as I buy more than 12 epubs a year anyways plus I get access to all the prepubs.

Also a possibility with how many books you buy, you could break even or net positive over buying from 3rd party. So depending on how you look at it, you could end up getting a free membership.

BartzBB

Premium Membership is $10.95/month.
$6 out that equals 1 Premium Credit = 1 E-Book.

Buy 4 more within the month = 24
In total you spent $34.95 for 5 E-Books.

5 E-Books outside JNC (Amazon, Kobo, etc) = $35.

Yearly is $120 and so if you buy 48 E-Books (4 books X 12 months) a year you spend $288. Add the yearly fee with an extra credit per month and you get $408 for a total of 60 E-Books.

60 E-Books anywhere else is $420.

TLDR; If you buy 5 or more E-Books a month then Premium Membership is cheaper than buying anywhere else.

Kalessin

@bartzbb said in Need membership to buy credits.:

TLDR; If you buy 5 or more E-Books a month then Premium Membership is cheaper than buying anywhere else.

And with the various e-book stores charging sales tax in most cases, the break even point is actually even lower than that, since JNC doesn't charge sales tax (or if they do, it's likely only if you're in the same state as them - certainly, I've never seen any evidence of them charging sales tax).

I agree that it's annoying to have to get a membership to get the books directly from JNC, but ultimately, if you're reading many of their series it saves you money to have the premium membership even if you don't care about the extra perks like the bonus content that some volumes have. Playing games with having the membership just during Black Friday would probably work even better, but personally, I'd rather not go to that hassle (on top of it feeling like it's taking advantage of JNC to do that). It's easier to just keep the membership, and I buy more than enough books to save money that way - though I do tend to try to stock up on credits during the Black Friday sale.

Geezer Weasalopes

Another thing to bear in mind; if you buy via another source, that source takes a cut.
That can be an incentive to purchase elsewhere if you have a venue you really want to keep going...but I don't think that's a concern with the eCommerce sites J-Novel markets through.

So purchasing direct from J-Novel results in the largest amount of money going to J-Novel, which doesn't hurt them any when going out to negotiate for new licenses.

It also decreases the revenue hit when the eCommerce sites get a stick up the mikta concerning illustrations or such and drop titles; if obtaining direct from J-Novel, big whoop if they do that.
Actually, that's what got me started getting the ebooks direct from J-Novel, I'd been impacted by some of the madness going down elsewhere.

Kalessin

@weasalopes Well, I don't think that there's much question that what you get from JNC is better than what you'd get elsewhere given that it's DRM-free and often has bonus content, and it's definitely the case that it's better for JNC if you buy from them directly. I think that the only real issue here is that the OP finds it annoying to have to pay for a membership that they're not interested in using just so that they can buy directly from JNC, and I very much sympathize with that. I was a member of JNC for years before I read any pre-pubs, and while I do read some pre-pubs now, I mostly just read the published books. And I'd be a lot more annoyed at having to pay for the membership if I didn't buy enough books to actually save money in the end.

From the standpoint of customers, the need to have a membership just to buy from JNC is definitely annoying. Many don't care, because they want the pre-pubs, but there are plenty of people who don't buy from JNC directly because of the membership requirement. Of course, it could very well be the case that JNC needs to keep it that way to make the Japanese publishers happy or that they have some other business reason which makes it so that they don't want to open up credit sales to anyone who isn't a member, so I wouldn't necessarily expect JNC to relax the member requirement, but I agree with the OP that it's an undesirable requirement from the standpoint of someone just trying to buy books from JNC.

Rahul Balaggan

Hello,

I believe the user who started the topic was looking for confirmation about needing a membership to purchase credits, (which has been addressed) rather then justification on whether a membership is “worth it”.

As kind as everyone has been to point out the various odds and ends of the membership, let’s hold off for now, unless the OP asks further regarding the membership.

Thank you