Suggestion, Direct Sales
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I'm sure it must have been mentioned/requested before. But since you have the infrastructure more or less in place, why not direct sales of the epubs? (without the subscription fee.)
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It was very briefly addressed in the AMA
its like the 2nd to last answer
Edit:
Also here is a small twitter conversation from a while back talking about this sort of...link
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It seems like a prospect worth exploring - previous statements simply say things are fine the way they are, but doesn't give much reason for why this feature is not planned. There could be contractual reasons why JNC does things the way they are, or perhaps they are just more interested in encouraging subscriptions than making more direct individual sales (as if you instead buy through Kindle etc they would still get a cut and presumably if they were selling direct to non-subscribers then the Japanese publisher might ask for a higher cut).
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I'd be in favor of direct sales for at least the premium credits for free users considering the subscription model offers me nothing of interest other than the credits themselves. At the moment, I wait for free trials to buy a bunch of credits for which I'll use as a free member through the little URL hack to get the Premium Editions for series. (which still hasn't been made a feature yet. >_>)
I don't really have any interest in reading parts of chapters as I only ever read by full volumes. -
@aruseus493 said in Suggestion, Direct Sales:
I'd be in favor of direct sales for at least the premium credits for free users considering the subscription model offers me nothing of interest other than the credits themselves.
No. Never. That should not be done. The way I see it is, Premium epubs are one of the benefits of becoming a member furthermore if you upgrade to premium, you get a slight discount. If @sam-pinansky were to give the possibility to buy premium credits to "non-member" users, there's basically no reason to subscribe to the service. Even if you were to subscribe to read weekly releases, the membership value will drop so the price must have to be lowered as you'll be taking away one of the benefits J-Novel membership offer.
Take it this way, subscribing to J-Novel could be the equivalent of what a First Press Edition is in Japan where you get the benefit of getting an extra bonus for buying earlier than other consumer, moreover not only you have to buy earlier, you also have to buy from many different stores selling novels/manga and those bonus stories are almost never reprinted, in J-Novel Club's case you get all those stores SS's and some additional content like cleaned images by becoming a Member and buying Premium epubs. Also... Summoning @sam-pinansky to fix this:@aruseus493 said in Suggestion, Direct Sales:
At the moment, I wait for free trials to buy a bunch of credits for which I'll use as a free member through the little URL hack to get the Premium Editions for series. (which still hasn't been made a feature yet. >_>)
This thing not being fixed yet moreover being exploited so shamelessly like this should not be allowed rather it should be punished. Premium epubs are something reserved for paying Members so my proposal is: Do not allow Free-trial Members to purchase Premium credits. This thing happening is totally unfair to people who are actually paying a subscription to be able to buy Premium content.
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The URL hack is a bug which is supposed to be made into a feature considering if a user with credits lets their membership expire, they still need to be able to use their credits. Otherwise, if you take away the ability to purchase credits during free trials, then it will only take away revenue. Cause I'm not interested in all the pre-pubs and forums for subscribers. I just want the volumes with the most content and I'm not going to pay $120 a year just to be able to buy credits.
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@mmkop said in Suggestion, Direct Sales:
This thing not being fixed yet moreover being exploited so shamelessly like this should not be allowed rather it should be punished.
Lol, no.
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@aruseus493 Man, you response is completely hypocritical. Not allowing free-trial user to buy premium credits will take away revenue you say? You're taking away revenue abusing a glich/hack/non-implemented-feature/whatever-you-wish-to-call-it that should not exist in the first place. You're not interested in the subscription-based model? Then, you should not have any of its benefits, including Premium epubs available to paying Members, go buy J-Novel content from retailers like Amazon, Kobo, etc. You have no right to use a feature you're not paying for. Abusing a system glitch to use a feature that normally you should not be allowed to use is basically stealing out of Sam & Co.
Let me tell you that this is really surprising coming from you promoting and shamelessly admiting of using underhanded methods to get content that you should not have your hands on, a guy so fixed on demoting FanTLs saying that they're stealing out of creators pockets (which indeed, they are) yet you're doing basically the same as them, stealing out of creators pocket.
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@mmkop
lol, I think you need to calm down cause it seems like you're just berating me for something you think is wrong.The point of a free trial is to grant access to features for members for a limited time. I use said feature as it's intended. J-NC earns revenue from the free trial for those that spend money to either actually buy a membership, or those that get credits that aren't interested in memberships.
The "glitch" I'm talking about is a workaround to redeeming credits which is completely within the system. If they completely removed the ability to redeem credits to those without an active subscription, that is stealing money from the users. I payed for the credits so I have the right to redeem them.
a guy so fixed on demoting FanTLs saying that they're stealing out of creators pockets (which indeed, they are) yet you're doing basically the same as them, stealing out of creators pocket.
wtf are you on about here? I don't demote fanTLs in general, just those that exist for the sake of turning a profit.
Even if they removed the ability to get credits during the free trial period, I'd just end up spending a single month's worth of membership to once again stock up on credits and not re-new after the end of the month.
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@aruseus493 You're indeed getting something out of free-trials, reading content. Included expired vols/chapters that @sam-pinansky , being the nice guy he is, kindly makes available to potential customers so they can catch up to their favorite series. Actually, the kind of system abuse you use could easily be fixed by adding a small line of code to make that Premium credits can only be used to purchase ebooks available by the date you lost you member status. That way you can only buy books that actually existed by the time you're still a member. Because, why would you buy content that doesn't exist yet? There hasn't been a sale yet that will make you purchase premium credits in bulk, am I right?
Stealing money from the users? Yeah, but what about stealing money out of J-Novel by redeeming something that didn't exist by the time you had the right to? You have the right to redeem your credits, certainly you do. However you do not have the right to redeem them for something that wasn't there when you had the right to, meaning being a member as those users are the only ones with the right to purchase credits in the first place.
Yet again being the nice guy @sam-pinansky is I can mostly be sure the premium credit system, including its many exploits, will stay as it is or might be overhauled to be more user friendly, including free-users.
Berating for something I think is wrong? I am indeed, the same way you're excusing yourself for something you think is right which I'm berating is wrong. Either you're in the right or I'm. That's the never-ending argumentation cycle. Someone is going to be right and someone won't, however neither side will be happy with the reached outcome or none will be reached at all.
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@mmkop said in Suggestion, Direct Sales:
There hasn't been a sale yet that will make you purchase premium credits in bulk, am I right?
I buy them in bulk for the series I'm buying which come with bonus short stories like Arifureta, Realist Hero, Isekai Smartphone, and Uchimusume. Also Grimgar when there's a bonus story. All the other LNs I read that are J-NC published, I get from amazon.
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@aruseus493 Yet there is no reason for you to buy something that might never come to be. If you can buy other series outside J-Novel, why not buy them all that way? You want premium content for volumes that hasn't even been released nor announced yet? Then by all means, become a member and get the right to purchase those future volumes. Because this isn't a pre-order store. Even in a pre-order store, you can't buy content that doesn't exist yet.
Supporting that code implementation I mentioned earlier @sam-pinansky. I'll be the only one supporting it though...
Edit: In fact this whole premium credit thing could be turned into a pre-order system that only members will have access to getting rid of credits, thereby, rid of the many bug/exploits the current system has creating new ones instead though, lol.
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Wouldn't that result in fewer sales of ebooks for jnc, thus a loss of revenue?
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@rtwpsom2 Not really, no. If J-Novel releases 4 e-books monthly yet you buy 20 premium credits that will last you 5 months worth of unreleased content and you're able to redeem said e-books being a free-user, J-NC is losing $4.95/month (it's worst if you use a premium member account as you'll get a free credit on subscribing plus a $1 discount when buying credits) which sums up to $18.80 lost on subscriptions by the time you spend all your purchased credits. If such feature were right and/or intended the whole premium credit system is pointless and should be abolished.
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Wow, this has turned into quite an argument...
As a Premium user, I think that non-members should be able to buy Premium credits at a slightly inflated price to reflect the extra content in the books as well as the lack of membership. Restricting them to subscribers means non-members have to choose between feeling like they're missing out on content or buying a membership for a service they don't necessarily want or need, both of which are negative in my opinion and caused me not to buy any JNC titles for a long time (I only bought in following the catch-up/free trial week).
@mmkop said in Suggestion, Direct Sales:
@rtwpsom2 Not really, no. If J-Novel releases 4 e-books monthly yet you buy 20 premium credits that will last you 5 months worth of unreleased content and you're able to redeem said e-books being a free-user, J-NC is losing $4.95/month (it's worst if you use a premium member account as you'll get a free credit on subscribing plus a $1 discount when buying credits) which sums up to $18.80 lost on subscriptions by the time you spend all your purchased credits. If such feature were right and/or intended the whole premium credit system is pointless and should be abolished.
I'm not seeing the issue here? If you look at the tweet @Rahul-Balaggan linked, JNC is advising people to do exactly that. The core purpose of the subscription is for reading weekly novel translations which the free user cannot do (outside of their 1 month sub). If anything, JNC has gained 1 month's subscription fees from someone who otherwise wouldn't have subscribed so it is a gain for them.
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The primary benefit of Premium Membership is getting discounts on the premium ebook credits.
Free trials are only for normal memberships, so if people buy credits during them they pay full retail price.It's not really my intention to lock people out of getting the premium ebooks and bonus stuff unless they are actively subscribing to premium, as everyone has their own financial situation. The free trial loophole is fine. If you think that's unfair to you as a premium member, remember that they're paying more for those credits and not able to read any weekly releases.
I've thought of a few other perks for premium subscribers in the future... maybe like a custom member's card for people that've been premium for a full year, or something.
But trying to make a digital product like short stories or bonus illustrations a "limited" item is a fool's errand and would only encourage their piracy and lower our sales overall.Eventually I believe we will implement a full store, and in that store perhaps the premium editions will be slightly higher priced. But it's not something I'm going to focus on too soon. Practically Premium Credit sales are still only <5% of total ebook sales. Right now focusing on increasing subscribers and overall name recognition is more effective use of resources.
