Status Exception Updates
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It would be nice of J-Novel could keeps us updated on the status of stories that have unusual issues. I thought of this as I keep an eye out for the next Mixed Bathing volume or Her Majasty's Swarm book. From a little bit of research, there was a three year gap between v6 and v7 in Japan. Did the author get sick? Just go on hiatus? Get cancelled? Her Majasty's Swarm seems to be having some sort of issue, too, related to... publishers, I guess? Since many of us don't ready Japanese well if at all, we have trouble finding the information that would tell us what's going on.
Maybe if J-Novel could put note up that would give us the news, that would be very helpful. They could put it on the series page or in a pinned note in the series discussion forum.
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We usually don't have these answers you want, and the few times we do, we cannot talk about it publicly for one reason or another.
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@myskaros The first part of your answer is... well, I'm not in the business so I'm not in a position to fully understand. If it were me and it affected the product I sold, I would want to keep a finger on when the next volume might come out and what might be delaying it as best I can. It seems it would help with planning. If you know author X is on a long hiatus, you could adjust manpower and projects accordingly.
The second part of the answer really doesn't make sense? Why would you (me, anyone) be banned from talking about publisher statements and/or author tweets? It's not like that sort of stuff isn't available for the public to read -- if they read Japanese. And of course, the reason we're here is we don't read Japanese or don't read it well.
Just my 2-cents. Feel free to ignore me. I have the same frustrations with the other publishers lack of transparency.
D
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@Farmerdad You need to keep in mind they're licensing books from a different entity. If that entity hasn't publicly announced the series is on hiatus, or on hold, or has been cancelled in Japan, it's unlikely they'll tell the English license holder, or if they do want to explain it so they can make decisions, it'll probably be under some kind of NDA.
Most of the time, there is no public statement on the Japanese side, so all people can do is speculate the author has given up on a series or whatnot. It's not that people can't discuss things, it's that if JNC has been given privileged information about the situation, they won't necessarily be able to turn around and tell their customers what's going on.
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@Farmerdad I don't really know what you're expecting, to be frank. You're asking J-Novel Club to collect and share information about publication status/author status, correct? I see two possible scenarios for this:
- JNC obtains information from the publisher behind the scenes.
- JNC combs through social media and blogs to find public information.
For 1, my initial answer basically encompasses this. We don't usually get secret information about series or future books. When we do, it's under confidentiality, so we can't share it.
For 2, we don't do that currently, and we won't start doing it just for your personal convenience. (See the last paragraph.)
And the hidden answer between 1 and 2 is that any information we do reveal publicly can lead to a lot of speculation among the fanbase about information that we do or should have, or confirmation by omission. "Why did JNC know series X is canceled but say nothing about series Y? Does that mean Y is actually not canceled? If JNC said author A is sick but nothing about author B, was B's series canceled?"
As you've probably seen in the topics like this one, we can't license a new volume until it's released in Japan anyway, so the reason why there's a gap or a hiatus or cancellation or whatever is honestly irrelevant to us. If a book is going to be published, we have advance notice of it from preorders and other indicators. Therefore we have no reason to proactively seek information on authors and whatnot.
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Referenced by
Shiny
