January 2023 Livestream!
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Tune in on Friday, January 27, 2023, at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET (January 28 at 12 AM UTC) for an announcement session of new exciting light novels and manga that will be launching on J-Novel Club! Plus, we'll have Q&A at the end if there's some time! 😁 If you can't make it, you'll be able to watch the VOD for at least a couple days afterward, and recaps will be on our Twitter and here in this topic as well!
https://twitch.tv/jnovelclub
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Pinned by
myskaros
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I was just wondering when the next livestream was going to happen
Is there going to be hints this time?
“There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.” ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
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@Lily-Garden Give them hints even once, and they ask for hints forevermore.
Not me asking, though.
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I‘m praying for Fake Cinderella. But I guess, I‘m getting disappointed again...
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Referenced by G GeorgeMTO
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Referenced by I Ingraman
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Reminder that the stream will start in about 90 minutes! Tune in on our Twitch channel!
https://twitch.tv/jnovelclub
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros to be sure, in 1.5 hours you mean? Or did the time for the event change?
Quof got a break.
WHAT'S THE STORY WITH THAT FREAKING BLACK DRAGON?! -
@Crimson-Wise My fault, I mixed up what time it starts >_<
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I posted links to the announcements in the 2nd post, but I wanted to ask, would people prefer images to be hotlinked directly in the post?
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Please spare us the time, and yourself the money, and only hold these sorts of livestreams when you have actual licenses to announce, not trash-tier garbage no one will read. We know, 2023 is a rough year so far, what with the pandemic still going on and the recession and all. We get that. We also understand that Japanese publishers are now wise to how valuable their IP is, and they no longer accept lowball offers for extremely popular series (Gimai Seikatsu, kurakon, etc etc).
But what we also know is that a failing new Japanese publisher, with no established series anywhere on the popularity charts, with several series in limbo or already axed, will be willing to accept virtually any offer to make payroll for a couple more months before going belly-up. We're also wise to just how bad these series are, without having to go through the mental torture of reading them.
We also know a thing or two about investing. Sure, you can buy hundreds of penny stocks for a few bucks, and you'll own way more stocks overall than if you tried buying stocks in, say, Berkshire Hathaway. But your odds of losing everything aren't even comparable. Licensing series is an investment. In the past, you've invested quite well in popular series like How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, Imoza, etc. We all expected you to turn these gains around and invest in newer, up-and-coming, popular LNs. Instead, we started receiving trash-tier isekai, actually axed LNs (Did you even disclose that Legged Mimic was axed?), and... whatever the hell this announcement stream was.
We're not asking you to listen to a vocal minority here. We're simply asking you to look at popularity charts of series in Japan, attempt to license at least some of them, and if you can't, provide some transparency as to why. Keep in mind you're one of the three largest publishers of Japanese media to English, so claiming that you offered a number and they declined isn't going to jive very well. It's time to open the pocketbook. I'd like to place a purchase order for a share of Berkshire, please. No more penny stocks.
And for the love of all that is holy, stop pretending that these awful licenses are anything more than garbage. You're insulting your customer base by blithely pretending that any of these series are worth our time reading, much less our money purchasing. We know better. And we won't buy them. Don't act surprised when we don't.
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@Daxar When the bean counters report that Quiet Blacksmith Life has swept the top of the sales rankings whereas Rebuild World is languishing with the loss-making rejects, one can't be surprised when licensing strategies are adjusted accordingly.
That being said, man shall not live on bread alone, and this round of announcements doesn't appear at first blush to offer too much in the way of divine words. There have however been, for me, a fair number of series that sound like trash in licensing announcements and then turn out rather well. I'll wait and see.
tl;dr who is "we"?
edit: Pale Moon Reverie fits the bill if you were looking for something outside of the trash tier isekai making buzz in Japan.
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@Daxar Speak for yourself. I'm isekai trash and I know it.
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I'm sorry you were disappointed with our licenses this time. I won't address your entire post, but I can provide a couple responses.
@Daxar said in January 2023 Livestream!:
We're simply asking you to look at popularity charts of series in Japan, attempt to license at least some of them, and if you can't, provide some transparency as to why.
- As mentioned on the stream, we bid on a lot of stuff, and we don't get a lot of what we bid on. Usually this means another company already licensed it before we even offered. This isn't something that can be solved with money.
- Sometimes the publisher just doesn't want to license in English. (See: Alphapolis.)
- Sometimes the author or illustrator don't want their work to be published in English.
- When we run into these kinds of roadblocks, we cannot disclose the specific reason publicly unless we want to risk getting blacklisted from getting any other licenses from any publisher in the future.
- Worth throwing out there that there is a lot of business politicking going on too, and that's a whole thing that both complicates our ability to license and I similarly cannot give more details about publicly.
- Also worth mentioning that we do have a lot of licenses that are not ready to be announced yet. As Sam said on the stream, we have license announcement events planned through September of this year with stuff already populating each event.
You're insulting your customer base by blithely pretending that any of these series are worth our time reading, much less our money purchasing. We know better. And we won't buy them. Don't act surprised when we don't.
Again, I'm sorry you weren't happy with the licenses this time, and I'll assume this applies to licenses from the last few announcement batches as well. However, our sales numbers do not align with your stated beliefs regarding what the wider fan community will or will not buy.
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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Others have already commented on the demand side, which is definitely of note. A good chunk of J-Novel's customers will happily have these sorts of basic pulpy novels, as opposed to series like The Apothecary Diaries. This can even be seen in Sam's comment during the stream about how AI-written stories are a bigger business concern than AI-translated stories, as otherwise the AI can just pump out stories of mediocre quality that still fit tastes and plot holes are probably irrelevant to overall enjoyment.
And even if you gave the example of How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, that still fits this sort of template series; it's just that more series are licensed before their anime nowadays (see: Realist Hero).
A final point of note is how many publishers are also concerned about digital-only sales; while this is changing for sure (see: Welcome to Japan Ms Elf being digital-only in Japan since...vol 6? 7?), there may still be publishers who are dubious on digital and thus won't work with J-Novel due to J-Novel being digital only unless good sales.
Basically, everyone has tastes, and yours sounds fairly different to a "typical" J-Novel customer (coming from someone who has...mixed tastes to a degree). And the anime/manga/JP LN community are...a bit weird for US and the like (and viewed weirdly by those outside), which can make it tricky to get broad appeal. So that leaves trying to promote those series you want to see licensed to the audience, in a way that appeals to them.
Or go to other publishers who are more likely to license preferred series of interest, and hope that their audience also buys those series. -
If I had to guess anything of any high value is typically sniped by Yen Press. Now that J-novel is more or less another arm of Kadokawa. Anything more niche I find in my experience seems to be picked up by Seven Seas when J-novel doesn't get their hands on it.
To this day I cannot understand why Yen wasn't able to pick up half the long running GC Novels catolog series and somehow Seven Seas did.I can understand the sentiment that picking up some series is a waste of money and time (namely due to the nature of axed novels ending prematurely and how horribly rushed they tend to be) But I do however agree from the outside looking in, that it seems like stuff is getting ignored. Especially since these days 95% of the current isekai and LN stuff seems to have no problem getting subtitled and aired on crunchyroll as well as other streaming services and then the books never see the light of day.
On the plus side this happens less often now, but I agree its frustrating when it doesn't.
On another note, J-novel from my point of view seems to specialize in bulk licensing stuff they think might go big or simply they pick up abandoned work(see slayers among others).
For J-novel this means giga bank when the anime airs, especially if it does well. -
@myskaros said in January 2023 Livestream!:
As Sam said on the stream,
we have license announcement events planned through September of this yearwith stuff already populating each event.I must have missed that part, but seriously?
That is a lot of series sitting in the pipeline not yet ready to go live for one reason or another...
Along with what I assume must be several that are almost worked out but the contracts haven't been signed yet...Green's Theorem
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@Konchen said in January 2023 Livestream!:
But I do however agree from the outside looking in, that it seems like stuff is getting ignored. Especially since these days 95% of the current isekai and LN stuff seems to have no problem getting subtitled and aired on crunchyroll as well as other streaming services and then the books never see the light of day.
I can sympathize, but the only answers I can give you are found in my previous post.
- Are some things getting ignored? Yes, I won't deny that, but that's because from the inside, we have more data than the general public does, and things that fans think are popular aren't necessarily profitable.
- Then there are the ones that fall into the "we bid but didn't get it for reasons" bucket. It feels rather unjustified to single out JNC for not getting a series that a different publisher already licensed but hasn't announced yet for whatever reason.
- Even series that get anime aren't necessarily going to do much for book sales, as evidenced by the numerous series JNC and other publishers have licensed with older anime adaptations that frankly don't sell gangbusters like fans swear they will.
In the end, I know it's annoying that there's no visible movement on certain series, but there isn't anything we can do to help with that in most cases. If we (JNC) do actually have it licensed or in negotiations to license, you'll just have to wait until we're ready to announce it D:
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@piisfun You might have missed this message on Discord too:
https://discord.com/channels/320950114355118090/885244724460535849/1068702798050500688
Quarkboy — I said explcitly that we're budgted to put out 25% more books in 2023
Whoever said nothing's impossible never tried slamming a revolving door.
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@myskaros I went trawling through the general channel after that comment (something I normally avoid: it moves too fast), so I did.
Those points definitely say a lot of stuff is moving behind the scenes awaiting debut.
It also explains why we can have most of one announcements stream be just licenses from newer partners.
Anyway, time to see if there is anything I like in this batch...
(There usually isn't, but why complain? There are much better uses of time... though apparently not everyone thinks so...)Green's Theorem
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@myskaros
All good no offense taken actually, I didn't mean to reply just to you but to the general thread. Thanks for being transparent on the topic.Anyways only thing I'm hoping(ium) on still is beast tamer since the author seems to have a thing for turboing books out. For now Im waiting for ryuyus the the demon lord LNs to catch up to the fan tld manga. Almost there...
