January 2023 Livestream!

myskaros

@Crimson-Wise My fault, I mixed up what time it starts >_<

myskaros

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?

Daxar

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.

Microdynames

@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.

GeorgeMTO

@Daxar Speak for yourself. I'm isekai trash and I know it.

myskaros

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.

Brakes

@Daxar

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.

Konchen

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.

piisfun

@myskaros said in January 2023 Livestream!:

As Sam said on the stream, we have license announcement events planned through September of this year with 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...

myskaros

@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:

myskaros

@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

piisfun

@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...)

Konchen

@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...

DarKraD

@piisfun said in January 2023 Livestream!:

(There usually isn't, but why complain? There are much better uses of time... though apparently not everyone thinks so...)

I honestly never understand this argument. People complain because they care, especially after being frustrated after so many stream announcements that went nowhere. Take the recent WoTC and DnD event recently. If nothing was raised, no complained, no backlash, we wouldn't have what just occurred today. And reading the above, it doesn't sound like complaining to me, just some frustrated opinion.

Waiting for JNC announcement used to be really fun as they had some gems that shined like My Sister Can Read Kanji, Kokoro, Grimgar, Dendro, etc. Now just a bunch of one-two-and-axed series. And I don't even want those uber popular series or anything, just give me some fun, whimsical series like Gear Drive, which ironically got axed after 1 volume.

Propagandist

Thanks for the stream. I'm excited to give these a read and don't feel "insulted" by the selection at all.

Ran

@Microdynames said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@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.

No no no. D: Really? But Rebuild World is amazing... x_x This is terrible. I need to leave amazon reviews or something.

piisfun

@DarKraD
Two very different cases.
The WOTC issue was a case where complaining could actually have an effect, and did.

The problem here is a case where complaining can't have any real effect, hence why I called it a waste of time.

I read quite a few web novels.
Japanese publishers typically start with web novels and turn them into light novels, so some statistics should work here:

Over half of all web novels never get enough chapters to even consider publishing.
Of the remaining ones, half are garbage.
Out of that, 30% are smut, pornography or other difficult to license material, none of which the English market will touch.
Most of what is left is probably getting tried out by the various Japanese publishers.

The "gems" you talk about... there is honestly only dozen or so of those per year. There are two major reasons the number has decreased:

The English market has heavily depleted the backlog of these "gems," meaning that they are now much harder to find.
Market competition is increasing. Slowly, yes, but significantly.

Finally, in a market where you vote with your wallet...
Our votes may count for the English publishers, *but they barely count for the Japanese publishers... the ones who control the actual supply of titles that JNC and others are trying to license.
That is to say, our votes have no effect on the supply, only on what the pipe brings from that supply. And when the problem is mostly the supply itself, that doesn't help very much.

With a system like that, and with multiple layers of corporate interactions required, there is only so much that can be done. Complaining, even complaining in mass, isn't going to move a system with so much inertia unless, like a certain issue mentioned above, it blows up in the media and threatens to take the company with it.

endoftheline

@DarKraD True, people may complain because they care, but those same people aren't necessarily worth listening to. And if it really is just a frustrated opinion, then it's likely something that people probably shouldn't even waste brain cells on. It should be acknowledged but forgotten, since the only reason they even bother giving their opinion is to validate their ego.

As for the gems you've mentioned...

My Sister Can Read Kanji

What's good about that one? To me it's just another sequence of 5 words. Nothing motivating me to look any further.

Kokoro [Connect?]

... I remember watching the anime, but I don't remember the anime being something to write home about.

Grimgar

I dumped the anime pretty early on. I just wasn't entertained by it. So how is it a gem?

Dendro

Ugh... that series was interesting in the beginning, but frankly, it just turned into a slog of words, pointless actions, and unhinged idealizing on what's-his-face-Ray's part. And if everything is just going to leave you with a bad taste, perhaps the problem is with your taste buds not what's going into your mouth.

And I'm guessing I just dumped on some of your favorites, so here's a sampling of mine so you can return the favor if you want: (Older) Invaders of the Rokujouma (bite me), Mixed Bathing, Me a Genius (Newer) Making Magic, Invincible Little Lady, Sometimes Even Reality Is a Lie.

FWIW, I've probably read about a solid third of what JNC has put out, online and offline. Most of it meets my expectations, but then, I'm also expecting 90% of everything being crud... Plus, everyone has different tastes so one person's treasure is another's trash...

As for what was announced this stream, other than the Lady Albert LN, there's a couple more that look interesting, but I'm likely going to wait awhile before looking at them. Weekly serialization sometimes does injustice to a story when they aren't written to be scrutinized in piecemeal. Monster Tamer and Trash Mapping Skill got killed for me because of that; I Surrendered My Sword would've likely been another victim if I hadn't read the Sol Press version and learned that the skill BS was called out as BS within the story itself.

jpwong

@DarKraD I mean, I liked that some of the older licensing streams had significantly more titles that I was interested in, but I also have to bow to the fact that what we think sells and what they actually see sells is apparently vastly different so I can't fault them for not giving a smogusboard of what would probably amount to being net negative series.

@Ran said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@Microdynames said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@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.

No no no. D: Really? But Rebuild World is amazing... x_x This is terrible. I need to leave amazon reviews or something.

I think the problem is that it's just too outside the norm of what's popular. I would have thought that it's slightly more unique setting would be a draw, but I guess not.

piisfun

@jpwong said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@Ran said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@Microdynames said in January 2023 Livestream!:

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.

No no no. D: Really? But Rebuild World is amazing... x_x This is terrible. I need to leave amazon reviews or something.

I think the problem is that it's just too outside the norm of what's popular. I would have thought that it's slightly more unique setting would be a draw, but I guess not.

Rebuild World is long, somewhat dark, and complex.
Furthermore, the first half of Volume 1 Part 1 can be rather hard to push through.
By comparison, Quiet Blacksmith Life is a lightweight series that starts relatively strong and gets weaker from there. It has romance and harem elements, and might as well be a wish fulfillment series...

Yeah, makes sense to me. Unfortunately.