January 2023 Livestream!
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@Gamen, although of course I know nothing about Kadokawa's corporate structure and ethos, in general it's perfectly normal for companies with the same owner to compete with each other.
After reading something captivating, book lovers simply need to talk about it with someone.
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@Angelus Yes. That was more to answer the "and whichever JP publisher owns Yen" question.... which just so happens to also own JNC.
For me... I'm not too surprised at the low sales numbers in general. Just look at @Josu_ke's infographics for sales figures from Oricon (which doesn't track Bookworm as an LN, lol), LNs don't seem to even be a big market in Japan. Most of the top 20 series sell <20k copies a month. Even #20 on the manga list sold more copies than #1 on the LN list.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in January 2023 Livestream!:
and of those left a dozen or two so are 'smut' or porn or difficult to license material (I'm guessing derivative of copywritten works) - which leaves 50 or 60 that current publishers are looking at --- maybe we can take a look at a few of the ones described above that are long enough, well written enough, but happen to be smut for JNC "after dark"?
Amazon says: no after dark for you!
With regular LNs being blocked (Hanashi just had this happen) R18 has no chance.
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@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:
@Jon-Mitchell That's the beauty of the JP system though, it's not 500, it's probably many thousands (I should look up the total naru numbers), and the in-site rankings make it easy to look at what might be popular or resonant.
I'm extremely certain that's why certain oddballs (looking at vending machine) got published, they did good numbers on Naru and so the JP publisher knew it was worth taking the plunge.
There's another trick for JNC though, they're also competing with Hachette (which is HUGE) and whichever JP publisher owns Yen (I never remember) along with a number of other small publishers for titles. You have to be really smart on your bidding...
Yen Press (per wikipedia) Yen Press, LLC is an American manga and graphic novel publisher co-owned by Kadokawa Corporation and Hachette Book Group...Kadokawa Corporation (51%), Hachette Book Group (49%)
and JNC is owned by Kadokawa - I don't know how much "competition" Hachette/Yen Press is and how much is a conscious/intentionally division of labor/market (sort of like - how much is Lexus a competitor of Toyota?)
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@HarmlessDave said in January 2023 Livestream!:
@Jon-Mitchell said in January 2023 Livestream!:
and of those left a dozen or two so are 'smut' or porn or difficult to license material (I'm guessing derivative of copywritten works) - which leaves 50 or 60 that current publishers are looking at --- maybe we can take a look at a few of the ones described above that are long enough, well written enough, but happen to be smut for JNC "after dark"?
Amazon says: no after dark for you!
With regular LNs being blocked (Hanashi just had this happen) R18 has no chance.
I think I remember hashing out this tangent before (sorry I brought it up here)
Amazon has a whole array of 'issues' and labelling is one of them (LN is the same as manga is the same as comic books and comic books are for children so adult LNs are not allowed )- they sell plenty of smut and a new brand (maybe a new company) would be needed --and yes amazon is a monopoly that should be broken/has too much power etc. -
@admin said in January 2023 Livestream!:
Classic series like full metal/slayers sell terribly, 100% of the time. Only print editions sell for those. Later volumes of classic series can sell <100 copies each digitally. So our ability to license classic series is tied to our ability to put out print editions (otherwise we're looking at 5-figure losses for longer series.)
"Classic" seems to apply even to series from like, 2015 or 2016.I see "series from like, 2015 or 2016" and "Later volumes", and I think "Long series" instead of "Classic", which makes more sense from my layman's perspective. When it comes to the Algorithm, it shouldn't really matter that the original text is from ten or twenty years ago, or whether it was beloved or not... Only that it's a new release that's yet to sink beneath the next wave. And each successive volume is basically limited to those who bought the previous.
....So that's a no on Yen ever doing the Index sequels I'm guessing. Oh well, I like Railgun more anyway.
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@Gamen My analysis applies to digital sales. Print is another can of worms and I don't have nearly as much data as someone like Yen on that.
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To one of the above comments, are any of the publishers working on getting Amazon to tag LNs as books instead of manga/comics? The weird censorship issues have hit (so far as I can tell) every LN publisher, and it feels like a lot more money could be made by all parties if Amazon would change the policy.
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I would imagine the issue is are any of the LN publishers large enough to bother to get amazon to listen to them? Working with amazon actually requires someone at amazon to care about the issue at all in the first place.
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@jpwong "someone at amazon to care"... I know what that's intended to mean, but clearly, it's getting the right person to care that's the problem. Having one member of proletariat care is no different from having nobody care, because they are easily shutdown for business reasons.
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@Windsagio It's a complicated matter that affects more than Amazon. It's about getting stores to update to latest BISAC standards when most places won't upgrade from the 2014 standards...
It's not unlike trying to get people to upgrade from Windows XP back in the day...
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@admin Pretty sure if I tried (and not even tried very hard), I could still find people using XP today.
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@GeorgeMTO You should see what still uses XP these days, some ATMs still use it.
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This quote from the Lady Albert LN (one of the titles licensed here) seems really fitting :
Such stories may be a dime a dozen, but that is by no means a shortcoming. On the contrary, following certain tropes is often a surefire way to win over a specific niche market!
I think it's my favorite license from this set too; it's absolutely hilarious.
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@Ran Hah, I saw and loved that quote! Just the right level of meta!
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@admin
That's very interesting info; thank you for that.On classic series, that makes so much sense. For example, I love Slayers and followed the prepubs, but since I already own the Japanese volumes I decided to only get the Collectors' Edition. Having the same series 3 times felt a little excessive ahaha
(I say that, but I'm buying both the junior bunko and English print releases of Bookworm).There are very precious few series I could justify having multiples of, and in terms of light novels, I'm thinking the only one left would be The Twelve Kingdoms. I already own the bunko set and the few Tokyopop worked on, and would more than happily get ebooks/prints for it if it gets rescued.
I'm assuming everyone has at least one series they cherish to that degree, but unless we overlap to some degree... well, it's not really a viable market.
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@Eleore Granting this is dependent on how much discretionary income people have and how they spend it, but I also do 'support spends', I buy the ones I'm actively following in the hopes it keeps them supported. Of course I also don't buy the JP versions, so it's not a perfect parallel.
Logic is out, Unreasonableness is in!
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@Windsagio I have two categories for JNC series I follow - the ones I buy, and the ones I keep as prepub only.
Bookworm, Apothecary Diaries and Dahlia in Bloom are examples of the former. These are series I really enjoyed and will definitely read again.
The latter category mostly includes manga includes those books I either won't read again, or simply didn't like enough to justify the purchase. My funds are also limited, unfortunately... .
As for buying the Japanese versions, well, I don't do that very often, just with a couple of series as shipping can be expensive. Right now, the only ones I'm actively buying are manga (My Happy Marriage's special editions and Shoukoku no Altair, both of which get like one book per year) and the Honzuki junior bunko.
My Happy Marriage is also a strange example in that I'm getting the English novels but the Japanese manga... perhaps it's because the setting, but that one just feels like I have to read it in Japanese ahaha.
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