January 2023 Livestream!

HarmlessDave

@piisfun said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:

Vocal superfans are very tricky to cater to, they're often substantially out of sync with the market as a whole.

That sounds an awfully lot like movie critics vs. actual audience opinions...

Or foodies. They love exotic and unique flavor combinations like truffle-infused braised otter snouts while I'd rather have a $10 pub cheeseburger and onion rings.

Windsagio

@HarmlessDave Another subject that comes up (especially with people into genre fiction) is this weird inferiority complex. People sometimes need (apparently) to make the stuff out to be more than it is, because they're embarrassed by it.

That kind of talk doesn't even reflect peoples own actual likes so can be further distorting.

Brakes

@Travis-Butler

Perhaps for longer-running series where there's existing continuity, or for those movies which are from directors/have certain actors in with notable dedicated fanbases. But it can be a bit trickier to consider superfans for new series/single entries without those particular directors/actors (even if such movies are sparser at modern cinemas).

However, critics do have a few notable differences to "majority" fans (although these are all pretty similar points, more different angles on them):

Critics may have their own taste preferences
There are certain elements critics may look for in movies which audiences don't care about, or perhaps even opposite views between the groups
Background (so whether had education background, fan background, or such) and experience in reviewing (or even where reviewing - is this a site that has a strong reviewing base and thus may keep that up long-term, or is this a fan blog that may go critic or superfan depending on the poster)
Critics also presumably have spent a LOT of time watching movies (and a range of movies), which would further affect their own tastes

Naturally, this is more focused on critics as in traditional reviewers, who have some biases but still try to focus on certain elements of the movie even if it doesn't fit their tastes. Others...not so much.

myskaros

@Microdynames said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@myskaros I was under the impression danmei is a slightly different kettle of fish (market demographic)

I think you could agree that even between light novels and manga, the market is different, yes? Danmei may not overlap as much with certain areas of LN/manga, but much more in others.

In general, "Korean and Chinese stuff" is both too vague to know what is being referenced, and whatever is being referenced cannot be used in an apples-to-apples comparison anyway, so I just picked danmei as a Chinese fiction venture by a Japanese LN/manga company (Seven Seas) that is so profitable that it appears to be supplanting their LN/manga business.

kuali

@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@HarmlessDave Another subject that comes up (especially with people into genre fiction) is this weird inferiority complex. People sometimes need (apparently) to make the stuff out to be more than it is, because they're embarrassed by it.

No, no, no, you philistines just don't understand! This series about a drunken lesbian pervert making dirty jokes online has literary merit! I'm not just reading it because it makes me laugh - this is serious stuff!

Lily Garden

@kuali It's a deliberate analysis of the current environment of parasocial content creators and how friends from work can develop into a legitimate support network to relieve reliance on substances for stress relief and limit the possibility of burnout

😆 😂

Windsagio

@myskaros My argument is essentially that "Japanese" has brand value that "Korean" and "Chinese" don't yet.

I know plenty of people who will read manga but not manhua, or for that matter what will read Genre LNs but won't even look at LitRPG English language works (which seem to me to be a combination of popular LNs and Hickman/Weiss D&D novels, but I'm not an expert).

The content of the works don't matter so much as the brand awareness, just like the concept of sexier cover art selling better (which was mentioned authoritatively up above). "Japanese" often drives some sales on its own, and "Korean" or "Chinese" don't seem to be there yet (granted, I don't have a ton of access to the numbers, so this is speculative)

lilitu93

@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@myskaros My argument is essentially that "Japanese" has brand value that "Korean" and "Chinese" don't yet.

I know plenty of people who will read manga but not manhua, or for that matter what will read Genre LNs but won't even look at LitRPG English language works (which seem to me to be a combination of popular LNs and Hickman/Weiss D&D novels, but I'm not an expert).

The content of the works don't matter so much as the brand awareness, just like the concept of sexier cover art selling better (which was mentioned authoritatively up above). "Japanese" often drives some sales on its own, and "Korean" or "Chinese" don't seem to be there yet (granted, I don't have a ton of access to the numbers, so this is speculative)

Japanese stuff currently may have more “brand” recognition, but there’s definitely more crossover than you might think. It may be more obvious in fans of female demographic materials though (shoujo/josei/BL/etc.). For instance, there’s a big overlap in BL and danmei fans, and villainess and BL manhua are both really popular among fans of the Japanese versions of those genres.

I’m sure there’s more examples - I just know more what’s going on in genres I’m into (been reading a lot of danmei novels lately plus most of the manhua I read is villainess), but if you look at the majority of what the English-language manga/LN publishers are doing from Chinese and Korean stuff, it’s danmei for novels or villainess and BL from web manhua. Oh and some k-pop related manhua, but that’s also a tie-in thing (and marketed more at the female demographic).

As for Western litrpg, that may be a harder sell due to the fact it’s not from an Asian country, so it’s seen as inferior, kind of the way OEL manga was back in the day when loads of publishers were trying to cash into it. I admit, I’m wary of that kind of thing myself as I expect it to be a bad copy of the original, as if it were good, it wouldn’t need to market itself as something it isn’t. I’m not saying this is fair, and I’m sure just like OEL manga, there’s some good stuff there as well for fans of those kinds of things. But part of the appeal of Japanese, Korean and Chinese works is that they’re foreign, so they’re different from what you get from Western works.

Windsagio

@lilitu93 The trick would be that both are at this point quite fringe.

I'm gonna guess that, the BL market in English speaking regions is the very definition of 'loud, devoted, tiny' that we've spoken of above. Them having overlap with things isn't that significant when you get for sales.

And let me be clear, I easily believe that many of these things are growing to some degree.... They're just demonstrably extremely small, so making money on them can be tricky.

As Admin said above, even heart (which has a lot of romcom and mainstream shojo) breaks about even, which is a lot lower than the big sellers... and BL is much much more fringe than that.

If we were to break down the 'official' comments above, the following would be general guidelines:

Current or recent Anime drives sales
There's a recency bias (ie older titles, even 'classics' don't do super well)
Standard genres do better than even experimental genres, let alone extreme niches.

The one that interests me is that all the publishers have dipped into the "Lesbian isekai for the male audience" (whether gender swap or not), and I'm incredibly curious if those sell well.

Travis Butler

@Brakes said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@Travis-Butler

However, critics do have a few notable differences to "majority" fans (although these are all pretty similar points, more different angles on them):

Critics may have their own taste preferences

There are certain elements critics may look for in movies which audiences don't care about, or perhaps even opposite views between the groups

Superfans do this too - even more so, I'd argue.

Consider the following example of a villain.

General audience: Does he sound and act cool as a villain?

Critic: Does this character work well as a villain - in the way he steers the plot, the way he affects the main characters, the way he meets critical standards for villains?

Superfan: Does he fit the continuity established by a TV series (that 90% of the general audience hasn't seen)? How does he jibe with the pet theory I came up with after reading a dozen volumes of ancillary stories that the general audience has probably never read either? (I'm not exaggerating on this one; I've seen this exact behavior when discussing with friends of mine.)

Which do you think better represents a general audience's concerns?

So let's look at Japanese novel translations. The forums here are generally pretty good, but every so often you'll have a superfan pop up complaining because a translation is overly casual and doesn't meet their standard for a properly 'literal' interpretation. Or because Japanese cultural references that no general reader will catch have been changed to English-speaking ones. Puns have been changed to use English references. Etc. All of these are concerns that matter to superfine, not to a general audience - and in many cases work against a general audience, by making a novel less approachable for a casual reader.

Or take series being licensed, to bring this back on topic. We've had pretty hard evidence in this thread that titles aimed at casual readers, which have received lots of complaints from serious fans here, sell much much better than other titles those serious fans prefer.

Brakes

@Travis-Butler said in January 2023 Livestream!:

Superfans do this too - even more so, I'd argue.

Consider the following example of a villain.

General audience: Does he sound and act cool as a villain?

Critic: Does this character work well as a villain - in the way he steers the plot, the way he affects the main characters, the way he meets critical standards for villains?

Superfan: Does he fit the continuity established by a TV series (that 90% of the general audience hasn't seen)? How does he jibe with the pet theory I came up with after reading a dozen volumes of ancillary stories that the general audience has probably never read either? (I'm not exaggerating on this one; I've seen this exact behavior when discussing with friends of mine.)
Which do you think better represents a general audience's concerns?

I acknowledge that superfans do exist (including for single-entry series), however I consider series superfans to have reduced applicability, especially for the current context of these more "casual" series.

@Travis-Butler said in January 2023 Livestream!:

So let's look at Japanese novel translations. The forums here are generally pretty good, but every so often you'll have a superfan pop up complaining because a translation is overly casual and doesn't meet their standard for a properly 'literal' interpretation. Or because Japanese cultural references that no general reader will catch have been changed to English-speaking ones. Puns have been changed to use English references. Etc. All of these are concerns that matter to superfine, not to a general audience - and in many cases work against a general audience, by making a novel less approachable for a casual reader.

Or take series being licensed, to bring this back on topic. We've had pretty hard evidence in this thread that titles aimed at casual readers, which have received lots of complaints from serious fans here, sell much much better than other titles those serious fans prefer.

Ah, thank you for clarifying. There would definitely be superfans for broader genres/subsets (like sci-fi fans who pick apart the accuracy of the science) that would not rely on an existing series. Further, J-Novel as a licensor would also have fans of unlicensed series (or those where the license is dead) who want a particular series brought over, which does fit with your consideration of superfans.

So yes, critics may be relatively closer to a general audience then superfans. However, all three may still be quite different from each-other, due again to these varied tastes and how much of similar material each group would rather consume (a critic is arguably more likely to tire of highly repetitive material, particularly if it doesn't suit their tastes, while general audiences may vary on this and superfans would probably prefer more similar material).

lilitu93

@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@lilitu93 The trick would be that both are at this point quite fringe.

I'm gonna guess that, the BL market in English speaking regions is the very definition of 'loud, devoted, tiny' that we've spoken of above. Them having overlap with things isn't that significant when you get for sales.

I think it's less that it's fringe than that it's an underserved market. Plus demand for both danmei and web manhua grew in other channels first - danmei from both live action and animated adaptions (donghua), and manhua via their apps (Tapas, Webtoons, Lehzin). (And, of course, scanlations and fan translations, but that's a given.)

I've got no idea how the published manhua is doing, except that they are still doing it and it seems to be expanding, but danmei is doing incredibly well for Seven Seas:

https://sevenseasentertainment.com/2021/12/23/mo-xiang-tong-xiu-mxtx-becomes-triple-new-york-times-best-selling-author-in-one-week-with-seven-seas-debut-of-danmei-novels/

It also partially depends on the publisher, I think. Seven Seas especially seems to be aggressively going for fans of female-demographic works, and I've noticed that they're the publisher I'm currently buying the most number of novels from outside of JNC.

I'm glad to hear that J-Novel Heart is doing pretty well, at least enough to keep it going. I still don't really like the name of it as female-demographic works aren't just romance, and romance isn't just aimed at girls and women, but I like a lot of what's published in it. I'm sure JNC did more market research than I've ever done, though, when they picked the name. I do wonder, though, if their reputation as "generic isekai" sometimes hurts, and those who would like Heart aren't looking at JNC, but I suspect most people into light novels who are big fans do keep on top of what's licensed.

Wellwisher

@admin said in January 2023 Livestream!:

Here's a simple fact: oversummoned is (as a certain reddit mod would say) an "axed" light novel series. When we announced it people derided the choice (and somewhat correctly deduced it was mostly because we wanted the manga, which is also selling some of the best of any manga we do).

There was no need to guess because you mentioned that during the annuncements (either during Oversummoned or Gag Character slide).

Windsagio

@lilitu93 With the continued caveat of "the industries are slightly different", I'm super cautious of 'underserved market'. It's always a question until some publisher takes the plunge (although the Danmei example may be telling if it goes well), and people have a tendency to generalize from themselves and think what they like must be generally popular.

It's worth watching and seeing though, I'd enjoy being wrong.

Jon Mitchell

@piisfun said in January 2023 Livestream!:

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.

lets say 500 webnovels a year are 'in the wild' /year
so what you are saying is that, out of web novels - half (250?) are too short to bother with.
and half of what's left is garbage (I'm guessing just not written well/not worth reading?)
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"?

Windsagio

@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...

WaterDweller

To put the Japanese web novel scene into perspective, I'll leave this quote from Wikipedia, about Shousetsuka ni Narou, the primary web novel site in Japan.

As of December 2022, the site hosts close to 1,000,000 novels, has over 2,300,000 registered users and it receives over 1 billion page views per month. (source)

Out of those ~1,000,000 novels, the number that have been picked up for publication as a light novel can probably be counted in the hundreds, if even that.

Windsagio

@WaterDweller And most of the series on JNC are amongst those hundreds!

I certainly wouldn't post on Naru with the intent of being picked up though.

Geezer Weasalopes

@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:

@WaterDweller And most of the series on JNC are amongst those hundreds!

I certainly wouldn't post on Naru with the intent of being picked up though.

Which is what pretty much every LN Author Afterword says; they never expected to get a publication offer.
A number have even said they suspected they were being trolled when the offers started showing up.

Gamen

@Windsagio said in January 2023 Livestream!:

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...

To quote ANN's disclosure statement:

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.