Question about older series Licensing Suggestions
-
During the April 2025 "Announcements!" Q&A part of the video, it was said that series 5 years or older will likely not be licensed.
My question is:The 5 years count starts on Volume 1 release date or on the Final volume release date?
-
@gustavosousil
The impression I got was for sure if the series had been complete for over five years.
If it was completed more recently than that...it would depend.If it started further back than five years but was still actively being published?
I think Frontier Lord, for one, might qualify? I haven't checked the Japanese release dates...and when JNC picked it up...
Rokujouma? Might be one to check the dates on.Anyway, my sense was that if it had ceased publication over five years back, it had a stake through the heart.
-
@gustavosousil I think that's too nitpicky a way to look at it, especially if they used 'likely'.
The point of the statement is that older series have apparently sold badly for JNC, probably because they're out of sight, out of mind. '5 years' is just a convenient label for 'old enough that there probably won't be enough of an audience.'
So arguing about when to start the clock is the wrong tack; the real question is 'are there enough people still thinking about this, and willing to buy our translation, for us to earn back our investment?'
-
@Travis-Butler said in Question about older series Licensing Suggestions:
'5 years' is just a convenient label for 'old enough that there probably won't be enough of an audience.'
A couple of years ago Sam did put an actual year in where they were considered "classic" in terms of effect on sales.
admin said in January 2023 Livestream!:
"Classic" seems to apply even to series from like, 2015 or 2016.
So 2 years on that would mean 2018 now, which is slightly over 5 years ago, but if licensing takes at least a year to pick up a new title, that's not that far off. So I agree that it's not a hard and fast rule, but I certainly wouldn't be expecting anything that ended pre2020 anymore from any publisher.
-
I asked this question, because there is a series that I am thinking of posting on the Licensing Sugestions Forum and the synopsis of the Latest Volume released made me think the series will end soon.
The First Volume released on May 2019 and Latest Volume(10) released on December 2024.
I was thinking of waiting for the release date of volume 11 to be announced before posting on Licensing Sugestions Forum.
Why I think it will end soon:
-
There are always exceptions, especially to hand-wavy rules like this. It's never a bad idea to suggest a series that you'd like to see licensed, just don't get your hopes up if it's subjectively "kind of old."
-
I would have thought an older and longer series that remained popular for years and published many volumes without being axed or dropped would make for a better license.
I'm just curious to know why older series don't sell well. Is it because the writing or contents are outdated? Because we already know there's no hope for a manga or anime adaptation? Because everyone's already read the fan translation?
-
I think the “rule of thumb” message here is that an older series (especially one that doesn’t have a ton of “buzz”) isn’t likely to get picked up. (Net new to JNC) also I suspect that contracting a license on a title has a time frame attached. If a series is 5 yrs old (on the JNC site) JNC might have to look at renewal of a contract , and if it isn’t selling…well the fate is predictable. That being said, if there is a series you care about- use those credits! Get them in your personal library. The more popular a series is, I would speculate that the more likely it is that similar series (or titles from the same author) get picked up.
-
@BlueDragoon I don't think there's necessarily one specific reason someone could point out. It'd be like trying to figure out why romcoms don't sell very well to JNC audiences.
Fan translation is probably a fairly big one though, even if they're only doing the WN, if it's close enough to the LN version there may not be a large audience who will buy the novels. But the genre could have fallen out of favour with western audiences, it could be long (JNC hasn't dropped a series yet, so licensing a long series would be a gamble if signs point towards it not going to do particularly well). An anime may well boost sales, but if the series is doing poorly, even an anime probably won't boost things into the profitable realm, or keep it there.
-
After reading the all comments I decided to post it on Licensing Suggestion and hope for the best.
There is no fan translation (At least I didn't find it, when I searched), because there is no WebNovel version, there is only the Light Novel version.
I also put the manga version on the Licensing Suggestion on the Forum:
