Curious: does JNC pay licensees for prepub readers?

HarmlessDave

I'm just curious about this, but I understand if you won't reveal license terms.

If I read a book's prepub parts but don't then buy it, does the author get paid anything extra?

Or is prepub access baked into the license as a flat fee or without any payment at all?

Geezer Weasalopes

Funky question.

My perspective could be strange, but what else is new?
I got the membership initially as a means of providing JNC additional operating funds, and it was quite some time before I started reading any of the prepubs.

Your question has several things involved from a programming/accounting perspective.

Can JNC track which prepubs an individual reads?
Can they cross-correlate that information with purchases made via the JNC store?
Would JNC do so?

As well as what the deal is between JNC and the Japanese publishers concerning prepubs as a whole.

My personal suspicion is that JNC would rather not maintain records at that level concerning their members/customers; some things you'd rather not have available if government agencies or others come fishing.

Prepub permissions would be built into JNC's licensing boilerplate.
Granted, sometimes the boilerplate gets tweaked; Square Enix demands copyright info at the end of every prepub section, no one else has to date. That Square Enix got that into the license agreement makes it clear that the Japanese publishers do care about the prepubs at some level.
My thinking is that there's a set fee JNC has established for being allowed to do the prepub thing, and this is distinct from any other sales royalties. Because it's access for a limited period of time. And while any member can read the prepubs...unless they tracked individual access they couldn't satisfy any accounting standards concerning calculating royalties on such access.

And not all of those who read the prepubs purchase from JNC; it boggles my mind, but it's very clear based upon comments in the forums and the JNC Discord that a significant number of folks would rather purchase elsewhere unless they desire the premium content in those cases where there is premium content.

So even if they did track individual-specific prepub access, they couldn't match it against all purchases of JNC titles across all venues.

HarmlessDave

@Geezer-Weasalopes - yes, there's a range of possibilities from no fees (paid in "exposure" or made up with higher royalties), to a flat fee based on something like historical data, to the kindle unlimited and Spotify model where part of the subscription/membership fee becomes a pool that is divided between the publishers based on epub usage.

For the Spotify model then as you say there is the complication of which prepub readers have bought the book (I've read prepubs that I already own) and might even have bought the book elsewhere.

I'm curious in general, but mostly about how guilty I should feel about reading a prepub but then not buying the book :) . Usually I do, but if a volume was not my cup of tea then I might not.

Geezer Weasalopes

@HarmlessDave
I'd say you don't need to feel guilty concerning reading prepubs and then not buying the book.
JNC's business model has to have taken that into account when they came up with this.
If it wasn't "working out" from their perspective...they'd have dropped the concept.

I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the Baen Free Library.
Probably with the Baen CDs back before Jim died.
Collected Driblets of Baen seems to have ceased getting new content, although the site is still up.

"The first hit is free" doesn't always get a sale, but it gets folks trying stuff they might not have otherwise...and tends to result in more sales than if they didn't do it.

HarmlessDave

@Geezer-Weasalopes said in Curious: does JNC pay licensees for prepub readers?:

"The first hit is free" doesn't always get a sale, but it gets folks trying stuff they might not have otherwise...and tends to result in more sales than if they didn't do it.

Yes, I've bought dozens of JNC volumes based on getting to read the full first volume as a try-before-you-buy. For other publishers the Kindle samples at Amazon are sometimes just too short for me to decide, and that's probably cost them some sales.

I'm sure JNC itself is fine since I'm paying for the premium membership and buying mountains of books, but I'm still curious whether Author A gets at least a token payment if I read their volume and decide not to buy.

I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the Baen Free Library.

Yep, and it's gotten me hooked on a series or three.

rsog412

@Geezer-Weasalopes said in Curious: does JNC pay licensees for prepub readers?:

Can JNC track which prepubs an individual reads?

Yes, for completely benign reasons. Our reading progress is saved on each pre-pup. You can see it yourself if you go to a series page and mouseover each part.

Geezer Weasalopes

@rsog412 said in Curious: does JNC pay licensees for prepub readers?:

@Geezer-Weasalopes said in Curious: does JNC pay licensees for prepub readers?:

Can JNC track which prepubs an individual reads?

Yes, for completely benign reasons. Our reading progress is saved on each pre-pup. You can see it yourself if you go to a series page and mouseover each part.

D'oh!
Yeah, that form of individual tracking is there.
And if you purchase via JNC, it does link together.
And it is retained even if you haven't purchased the work from JNC prior to it expiring; it'll show if the series is on catchup or if you do purchase it further down the line.

Thank you for pointing out the Grand Canyon of holes in some of my reasoning!

I'm still leaning toward that not being something they build into royalty calculations.
My perspective might be influenced by having done manual bookkeeping for a couple of years in my far gone youth; tying it all together is much simpler with modern software.
I lean toward the Japanese publishers not wanting to have too much complexity in what shows up in their royalty statements.

Shiny

Assuming the arrangements haven't changed, the thread at https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/3593/voting-with-your-wallet-how-to-support-series-you-love from 2020 should provide you with relevant insights into how a portion of your subscription fee goes towards pre-pub royalties.