[IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025
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@22144418 Try what they did here in case you want to drop out because the subscription is not giving you anything anymore or you are unhappy https://forums.j-novel.club/post/410225
If you find no more use for the subscription due to the change, one has the right to cancel as the initial contract is unfulfilled and you have not agreed to the change. That is at least a standard regarding contracts.
I cannot stress it out enough: JNC still has some ACTIVE WORK TO DO here regarding the communication and setting things right.
I can imagine that some people do not bother in actively seeking out cancellation when the disadvantages became too great for them - but it is also a matter of what is right. The initiative should not have to come from the customer, but from the service provider.
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@Jon-Mitchell I am not saying those costs don't exist but it's not typical business practice to raise the price of the back catalog to cover for those. A released premium epub here is considered a finished product. Any revision afterwards is included in the asking price, much like buying software with post-sale support. If they want more, they can come up with a new "version" so I can decide if it's worth my money. I expected this for any company, and I'm not going to make a special case for JNC. All other publishers have the same cost, after all.
Maybe I'm a fool for trusting JNC with advance payment for coins, thinking that I'd be able to get this many books from their existing catalog. Maybe I'm also a fool for thinking that if they are going to do this price increase on old releases, something which is practically unheard-of, they will give me plenty of advance notice. I hope you can at least get why I consider this as a breach of trust.
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@hyper all you can do is just use up your devalued coins on sale items. i just spent 1/4 of my coins on the Kadokawa sale. Once my coins and current subscription are finished I may change to readers club or just buy ebooks only.
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@hyper said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
Maybe I'm a fool for trusting JNC with advance payment for coins, thinking that I'd be able to get this many books from their existing catalog.
If you requested it you might get a refund on whatever you originally paid for your coins. I assume JNC would rather refund on request than open themselves up for a potential mis-selling suit/investigation.
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Oh, so the coins I'd been accumulating have suddenly lost 15% of their value and I had no idea this was coming, and I've lost catch-up series.
I really don't love that.
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When changes like this are made, there are right and wrong ways to go about them. I would normally expect to be notified, via email, that these important changes (that involve pricing) were coming on a set date, and to prepare for them. I would not expect to have to go out of my way, on the forums, to find a post hoc post made after the fact.
For a while I've been supportive of what JNC does and what it stands for. For a while I was very happy with the service received. I would still like to support its mission but this makes me deeply unhappy.
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No no, you see, they communicated it very well actually, with their...youtube stream? That surely everyone not only is aware of, but also follows closely enough to know when it goes live. It's pretty foolish to expect advance communication regarding significant devaluing of products and price increases in any other way, honestly.
This whole thing is a joke. I can't believe I've actually spent years and a significant amount of money supporting people that don't care enough to even have the common-sense thought of something so simple and fundamental as proper communication.
It's certainly not a mistake I'll ever make again.
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@hyper It is not true that businesses do not raise the price of a back catalog. Merely keeping a back catalog accessible for purchase from comes with realtime, immediate costs, and any price set for items in that catalog must make good the current cost, not what the cost was back when the product was first released. Failing to do so will force a business to make up that margin elsewhere, either by raising the cost of "new" releases or by just removing for sale items in the back catalog to avoid the loss making that happens. One way or another, you will be paying a higher price for access to that back catalog, either directly via immediate higher prices for items in that catalog or indirectly via higher prices in other products that are more "current."
That being said.
It is true that this is a breach of trust, though by indications not an outright breach of (part of the) contract. JNC should have given much more forewarning about this, and also should have been aware that a significant percentage of their customer base don't pay any attention to their youtube channel, considering how many people comment on the new release threads indicating that's their first awareness of said new licenses. Then there's another chunk that similarly don't bother with discord. This site is the means by which we manage our subscriptions/payments in the first place, so this site should be where relevant updates to said subscriptions should be communicated, or if not that, an email notification with at least a minimum time of the minimum subscription period, that of a month, at least, of forewarning, and no, the bloody newsletter does not count, since as a business/financial communication it should be entirely separate from marketing messages. Posting the notification on the site proper after the change has gone into effect looks at best unprofessional and at worst deceptive and won't make any of us who don't follow the youtube channel be any more inclined to bother following it in the future, it just tells us we can't trust you guys to be properly transparent on your primary platform of sale, this site.
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@hyper The actual price hike was actually a few years ago though in that respect when the raised the price everywhere but left their own site at a discount.
And the issue of not raising the price of the back catalogue was discussed at some point. In order to keep the price of the back catalogue the same, they would have had to hike the price of new releases by about $2 to offset things (probably even higher now since this figure was about 3 years ago)
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Hello!
I am too lazy to read past post, but ...
Have someone noticed yet that for new members "Subscriptions" Plans are displaying just the 3 first tiers!??
There where not Lateral scrolling bar (not active as far I could see) ... and missing tha last two Tiers >Premium Club & Premium READERS Club
... Just to let you know if no one else had notice it before. XDD
Cheers.
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@Shiger1 Technically it seems they are presenting these as three tiers. But that you can mix those tiers to get stacked effects.
a) Readers Membership, b) Club Membership, or c) Premium Club Membership.
If you stack you get Readers Club Membership (a+b) or Premium Readers Club Membership (a+c).
But I agree that it is confusing because when you go to the billing screen it shows as separate options instead of items you can throw into a shopping cart and compound. I'm guessing that did that so people don't actually try to do an invalid combination like Premium Readers Club Club Membership (a+b+c).
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@morbelek I see all 5 different options, so not sure what would be different that you're seeing it that way.
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@jpwong I am talking about the "How it works" web page
https://j-novel.club/howitworks -
Sucks that the first time I hear anything about the catch-ups going away was googling after wondering why the catch-ups hadn't shown up, and the first time I heard about the books increasing in price was reading the forum here.
An email about removing catch-up series and a service-wide coin increase is an impactful change to the core service, not a 'marketing' communication.
I don't mind that catch-ups go away, but they were a really good draw for the service when I recommended the service to friends. I think they helped immensely with getting new readers to engage with the service and the series, but I guess the numbers didn't back that up? Off the top of my head for alternatives to removing catch-ups completely that would still serve the business purpose of getting people to buy books instead of waiting for catch-ups:Catch-up only for the first 1-3 volumes of several seriesHalving the number of catch-up seriesGiving people a monthly token that 'unlocks' just one of several catch-up series
And that's to say nothing about silently removing the implicit one-month-one-book deal, and thatraising the price suddenly hurts long-time subscribers who were sitting on coins the most. Price increases are nothing surprising, but doing so (effectively) unannounced feels bad. I can't see any world where the decision to change the price was made without knowing this.JNC has the best translations in the market, but the lack of communication was a disappointing move from the business side.
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EDIT: Reading the full changes and squinting some, I over-reacted on the catchups going away. That's on me for not reading the full announcement (if only there was an email to properly introduce the changes before I found it in a reactionary forum thread... ;P). I'm fine with a slight increase in price on the premium subscription to match the increase in coins for the Premium Club Membership. I do like the reading club, actually! I have to wonder how series will be chosen for full vs partial access, but if it's a known factor then that's fine. Still sucks about the "unannounced" price change though.-
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@sorvani here, i will add as a secondary purpose to collect some coins in case i missed a book in a series i grew to like in a catchup series as it was being released down the line.
You could like get all the way off my back instead of nitpicking about my choice of tier of service i was paying for. i didn't complain i was not getting enough for that tier at that price (then perhaps your comment would be justified instead of pendantic).
instead my very real and valid complaint is that a price increase of more than 40% with no real and plainly and publicly posted noticed prior to implementation with vastly reduced services is ignored in your reply?
Perhaps there are decent tiers at lower costs that would fit my interests that i pay for in the future. but for now j-novel has lost my business becuase they wanted to fleece premium members without talking to them first. i doubt they care if their business model reduces my personal financial consumption by at least half.
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@eroschilles It was a dead serious reply.
You said that you subscribed premium mainly for catch ups. Well you could have gotten that for a lot less ($54 vs $120) with a normal membership. No need to add any perceived malice to a straightforward comment.
Now, moving on, there is no 40% price increase from what you had, because that is not how anything works.
Legacy Premium was $120
Premium Club is $132
That is a 10% increase, not 40%.Readers does not replace Catch Ups. Readers is a completely different solution. In fact, Readers is designed specifically for people that just want to Netflix things like you seemed to have been doing with Catch Ups. To me it sounds like a great fit your reading style. You have no need to buy Premium Readers Club for $170. If you do read prepubs (not clear from your comments), and I assume you want Readers, then you would want the Readers Club and that is only $90.
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As others have said about being frustrated with the lack of notice on the changes for members, a youtube stream and then a post here once the changes are already pushed is not sufficient. I don't have much to add other that wholeheartedly agreeing and the breach of trust on pushing changes makes me more hesitant to keep my subscription knowing that I won't even get adequate notices if any changes happen to it in the future.
It is also kinda crazy how its been 1 week since this update was pushed, with J-novel themselves acknowledging they should strive to do better in this thread but they still haven't pushed a email out to all members regardless of their email newsletter setting (cause most people don't want to get a bunch of emails on sales or new novels) about the changes now that its been in effect already. It seems like that should be the absolute priority now that a non-insignificant number of members have voiced that they felt blindsided by the changes, to make sure that all members know about these changes.
To me this is kinda of worrying as it indicates either they what to kind just let it settle down and hope that some members won't notice the changes and keep their subscriptions rather than informing them and having every member evaluate if its worth to keep their subscription or that they do not actually care about repairing the breach of trust with members. Neither of which are great, as the first indicates that J-novel might not be confident in the value that their new subscription model provides compared to their old one, and the latter indicates that their response in this thread is superficial and not sincere of trying to do better. I hope that isn't the case and that they do push an email about this to all members, as it would be the first step in trying to do better as they said they want to do.
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@zwabbit I still honestly don't recall anyone raising the price of their old digital back catalog in the same manner JNC did here. Physical goods or digital services? Sure, because variable costs account for a lot, but for digital goods, it would have to be so old that the raising price is more about the cost of access to said products. For example, software or games so old they need to be ported, rewritten, or emulated to be run. None of that applies here though.
And of course I'm with you 100% on the second paragraph.
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@Benedict-Khoo said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
To me this is kinda of worrying as it indicates either they what to kind just let it settle down and hope that some members won't notice the changes and keep their subscriptions rather than informing them and having every member evaluate if its worth to keep their subscription or that they do not actually care about repairing the breach of trust with members.
I'm gonna be that guy here. The lack of responses tells me that they think of our frustrations as just another cost of running a business. The few lost sales from us will be offset by the higher prices. Trust is just another commodity. They did the math, and they think it'll be worth it.
I congratulated JNC when Kadokawa bought them, but deep down I was very worried. I knew the countdown had begun. Why would there be a "deadline" for this change? They admitted that communication was lacking, so why not just delay the change? This tells me the order came from above.
I'm genuienly worry about DRM-free now.
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Just want to leave a note: there is a new series announcement planned today in some event in New York. The small team is probably preparing for that.
Let's hope that once they have that big event out of their hair, they would respond to the comments.Full disclosure: I just had two more months of my "old" premium membership left and for my use case it was a no brainer to switch to the new premium club because I plan to buy a couple of books I am following anyway and I am mainly here for the pre-pubs. Still, I understand the frustrations of others who might have just renewed or have many more months of subscription time left. I might have reacted the same if it were the case.
P.S. I am not a paid bot or agent of JNC. Since we have been told multiple times that they are a really small team and I could think of this event, I wanted to put it out there.
