[IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025
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@Elijah203223 I believe so far as we've been led to believe CR is licensing JNC's released manga for streaming on their catalogue, so it should be a one way deal. I would imagine the part we'll need to wait and see about is if they're allowed to modify the material they get sent (kind of like how Yen could change the translations they get for their JNC imprint but probably don't)
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@Jon-Mitchell Well, it would seem people really need to consider Kindle Unlimited / Kobo plus.
Unfortunately geoblocked for me. Comparable price and wide selection. -
So basically I now get about 13% less with my current subscription. Because of the price increase from 699 to 799 for all epubs.
What an absolutely scummy practice to incessantly fuck with the premium currency pricing mechanism, so that people don't get what was promised on the box when they subscribe.
If you want to make a change, make a change in the purchase price of the currency itself. Oh wait, but they know a lot of users sit on coins untill they like a series and splurge to buy the whole series at once, and that wouldn't help them reduce their potential licensing liabilities, nor drive profits.
I think after this I might have a re-think on my subscriptions as currently there is 0 value to pre-paying for the premium currency via subscription, if a year down the line the pricing is going to get fucked with again.
For perspective since I first subscribed my coinage has gone down 25%.
Like everything else I love about J-Novel, but the consistent changing of the premium currency is a massive downer.
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@TheWickerMan Its not legal, but who is going to sue them?
You cannot unilaterally change the terms of a service, regardless of what you put into the contract, and especially so on consumers.
However, Bungie were able to completely delete purchased content as well as delete accounts without proper notice and yet no one has sued them. However, I and many others doubtless will never touch Bungie ever again witih a barge pole.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
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This is a complete nonsense, because the base post publication cost of selling an e-book is essentially 0, because you can run distribution through third parties.
The only continued costs that J-Novel has are those for hosting their website catalogue and direct to consumer sales and subscription models. Which from a cost basis as a primary text based platform are minimal when considering the e-space it operates in.
Now those baseline cost changes would only ever justify changing their direct to consumer pricing, not their third party pricing.
It doesn't take away from the fact that in this change they've not merely changed the costings for the subscriptions (which I think most people would be fine with), they've retrospectively changed pre-agreed terms on existing subscriptions (what people are mad about).
You purchased a subscription on the basis of getting X Y and Z, they've now said you don't get Z and you only get 80% of Y. This is essentially them scamming their customer base.
Imagine you go buy a bus pass for the year, for any bus in your town, and then suddenly 2months in they say, oh its only valid for these specific routes.
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This is a downgrade in service and increase in cost. I loved reading on one or 2 of the catchup series each month. If your going to remove them then update your app and remove the filter option. Why still be able to filter by something that doesn't exist. I plan on keeping my subscription until it's expired but I'll be weighing the cost to what I'm getting out of it before I continue my subscription.
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@zantar04 From what we've heard, the hold up is on the app stores approving the updated app that handles the new reader tier and removes the catchup filtering. I consider it another communication letdown that these changes weren't submitted far enough in advance that it's now been 2 weeks since the new tiers rolled out and the app is still waiting for approvals, but I also understand that JNC is considered small enough that app update approvals seem to take variable amounts of time, and that they can't just force through things the way larger companies seemingly can with their app updates.
@Tremarl said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
If you want to make a change, make a change in the purchase price of the currency itself. Oh wait, but they know a lot of users sit on coins untill they like a series and splurge to buy the whole series at once, and that wouldn't help them reduce their potential licensing liabilities, nor drive profits.
Which is actually kind of strange when you think about it. There's been next to no benefit to sitting on your coins because they've never gone on discount since their introduction, so the only real reason to sit on large volumes of coins is if you were doing what's been discussed a lot in this topic, which is you bought a huge amount at maximum discount and maintain a lower or no subscription between purchases. It's like holding onto gift cards, you're taking a risk both that the prices of where ever that gift card is good at won't ever change, and that the place will still be in business whenever you get around to spending them.
@Tremarl said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
Because of the price increase from 699 to 799 for all epubs.
You ultimately might as well think of it as them ending the 100 coin discount we enjoyed buying direct since the price of LNs was already 7.99US on all the other storefronts long before this increase (799 coins as 1 coin = $0.01 US).
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After noodling on this more, I think Premium needs to be just a single choice. Premium should be premium, period.
The current "Premium Club" is not premium. It is not the best because there is a silly "Premium Reader Club" above it that is the real premium option. "Premium Club" is merely the old Premium membership that had a leg cut off and now has a peg-leg stuck up its rear so it can still stand. 10% is not equal to 15%. "Premium Club" is an insult to all customers past, present, and future. Just let it go already, and get rid of this trash that makes no one happy because it is a lie.
One Premium tier that is everything, period.
For legacy annual premium subscriptions, the choices should be either a pro-rated refund of the remaining time for those that wish to cancel, or an adjusted date on their current subscription so the date changes to where the remaining value of the legacy subscription would pay for the new Premium tier. No legacy on life support. Cut the cord, clean up the mess, and let everyone move on.
Non-Member
Reader
Club
Reader Club
PremiumThat's it. Unless you are going to give all premium tiers the premium discount, no additional premium choices because only the top option of them is actually premium - making the rest a slap in the face.
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@AnimeMayhem Technically there is only one premium choice. For a monthly fee you get 1) to read the latest volume parts, 2) 799 coins every 15th of the month, and 3) a 10% discount in buying coins.
You can get a readers membership where you get 1) read a library of completed series, 2) the first 3 volumes of ongoing series, and 3) a 5% coin discount. Those are two of the three tiers and those are all the benefits you get.
Now you can stack memberships, Buy a Premium Club membership and Readers membership and get the benefits of both [Premium Readers Club] where even the discount adds up (total of 15% off). For convenience, J-Novel has a bundled option where you get both (only have to add one item to cart instead of two) but you are technically purchasing two memberships/items.
Amazon and other businesses do a similar thing. For example, if you buy a cleaning item you can add another item as part of a bundle to get a deep discount. However, in Amazon's case, you have to add both items to your cart at the same time and check out. If you forget the other item, you lose the bundle discount. I have missed out on so many deals that where listed in the description that something was free, but did not automatically add it to the cart when I did buy now option causing me to have to pay more in the end when I purchased the other item separately. So J-Novel having this bundled into one item ahead of time is one less headache for the customer.
With today's economy and how price psychology works, they are never going to have just a normal membership and just one premium tier as you suggest. At the end of the day, J-Novel Club is a business and this tier system is one way they can generate income.
If you go to a restaurant like Olive Garden you will see some of their meals have "premium sides" for a couple of dollars extra. Why would asparagus be premium? It is a vegetable. This is to introduce price anchoring, relative pricing, and account for the cost of the vegetable. The same is true for selling a large popcorn for $0.50 more then a medium at a movie theater. If you present a customer a choice of a small and large popcorn, most people choose small. If you add a medium size and make it slightly cheaper than the large, more people will choose the large because of the price anchoring and perceived value. The movie theater does not actually want you to buy the medium size in this case.
Considering the above, J-Novel should have made the Readers membership and Club membership the same but forced the Premium Club Membership as you have to pay for the readers library whether you want it or not, you get 799 coins a month, and you get a 10% coin discount. That would help maximize the profit the company gets off the membership.
Instead we the consumers get a meaningful choice. If you want to read the library and get the latest novels, with the ability to get a sizable discount on purchases, get the Premium Readers Club bundle. Money is tight and you don't need the readers library or you have no interest in the library at all, scale back and just get Premium Club membership.
This meaningful choice to save money could be considered a violation of "shareholder theory" (e.g.: maximize profits at all costs) so no idea why the accountants a J-Novel let this though.
So, this could have been so much worse. I'm fine with how the new tiers are laid out.
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No lots of people subscribe to premium as a convenience, they don't redeem all of there coins at once, they find a good series and then splurge.
Hell when I read Ascendance of a book worm prior to getting a J-Novel subscription, I bought like 13 volumes at once. Same for Lazy Dungeon Master.
I've saved up about 2 years worth of coins, and when I find a good series I splurge. Sometimes I find good ones on catchup cant read them during the month but like them and continue afterwards buying the books
I don't think of it as them ending a discount, because its not them ending a discount. They are trying to conflate premium currency with real money, if that is the case then don't use premium currency just use a credit amount in your account. The reason they don't do this, and they use premium currency is because they want to abstract the cost for the consumer, so that they can perpetrate scummy practices like we've just seen.
It was sold as 1 month 1 book. Now its not that. And for the remaining 6 months of my subscription I am getting less than what I paid for.
Anyway, I've cancelled my subscription, and will unlikely be renewing. I'll go back to buying as and when I want to. There's no point on me sitting on premium currency that is depreciating every year, because of bullshittery, when merely not spending nets me 5% in my savings account.
The analogy of gift cards is a pile of crap, because it was sold as 1 month 1 book. Which is why I said from the start if they want to up prices, then up the subscription price, and up the price to buy the currency, don't fuck with the amount of currency required to buy a book. Instead they've literally just scammed a large part of their customer base 15% the value of the subscription they paid for.
Imagine going to a dealership buying a car, and getting it delivered 2 months later without 2 of the wheels and half an engine.
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I'm honestly surprised that despite the fact that a key facet of what went wrong here was lack of communication, 2 weeks later we've still seen nothing but silence. Maybe I shouldn't be.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but my good will regarding the situation erodes faster every day that we hear nothing. It doesn't bode well for improvements in the future.
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@Tremarl said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
Imagine going to a dealership buying a car, and getting it delivered 2 months later without 2 of the wheels and half an engine.
As odd as it may sound, this is almost exactly what's happening in the vehicle industry right now, no so much that it's missing parts, but if you don't agree to pay for a bunch of price increases at the time the car shows up, they'll rescind your contract and sell the car to someone else who's willing to pay the new higher price.
@Tremarl said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
They are trying to conflate premium currency with real money
Even if that's the case, the argument is basically that you were getting books cheaper than retail because you were buying $6.99 US worth of coins to purchase $7.99 US worth of book up until now (premium epubs could arguably be worth more given they contain additional content not found on other retailer storefronts in many cases)
@Tremarl said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
The analogy of gift cards is a pile of crap, because it was sold as 1 month 1 book.
Ultimately if you go look at a snapshot of the web site from a year ago (the furthest back anyone with an annual subscription may have renewed prior to the most recent adjustments), there is actually nothing saying you get 1 book a month. The how it works page and the FAQ pages both listed that you would get 699 coins on the 15th which you could use to redeem for an ebook, also noting that most LNs on their site are 699 coins and most manga are 899 coins. You actually have to go back to when we were still on the credit system to find wording that indicated you got a book a month (A free Premium Ebook credit each month!) which is more than 3 years ago.
IANAL, but the two best options you probably have if you happen to be serious about pursuing damages would be to discuss with legal council about the possibility of bringing a class action. Alternatively if you think what's occurred is strait up illegal and individual or class action legal remedies aren't viable, you could reach out to the Texas state's attorney office (or the equivalent government legal department in your area) and see if they're willing to investigate as you may ultimately have rights that supersede anything in the ToS.
On an individual level, if you simply want to vote with your wallet, if you email them, I believe that JNC has indicated it is open to giving anyone on an annual premium subscription a pro-rated refund of any remaining time left if you want to end your subscription immediately due to the changes. Worst case they'll point to the ToS and say they won't do it and you're stuck until your billing cycle ends.
@AnimeMayhem said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
I think Premium needs to be just a single choice. Premium should be premium, period.
Really that would have been the best option (and I think we discussed something similar on the discord), but the ideal situation would have been that the existing tiers stayed the same (non-member, regular member, premium member) that retained all the same benefits they used to (with any necessary pricing adjustments to the tiers) and reader would just be an add-on, it simply confers the reader library access with no extra benefits at a fixed price.
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@Tremarl said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
This is a complete nonsense, because the base post publication cost of selling an e-book is essentially 0, because you can run distribution through third parties.
This is wrong. the Base cost is Not 0. J-novel has licensing fees they have to pay on top of any other fees (publisher, platform, author portion should be taken care of by licensing fees, but may not be and sometimes translators get a percentage as well). Think of it as similar to royalties. Even if they self host and their translators don't get a % of sales, the cost of selling eBooks is still not $0. There is a lot more overhead than you think (and self hosting is not free).
Jnovel had to pay the Japanese publisher and work out agreements with them every time they did catch-ups (and they had to get an agreement for the readers club, which is why its not the whole back catalogue, just those that JNC reached an agreement with to have in the readers club).
Most of us understand why the price had to be increased (they held off for 3 years on increasing the price of books on the site), and now they match all the other sites, but JNC is still the best place to buy them due to the DRM free and premium content.
What is upsetting is the lack of communication. We had little to no time to react to the change. Had the communication been better, people would not be nearly so upset.
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@Elijah203223
I would be VERY surprised if SONY/CR has any editorial control/influence over the manga content once they license it. (why would they bother? it is so much easier just to choose NOT to include a 'problematic' series on their service vs spend recourses to censor it - when the audience is no where near what an anime is - see the debacle that was End of World Harem) I don't know what laws apply.your fears of SONY buying Kadokawa are justified- Kadokawa has a tremendous influence on the media landscape - so many intellectual properties flow through Kadokawa's publishing/media production pipeline of magazines/ manga/ books/ anime /games /etc. (of which JNC is now a part) that Crunchyroll/SONY NEEDS access to those IP's (there are only so many titles that SONY owns or that CR creates organically. From what I understand there is nothing stopping Kadokawa from licensing IP to air on Aniplex(HiDive) or Netflix or Hulu or Amazon or wherever - if Sony bought Kadokawa there would be a conflict of interest - and SONY would then have a inordinate influence (more so than now) - I don't know what anti-trust laws on Japan are like
I think that maybe SONY/Crunchyroll (at least in the USA) has figured out how to grant access to 18+ content on their platform (improvements to settings/permissions etc) as an example Tales of Wedding Rings is an anime streaming currently - it's light on plot and not so light on "T&A" and based on the settings I have - no magic steam/ mystical light beams of modesty polluting the content (and I know that censored versions are out there) - so for the time being - (October 2025) I'll give Sony/ Crunchyroll kudos for sanity
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@morbelek I don't see a single premium option as forced to be honest. The way it looks to me, all Premium Club gets you is some coins at 0% discount. Why would anyone choose that when they can get a 5% discount on all coins at regular Club Member? And with only Premium Reader getting the 15% discount (and a monthly 799 at 0% discount) it's the choice for those who want to buy a lot versus just being Reader to read. We've been given a non-option (Premium Club) to justify the $4 bump for Premium Reader which is the actual premium tier. I think everyone forgets that the included coins with Premium are at 0% discount.
@cfoley said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
I'm honestly surprised that despite the fact that a key facet of what went wrong here was lack of communication, 2 weeks later we've still seen nothing but silence. Maybe I shouldn't be.
I expect this to continue. Translating Japanese to English is a much different skill set than Customer Service and Communications. At this point I expect JNC to not respond at all, let the chips fall where they may once the dust settles, and hopefully take away some lessons learned on how to do better next time.
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@AnimeMayhem Premium gets 10% off coins.
I wish we kept the 15% off, but losing 5% of the discount does not bring it down to 0% off. Its now 10%, instead of 15%. -
@Aquantis Licensing fees are per sale, not on retainer. That is to say merely having it in a catalogue does not have a continued running cost at a base level, like say running a server or renting a property has.
If they're paying a retainer fee, instead of a per sale royalty, then they fucked up. From a box shifting perspective, but not from an all you can read perspective, if the costings are right. So depends a bit on the model they're going for.
Also is there any source that translators get % per sale? My understanding was they got paid for the translation and that was it.
However, if you're going on a retainer model instead of per sale model, old IP actually gets cheaper as it ages, which is why Netflix and other such services, fill themselves with cheap English shows, and then old foreign shows like K-Drama, because they get it on the cheap, and in advertising can claim a much larger catalogue than they realistically have.
https://www.novelupdatesforum.com/threads/how-much-does-it-cost-to-license-a-japanese-light-novel.98940/
Post on the issue itself. Regarding licensing JNC uses. [This may have changed since then, but this is the only information I have seen so far, and it seems to imply a normal royalty box shifting agreement]https://www.novelupdatesforum.com/threads/im-a-jp-en-translator-looking-for-work.98755/#post-5391777
Confirmation on translator renumeration being mostly fixed.Also randomly found this malding not understanding copyright and what it covers, which was a funny read. (Even more hilarious the claim from the TL group that their TL was a fanfic rofl, reminds me of the current discourse between UK gov and American websites over the Online safety act)
https://www.novelupdatesforum.com/threads/how-not-to-respond-to-a-license-notice-roxism-hq-and-nozomanu-fushi-no-boukensha.60034/page-1
But that's kind of off topic. [That is to say JNC is not capable of issuing a takedown on a translation that is not being made commercially available, on content that is already hosted in a non-commercial format - WN]
