[IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025
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@jpwong JNC 100% forces you to hold onto coins. If you get 699 on sub and save you have 1398, you use it to buy manga at 899, you now have 499 coins left. Minimum purchase of coins is 500. You wanna now buy a book you need to buy 500 coins, for a 699 book, now you have 300 coins left.
This is one of the big complaints about premium currencies, is that they are priced in such a way to force the collection of dust.
@AnimeMayhem From a legal perspective whether they sell with coins or dollars the rules surrounding how it operates its store are the same. I'm not aware of any regulation or laws that would force JNC to market books from other publishers.
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coins vs credits :
it seems to me that having a virtual currency and 1 layer of separation between the financial transaction and the merchandise transaction solves a bunch of potential business problems- you have fewer SKUs tied to credit card transactions, simplifying that process, and since as a business you pay fees (to Stripe or whoever processes) this adds up
- you are less subject to the whims of currency valuation fluctuation (you outsource the risk to Stripe) transact in dollars or euros or pounds
- having e-books priced in coins, means you can more quickly put things on 'sale', create rental portals (and raise prices) and potentially offer more products that coins could be used for
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I don't deal too much with payment processing systems, but I would have thought you'd have an individual SKU for every book, because each one has to be catalogued separately for licensing fees and correct bookkeeping.
The fee is normally % of the transaction, so the total fee would be the same if it was several individual purchases or one large purchase, unless there is some sort of minimum fee they're running into.
The mechanism for putting things on sale wouldn't be functionally different between having it priced in coins or dollars.
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@Tremarl There are subscription tiers that don't give you coins, you have options if you do not want to maintain a coin balance. The sole downside of the lower tiers is the lower purchase discount which is only really allowing you to purchase books at a below MSRP rate.
@Tremarl said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
The fee is normally % of the transaction, so the total fee would be the same if it was several individual purchases or one large purchase, unless there is some sort of minimum fee they're running into.
Actually the fee is typically a % of the transaction plus a set amount. So I think the typical merchant agreement for Visa for example is $0.95 plus 1% of the purchase price per transaction. This is why many small businesses say not credit cards for purchases under $5 even if that's technically not allowed under their merchant agreement with the credit card.
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@Tremarl While margin squeezing is a form of predatory pricing that doesn't seem to be happening here. An accepted example is a vertically integrated auto company controls the metal manufacturing, makes cars, and sells them to customers. They would raise prices on the metals and the manufacturing of cars against other businesses and the vertical company would then sell to its customers at a lower cost than other business could afford to sell to their customers. As J-Novel is actually raising prices ($6.99 -> $7.99) on its end customers that is actually an argument against price squeezing.
@jpwong @AnimeMayhem Unfortunately having the coin system should be more profitable than accepting cash alone so I can see why they switched it them. If you thought of the coin system as the same as the gift card system, it makes more sense. Some of the perks of gift cards from the business standpoint is:
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people deposit money with the business ahead of time so it can be used later. One person purchasing a gift card doesn't amount to much, but scaled up over thousands or millions? That is a significant amount of money. While true from an accounting perspective the money is a liability to the business because the money hasn't been "spent" yet. They are gaining interest from those funds and their business is more liquid because of the cash infusion.
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people spend more money. Like I often encounter at J-Novel if you don't have enough coins to buy a novel or manga, you will spend more money to get the coins you need to make the purchase.
I mean look at airline miles, credit card companies and other retailer regularly give the equivalent of millions in interest free loans to airlines when they purchase miles in bulk so they can give it to their customers. And those miles get truly devalued frequently.
The only thing that baffles me is that a big part of gift cards is building brand loyalty and customer acquisition. I can walk into a grocery store and buy an Amazon gift card for a friend who is going to college to help defray their moving costs. Amazon gets potentially gets a new customer and money and my payoff is I was able to help my friend. Win/Win. But J-Novel isn't doing that. I can't seem to buy a gift card (regular gift card or using the coin system) to give to my friend so I can introduce him to various light novel series. And since light novel series like Lazy Dungeon Master don't have a physical copy, I can't loan him my copy like you would normally do with books.
For a lot of the stuff they are doing it is like that are almost there, but aren't going to reach it which makes everything from the customer side more vexing. (Cannot bulk purchase books/manga via carts like Amazon or other retailer; No real search ability or recommendation system for the Readers Library like Netflix or Paramount; No ability to buy or gift subscriptions to non-members like many business chains like Target, Walmart, Disney, etc.)
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@morbelek I never said this was a case of price squeezing, just that there are multiple types of predatory pricing.
In regards to JNC the predatory practice from my point of view is the usage of a premium currency and all that entails. I think a better comparison rather than gift cards is in-app purchases through game currency. That is how they are marketing it and how it appears to be sold, and the content is not otherwise purchasable without buying the premium currency.
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@AnimeMayhem said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
What I was trying to get at is the JNC website doesn't sell books, it sells coins. So my question is if they had just a normal store that sold digital books, wouldn't they have to allow other retailers to sell the same versions as opposed to only JNC being able to sell "special editions" as it were?
Considering the terminology and legal details, you might be on point.
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@AnimeMayhem said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
What I was trying to get at is the JNC website doesn't sell books, it sells coins. So my question is if they had just a normal store that sold digital books, wouldn't they have to allow other retailers to sell the same versions as opposed to only JNC being able to sell "special editions" as it were?
I think that since JNC only sells their own content (via coins- but for other reason too) this actually gives them a negotiation point when dealing with other retailers / marketing point with customers - if JNC sold books (was a 'regular' e-book store instead of a 'club' ) why not sell other publishers' content (or other Kadokawa IP? / or allow JNC coins to be used on Yen Press site for example?) - the flipside of that is why should Amazon/BN etc carry JNC's inventory (or price it in a was dis-advantageous to JNC) ?
Amazon is a 'frenimy' (friend/enemy) JNC needs to cooperate to get access to the marketplace/ exposure to 'eyes' for their products that they wouldn't otherwise (same deal/SONY/Crunchyroll) but JNC HAS to offer something unique/exclusive to members (or why would anyone join/pay) I presume that the profit margin of ebooks sold via JNC (coins) is higher than sold via Amazon, I also imagine that JNC benefits from the feedback (and proofreading) provided by the community in the fora (and JNC HAS to reward members somehow for that: this was formerly catch ups, is still exclusive 'bonus' content in epubs , and discounts on coins (depending on level of membership))
an advantage of coins (to members and club) is JNC can offer benefits to members (who already hold a 'bank' of coins) , probably without violating agreements with resellers -(JNC might have agreed NOT to sell ebooks for less than amazon,so that amazon would carry JNC's stuff at $7.99/each or whatever) BUt I don't think this would stop JNC from offering a membership benefit on 'black frday" of 10,000 coins for $10.00 or buy 899 get 899 free - this week only type stuff
it also allows them to increase brices acress the board - all books cost 100 coins more (to match 'regular' onlineprices elsewhere, to honor whatever deals were made) -
Its crazy to me that there was almost no effort to tell people about this. I only just learned about this today because I saw someone on discord with the new role and was curious what the reader club thing was.
Yeah I'm not subscribed to the newsletter as I don't want more spam on my email but something important like this should have been sent to everyone with an active billing subscription. -
J jpwong referenced this topic on
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H Hikikostory referenced this topic on
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Well, that certainly was a Decision.
Membership cancelled.Since you changed right after I had already paid for the year, I had thought about legal civil action. Byt $120 is a small price to paid for never having to so much as think of this anymore... cheap.
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@Thomas-Smith-yjw56xl ask them for a refund if unused time. This happened back in October, and they were refunding people then. not sure if they still will now that it has been a few months, but you can try
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Membership cancelled.
What a bad move.From reddit:
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They're increasing the cost of the epubs on their site to match the price on other sites. So, they'll be 799 coins instead of 699 coins (so effectively $7.99 instead of $6.99).
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They're removing catch-up series. They won't be a thing any longer.
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They're reducing the coin discounts on the existing memberships by 5 percentage points. So, the basic membership will give you no discounts on coins whatsoever, and the premium membership will give you a 10% discount instead of a 15% discount.
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They're introducing a new "Reader's Membership" which is separate from the existing memberships which will include some number of their completed LN series (and no manga), and in some cases, it will include the first 3 or so volumes of on-going series as a way to preview the series. So, in a sense, they're creating a separate membership for catch-up series except that it will include some set of series all the time rather than rotating through series, and you'll lose the ability to completely catch up on any series without actually paying for epubs unless you wait until the entire series is out long enough to be added to their Reader's Membership catalog (and which series end up in that catalog is also dependent on their contracts with the Japanese publishers).
The cost for the Reader's Membership on its own will be $3.50 / month or $40 / year. It includes no discounts and does not allow you to read any on-going series beyond those where the first 3 volumes are made available as a preview. It sounds like in almost all cases, you'll be reading the pre-pub versions of the books (Sam said that they might update some series to the epub versions for the Reader's Membership), but this subscription is about reading completed series, not about getting pre-pubs as they become available.
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The regular membership is being renamed to the "Club Membership". It stays at $4.95 / month or $54 / year, but since you're losing the 5% coin discount and losing the catch-ups, you're getting less value for the same money. Regular memberships will automatically be "upgraded" to the Club Membership.
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The premium membership is being renamed to the "Premium Club Membership". It will increase by $1 a month (or $12 a year) to compensate for the $1 increase in the cost of the books. So, it will be $11.95 / month or $132 / year and give you 799 "free" coins a month instead of 699. So, you're paying more for less value. The number of books is the same, but the coin discount is 10% instead of 15%, and you're losing the catch-ups.
Your current premium membership will not be automatically upgraded. It will continue to get 699 coins a month (even after the price of the books increases), and the discount will still be reduced to 10%. You can upgrade to the new membership without waiting for your current membership to renew.
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If you wish to combine the Reader's Membership with the Club Membership, you can do so by getting the "Reader's Club Membership," which will cost $7.95 / month or $90 / year, saving you $0.50 / month or $4 / year. It also gives you back the 5% discount on coins that the Club Membership is losing.
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If you wish to combine the Reader's Membership with the Premium Club Membership, you can do so by getting the "Premium Reader's Membership," which will cost $14.95 / month or $170 / year, saving you $0.50 / month or $2 / year. It also increases the discount on coins by 5 percentage points to return it to the 15% off which the current Premium Membership has.
So, in essence, they're increasing the cost of their books by $1, changing the nature of catch-ups so that they're primarily just completed series, charging an additional membership fee for access to that catalog, and reducing the discount on coins that you get unless you pay for both one of the "Club" memberships and the "Reader's" membership.
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Oh, hey, I just found this thread months later, since I don’t hit the forums much and have no idea where else it was posted. Maybe you should have sent an email?
That said, I am not at all happy about this. Now that Bookworm is pretty much done, without catchup titles to look forward to, it’s probably not worth the money for me any more. I kept the membership solely for catchup titles. Most of the series I follow aren’t ones I’ll miss once my year runs out. The ones that are, I would have bought anyway.
So, yeah. Guess I’m off to see when my year expires.
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@smirkl
I also wanted to say that I am going to be discontinuing my membership over this change.
I just am not reading the first couple books in a series compared to how I would look forward to reading (or rereading) whatever series was chosen.I have no doubt your system is able to show how active your members are, so I would love to know if my own disinterest is a universal thing.
Especially as I do enjoy what was happening here before.John Ross
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@JohnRoss said in [IMPORTANT UPDATE] New Subscription Tiers + Readers Library Now Live as of October 3, 2025:
I have no doubt your system is able to show how active your members are, so I would love to know if my own disinterest is a universal thing.
I can't remember where it was mentioned (maybe discord), but part of the reason they introduced the change was because their data showed that hardly anyone was actually reading the catchups, so there was very little return for the what sounds like fairly extensive staff effort to keep that system going as more and more things get licensed.
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@JohnRoss I too am not interested in reading the first few volumes of a series if the rest has to be purchased. I appreciate that the full reader's library has some good stuff, but they're only adding 2 new series a month. So I'll probably switch to a monthly plan and alternate between readers club and regular club if there's nothing new I want to read.
