Sol Press Discussion Thread
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I don't understand how a company can operate the way they currently are and believe they will stay in business
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@Khaos Because people willfully ignore their bad practices and continue buying their products regardless. The manga/LN/VN sphere is still niche enough that many people are just happy that anyone is (ostensibly) localizing, and that's how some companies take advantage of both their employees and their customers.
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@myskaros I understand that to an extent, but the fact that they are not producing any product, I mean they release 1 volume per series a year. I see that as anything but profitable. And with no updates, it just appears they have gone AWOL and people are going to just end up losing interest and forget.
Even if they are as slow as they are but actually had some transparency or an actual update even just monthly I'd feel a bit better about it.
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@Khaos
I don't want to be rude but what you're doing is exactly what they want people to do. They want people to COMPROMISE. The mindset that "as long as they give updates" or "as long as they release 1 volume per year" is the compromise that we the consumers shouldn't be even giving them.They are a company and what they do for a living is a profession thus they should act professionals themselves. They should either follow the standard of their competitors or go beyond and not show us a very poor and disappointing performance.
JNC started with around 5 series and after almost 4 years they've released 450+ volumes. Sol Press on the other hand has been around for 3 years and even if you count the VNs as 5 volumes worth of content they've only released 45 volumes in 3 years.
Rakudai was the last chance that I gave them and look at what happened. Nothing, absolutely nothing happened. My trust for them didn't hit rock bottom it just became nothing, absolutely nothing.
PS: Sorry for the rant but they just pissed me off so much.
JNC LN Ranking:
1st - Rokujouma
2nd - Realist Hero
3rd - Bookworm -
Ironically, I remember reading Sol Press was started because they didn't like the translation speed of other companies(?) at the time. Truly ironic that they actually are the worst company of all the ones around in regard to translation/release speed.
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@Terabyte Is that true? *takes a deep long sigh
Then that certainly is ironic. OTL
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@LegitPancake They've got a huge typo right there. It should read
DeadStar. -
@Terabyte
That's an insult to Dead Stars all over the universe. Sol Press couldn't even reach the state of becoming a star they're just space dust floating in the cold, empty vastness of space. -
Latest update from their Discord:
Alot of misfortune has been happening. We are trying to remedy and have a fix and explanation for everything soon. However, the corona virus isn’t really helping our process.
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Yeah, I don't trust their "discord updates." Corona virus has literally nothing to do with digital releases. Who cares about their printing issues when they can't even get out the digital releases in a timely manner yet?
Solving printing issues means nothing if they don't even have new volumes to print to being with...
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I'm fresh outta doubt to give them the benefit of. We'll see if they can regain any trust when they release things. Until then, I'm done worrying about them.
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The only hope I have left for them is to go out of business without flailing around, allowing others to pick up their licenses without much delay. I also hope jnc will get some of them.
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@nichtmalda The only problem is if they go out the business the license basically gets put into limbo and often people have to wait for it to run out before anyone else can pick it up. Often licenses and copyrights don't automatically free up when their owner goes out of business.
It is best if they get their house in order if you care about any of the licenses they currently have.
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my hope is that they voluntarily exit the LN business and concentrate on visual novels (and sell rights to the licenses they have - or make a deal with some other publisher to complete the works and revenue share or whatever is allowed under the agreement w/ the Japanese publisher)
I can't imagine that paying however many dollars to get rights to publish....and not publishing is a sustainable business model
edited to add:
I took a look at Sol's site and the Wikipedia page about them - looks like they've been in the business of LN's since April 2018, just under 2 years since their first release...and in that time they've licensed 6 titles and published about a dozen volumes (By comparison JNC has been pumping out volumes by the score, 450 +/- in about 3 years )
SOL seems to have raised money via several kickstarter campaigns for specific visual novels, I don't have access to sales numbers - but it seems to me that they must be short of funds if they can't pay their folks well, or bring products to market in reasonable time-frames (or the management is just a total train wreck)
all things considered, I can't consider SOL even a legitimate LN publisher....they don't publish enough. I've written them off. Licenses they obtain are lost to me ever seeing/ getting my hopes up over ...they are dead to me
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News about physical production!
Hello everyone, unfortunately, due to the Corona virus we have had to put a halt on all physical production. However, we still have digital versions up on our store and through our partners! We will have an update on physical production as soon as we can. Stay healthy!
sigh......we waited long time and they just said wait longer!
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@Jon-Mitchell said in Sol Press Discussion Thread:
I took a look at Sol's site and the Wikipedia page about them - looks like they've been in the business of LN's since April 2018, just under 2 years since their first release...and in that time they've licensed 6 titles and published about a dozen volumes (By comparison JNC has been pumping out volumes by the score, 450 +/- in about 3 years )
all things considered, I can't consider SOL even a legitimate LN publisher....they don't publish enough.
Tbf, JNC is the dream, not your average start-up. Another interesting comparable is Cross Infinite World.
In their first two years of business (September 12 2016 to September 12 2018), Cross Inf published 8 series, and had just one volume 2 released in that time. Most of their series are still sitting on V1 today (only two more volume 2s as far as I know since 2018) with none at volume 3 afaik. Tbf, they have one-offs + web novels that may have stalled, but there are some that are further along in Japan. Such as Root Double, which released in September stateside, and we're coming up on 7 months without the 2nd volume. My Favorite Song, released stateside in Summer of 2017, has a Coming Soon page for volume 2 still.
Even with all their stumbles, Sol are still close to on pace with Cross Inf's first two years release wise (ahead volume count wise) while splitting resources between 3 ventures as opposed to Cross Inf's 2.
For Sol, I just want them to pay their workers a fair rate and finish up as much of the series they've already licensed. Last thing I want at this point is for them to pick up more licenses to look like a "legitimate" LN company.
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@TheRedJet Thats really annoying.
I've read them all digitally years ago, so I only have a interest in buying the physical editions as it is one of my most wanted series.
I still hope that they do end up getting this series back on track as I still want to read what happens past the fan translation.
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@Terrence
now I'm curious. One Peace, Seven Seas... what other indie publishers are putting out LNs in English? VIZ and Yen have big corporate backing ...who else are the 'little guys' that JNC competes with? How much worse are they than SOL? or does SOL have an undeserved bad reputation? -
Futekiya is a manga publisher who is going to start doing some Yaoi LN with 5 initial licenses.
Besides them and the ones mentioned, I'm not sure. There's been some publishers that have disappeared into the ether (Digital Manga Publishing with their LN license of Scarlet Ammo). And I've seen fans hoping that new pub who grabbed the manga for "Loner Life", Kaiten Books, will maybe grab some LN in the future.
But yeah, I don't want to overstate Sol as being "mistreated" or anything though, their problems are well documented here. And they make themselves an easy punching bag with some of their promotion ("the shining star" of the LN industry; wanting to fight piracy by becoming a faster alternative than it in the visual novel space, etc). xD
