Sol Press Discussion Thread
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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
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@Terrence Yeah, Cross Infinite World has a lot of one-shots, but their continuing series do take forever to come out. Which is strange, since they do release one-shots at a decent clip. (Nowhere near JNC's pace, much less Yen, but better than Sol.)
@Jon-Mitchell If it matters, Cross Infinite World (which we mentioned) is the other publisher I keep track of, largely because they do stories suited for what we now term J-Novel Heart: generally shoujo-esque stories with female protagonists. There's a reason I commented in the White Cat's Revenge thread that I expected it to be a Cross Infinite licence, rather than JNC: Cross Inf licences are all like that.
They also apparently licence directly from webnovels (on Shousetsu ni Narou), based on the author afterwords in the novels. As in, the English translation is apparently the first time the novels are in print (whether e-ink or actual ink).
I'd say it's less that they're competing with JNC, and more that JNC decided to compete with them with the Heart sublabel.
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I don't mean to be a downer or especially hard on SOL, but I noticed something that seems 'off'
the cost of an SOL Press ePub (direct or via Amazon) is $9.99 US, A quick look around on
Amazon and I see Sword Art Online or Danmachi or Shield Hero or just about any Yen Press/ One Peace kindle edition at $7.99 US and JNC titles at $6.99 US. I'd like to give them a fair shake - but it's hard for me to give them a try if they want a 30% premium for their books? Is there anything better about them that we haven't discussed? (more or better illustrations or maps or whatever? extra materials? some other feature that I am missing?) Some Seven Seas titles are also $9.99 so maybe it's just a misconception on my part? -
@Jon-Mitchell A majority of One Peace ebooks like Shield Hero are $8.50-$9.50 each, and on Bookwalker they’re nearly $11. All Seven Seas ebooks are retail priced as $9.99 as well if you look at their website, Amazon just sometimes discounts them randomly. So if anything it’s kinda 50/50 of the publishers do that.
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Thanks, good to know. I guess I'm just spoiled rotten for JNC titles being $5.99 (with premium credits) across the board
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@Jon-Mitchell I totally get it. $10 for a 200-250 page book, even if translated and included illustrations, is just difficult to stomach or justify. It’s kinda why I’m not reading very many Seven Seas light novels. If JNC had gotten Abilities Average I would be caught up with the translation, but with 7S’s prices I only got the first volume. I did buy the first 5 volumes of Mushoku Tensei on BW though when they had a 50% coin back sale, but that’s basically the only time I can buy them. I was able to get 80k Gold for a decent price, though, but I haven’t even started it given we still have no idea when SP will continue.
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Yen Press is usually over $10 as another posted they are often in sale on Amazon but if you look their MSRP are in the 12-15$ range for many titles
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@trashboat We're talking about ebooks and in USD. All of Yen Press's paperback LN ebooks are retail value at $7.99, and their ebooks of hardcover LNs are $9.99. Some of their more recent released series are starting to be $8.99 though. None of their ebooks are more than $10 unless it's on Bookwalker.
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@LegitPancake said in Sol Press Discussion Thread:
@trashboat We're talking about ebooks and in USD. All of Yen Press's paperback LN ebooks are retail value at $7.99, and their ebooks of hardcover LNs are $9.99. Some of their more recent released series are starting to be $8.99 though. None of their ebooks are more than $10 unless it's on Bookwalker.
Sorry if this is dumb on my part but what is the diff between a hard cover and paperback ebook? Aren't both just ebooks?
And my bad regarding this being a strictly ebook discussion I didn't see that in the original post
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@trashboat Just some silly way of Yen Press to price digital LNs.
For example, Overlord is one of the series from Yen Press that are printed in hardcover.
The digital price is thus higher than their paperback LN series.
Note that it doesn't come with any extras or anything that justifies the price increase.
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@Village-Idiot wow that's honestly ridiculous. I like a lot of their releases and have no gripes with their quality, but I like having extras and side stories and to charge more in digital because of a physical format difference blows my mind.
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Unfortunately, this isn't just a US publisher trend.
Tankobon and Bunkobon are both just EBooks digitally, but one goes for more than the other even in Japan (double priced frequently, 1200 yen vs 600 yen). I see 300+ page Bunkos at that lower price, while sub 300 page Tankos are the 1200 price.
(While they can be bigger or have a more mature audience, they don't have to, and yet can still be more expensive digitally).
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Yen is starting to charge 8.99 for some"paperback" light novels too. "Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon..." Is $8.99 and it's a paperback.
Because of that I held off on volume 2 (first was good but not great).
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@Terrence I've tried to read up on this online but I had thought the difference between tanko and bunko was just the paper size they use and not really much else. Am I missing some major factor that would cause such a big price discrepancy?
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@trashboat The overall quality of the book is higher. Clovers are less flimsy and the paper used is thicker.
They feel more like a collector item than the bunko.
