Sol Press Discussion Thread
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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. -
I'm happy to see that Sol Press has managed to release their first LN of the year. Congrats!
That's faint praise, but maybe it means we'll get 80,000 Gold before Christmas after all.
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@trashboat
In addition to what Timmaaah said about the quality, there's also just a consideration of sales. A lot of stuff that's initially released in tankoubon isn't necessarily expected to be a big seller, so you'll make your money back more easily by charging more.Oftentimes a book that sells well will get re-printed in bunko, similar to how in America many novels will be released as more expensive hardcovers, and then get mass-market paperback releases later on if there's enough interest in the book that it will still make money at lower profit margins.
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Thanks for clarifying all this :)
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I honestly don't understand all the hate Sol Press is getting (not trying to defend them either, just trying to put some sense into it).
If Sol Press got something licensed, it literally means nobody out there was interested in licensing it. Can you ever imagine Sol Press licensing something if SS or Yen wanted it as well (or any other major publisher really)?
Knowing that, id rather have it licensed by Sol Press with a slow release than not have it at all.
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@Happy That's not always the case. For example others wanted to license 80k Gold, but now the license is stuck with
SolSlow Press with volume 1 having been released on 26 April 2019. More than 1 year later and there's still no release date for V2. According to their blog posts V2 has been in editing/proofreading/qa/whatever for more than 6 months which is completely absurd. The same situation applies to basically all of their LNs/manga, that is why Slow Press is getting all the hate; less than 1 volume released per year is an abysmally slow pace (especially compared to JNC which releases 1 volume every 2-3 months for multiple series).
