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Books/Preorders missing from Amazon
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@SomeOldGuy
Hmmm...🤔
That's good advice since I've been into anime, manga and light novels for the better part of 20 years now. -
I think one of the biggest concerns is that if just one seller makes this much of an impact then something is drastically wrong that one business holds that much power. Earlier in this thread I said I was done with my Kindle and I am proud to say I moved on to another tablet and will be getting my digital elsewhere.
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All my books so far are JNC, but I'm starting to look for some options for non-JNC titles due to the fact the number of LNs I'd like to get from Seven Seas and Yen Press are piling up (and I have no space for physical books at the moment). Anyone know if there's any significant differences between what comes out on Kobo vs Google Play Books? Most of the discussion is differences between amazon, Kobo and Bookwalker it seems like.
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@jpwong Kobo has HQ images if you rip the DRM. Google Books gives you LQ images.
Other than that, Google Books app is archaic and really far behind other reader apps in even the most basic functionality like making folders for series. Google is in no hurry to make improvements because they only have like 4% of the e-book market. Also they do not have an official e-ink e-reader that connects directly to Google Books.
The advantage of Google Books is excellent customer support, your books will auto-update, and you can upload like 1000x e-books directly onto the Google Book app. Prices are also cheaper than Kobo for Yen Press books.
But ya, no folders. Titles are sorted in list view one volume at a time. Have fun when you have a few hundred e-books trying to find the one you want to read.
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@Village-Idiot Since I've been uploading all my JNC novels into Play Books to read through web browser, they have added a bookshelf thing so that you can tag your books into different shelves so you can sort your books by series at least (through the browser, not sure how that ends up looking in the phone app). But yeah, even within that they don't seem to sort the books in any particular order.
So the primary difference is really just image quality? (price gap is something I'd need to consider on a series by series basis). Sounds like from the other posts, Kobo DRM is reasonably easy to remove as well.
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@jpwong said in Books/Preorders missing from Amazon:
So the primary difference is really just image quality? (price gap is something I'd need to consider on a series by series basis). Sounds like from the other posts, Kobo DRM is reasonably easy to remove as well.
They both use the same DRM.
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@Village-Idiot @jpwong Google Books is rather weird. If you read on their reader, you get HQ images, but downloading gives you LQ images. This doesn't happen with comics though, I got a HQ PDF (though it's a different publisher). With JNC novels, I had to manually download the HQ images off their reader and then replace it in the epub myself. It's the cheapest in my region and thus my first JNC novel purchases came from there, but I may reconsider it for future purchases.
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@nofairytale said in Books/Preorders missing from Amazon:
This doesn't happen with comics though, I got a HQ PDF
This is why I won't buy manga from Google Play. AFAIK, Kobo never gives you pdfs and instead always gives you epubs (meaning you can actually extract the images as jpeg files once the DRM has been removed). For whatever reason, they also typically have higher resolution images than their competitors - even for the same manga where both sites sell epubs. Of course, for JNC though, the best quality is going to come from buying from them directly.
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Regarding the price gap, if you're in US/CA/AU/NZ/UK, Kobo will price match to Google Play (with an additional 10% refund). There are some minor details that are worth noting (e.g. they'll only price match transactions paid for with actual money, not account credit) but it's definitely worth considering, if you're in an applicable region.
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@Gamen Beginner. The total worth of all my ebooks is now 47,768,12 Euro (I can not say for LN, as strangely the sum feature doesn't work in virtual libraries). But I collect them since I had my first Sony PRS T1. And I have al lot of scientific books which are a lot more expensive as normal novel or LN.
But this is true with everything. Sum up all movies you own, all games, etc. Here a buck, there 10 and you wonder what amount you spent.
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Heh I think it might be cheaper to replace my house than the manga/anime/ln/figurines it contains, so I feel everyone's pain.
Still you can't put a price on happiness.
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@ennithree Funny thing is in my region, Kobo are cheapest. Amazon are usually the most expensive, except on Viz titles where Google are nearly double the price of the other platforms.
Yen titles are also not available on the Play Store in my region.
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@ennithree Nice to know about the price matching program. My situation's quite tricky though. I have access to purchase from two regions, AU and Indonesia. The price difference between Kobo and Google is minimal in the AU stores. Google Play store in ID somehow gives around 25% discount for all ebooks, but no price matching program on other platforms. Might be useful for Seven Seas LNs though as it's not available in the ID Play Store.
Anyway seems interesting to have purchasing experience and tips discussion in another thread?
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I hope jnovel find a way to resolve this mess....
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Village Idiot Premium Member last edited by Village Idiot Jul 21, 2020, 2:46 AM Jul 21, 2020, 2:46 AM
I can't find How Not to Summon a Demon Lord on Kobo, were they removed?
Can only find the manga.
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@Village-Idiot Can only find the manga as well. It seems like the only series affected though (so far).
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As far as I can tell everything is still available on Ibooks, but this is starting to become concerning especially if it’s starts entering into censoring physical releases.
Hopefully bookwalker isn’t the only option in the future where we can purchase LNs.
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Oh ffs, now Kobo?
Okay the J-Novel twitter replied, but Sam said
"This time it WAS due to user complaint, but I think with some changes like moving the color images out of the preview and categorizing them as erotica they should be accepted.
Kobo's email was pretty clear." -
Hmm, so there may actually be someone or a group targeting the LN community.
How nice of Kobo to actually give them a god damn explanation.
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@Village-Idiot Kinokuniya in Australia recently pulled a bunch of manga from sale (including NGNL) at the behest of a conservative politician https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/kinokuniya-pulls-7-manga-series-after-politicians-complaint-over-sexualisation-of-minors/. I don't think it's useful to guess at the reasons behind this move from Amazon and Kobo but it's awfully coincidental.
