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Will anything change with J-Novel due to the acquisition by Kodakawa
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Just wanted to know if there will be any major changes in the way J-Novel operates with the recent acquisition of the company by Kodakawa
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@morbelek thanks - that helps (google translate, as usual, did a poor job)
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I expect there will likely be a post of some kind from JNC detailing exactly what will/won't change. But it'll come when they're ready to make one.
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I will leave this post open for now.
However an official post with a Q&A post will be arriving later today.
I ask that people keep their speculations to a minimum until that time.
As always everyone’s patience is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
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Would be nice if some of these could be answered in the Q&A:
- Will this badly affect the possibility of publishing books from other publishers?
- Will the amount of concurrently translated books greatly increase? (Cos I'm really looking forward to some of the titles I have my eyes on to get licensed by JNC)
- So far JNC has done well in terms of no censorship (afaik). Will it stay like that?
- Will the subscription system stay the same?
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Doesn't Kadokawa already have BookWalker? Wonder how the relationship between these two services will play out as the target market is pretty much the same?
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@korppi Bookwalker don't translate, they're just a place for various translation companies to sell their novels to a targeted audience. They do have Yen Press who do translate though.
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@georgemto Bookwalker translated The Ryuo's Work is Never Done! and The Combat Baker and Automaton Waitress.
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Pretty funny to think that Japanese edition of Bookworm is published by tiny tiny seven years old company called TO-Books with about 30 employee, while the English edition will be published by the behemoth Kadokawa, the number one publisher in Japan (I check the recent number and Kadokawa sales is close to twice as large as #2 Kodansha).
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I'm curious as to when the Q&A topic will appear. Given when Rahul's post went up, later today taken in a US sense would mean some time in the next ~14 hours (or, more realistically, the next ~8 hours), whereas if we're going by JST that jumps to some time in the next ~22 hours.
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@otonokakuei said in Will anything change with J-Novel due to the acquisition by Kodakawa:
Would be nice if some of these could be answered in the Q&A:
- Will this badly affect the possibility of publishing books from other publishers?
- Will the amount of concurrently translated books greatly increase? (Cos I'm really looking forward to some of the titles I have my eyes on to get licensed by JNC)
- So far JNC has done well in terms of no censorship (afaik). Will it stay like that?
- Will the subscription system stay the same?
While this is for the Q&A forum, another question that comes to mind will be if J-Novel will lose their flexibility on what books can be translated and can only do those allowed by Kodakawa. (I think that may be your question #1)
Ofc, it could be the other way around, and with the backing of the #1 publisher in Japan, the number of authors wanting to go to J-Novel for translation for the English speaking market may increase
There could also be DRM changes - I don't foresee that being an issue, but you never know.
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Looking forward to the QA post, though I'm not expecting a lot of changes short term since acquisitions don't typically try to shake everything up right away.
I am interested in know if this will impact what titles JNC might be allowed to try to go after down the road, or if it gives them the opertunity to gain access to Japanese publishers who have at this point stubbornly refused to even consider licensing anything (looking at you AlphaPolis).
On a purely end use level, I'd want to know if there will be any changes to the subscription system, and if there will be any changes to the credit system (I know a lot of us have huge stockpiles of credits for future use).
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My hope is higher quality paper for printed books. (Want
extra thick Bookworm books :3) -
Wow. I really don't know how to feel about this. Is there going to be major changes and cost increases to members? Are we going to lose titles JNC has already been publishing? Are we still going to be able to read stuff weekly as it's translated? Will there still be premium edition? Goodness gracious my head hurts now.
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My biggest question is how is this going to affect the series they already have. As had been noted in the past they license on a per volume basis, so what happens if these publishers now no longer want to continue those licenses to a company owned by a rival.
Also I wonder how this affects the negotiations with the new square Enix publisher to complete a series like Walking my second path in life.
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@elkensteyin said in Will anything change with J-Novel due to the acquisition by Kodakawa:
While this is for the Q&A forum, another question that comes to mind will be if J-Novel will lose their flexibility on what books can be translated and can only do those allowed by Kodakawa.
@catstorm said in Will anything change with J-Novel due to the acquisition by Kodakawa:
@elkensteyin
My biggest question is how is this going to affect the series they already have. As had been noted in the past they license on a per volume basis, so what happens if these publishers now no longer want to continue those licenses to a company owned by a rival.Being owned by Kadokawa hasn’t prevented Yen Press from licensing titles from other Japanese publishers.
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@elkensteyin said in Will anything change with J-Novel due to the acquisition by Kodakawa:
There could also be DRM changes - I don't foresee that being an issue, but you never know.
That's by far my biggest fear. Looking at Yen Press I don't think Kadokawa's involvement will be negative, but IRC BW uses pretty strong DRMs and Japanese companies aren't exactly known for their relaxed views on Copyright, so I really hope the current premium ebook system stays mostly the same.
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@elkensteyin
This may be the answer to a long running question as to why some series have not had any releases after finishing their current volume despite there being further content that is out there to be licensed. -
It will be great when we can get some of these questions answered.
