J-Novel Club

[pepinotomate]

oh great they took over another dussin series i followed, i sure do love these cunts... guess i'm gonna have to stop reading all those.

Dude, you're acting like all of these just got licensed and everyone gonna drop them, when in reality the majority of these series that are showing up by J-Novel been licensed for years at this point with a scanlation on the side, why would it change by now with most of them when this group isn't even official by them here to police them

 

[SomeConch357]

how about yall fuck off? come in try and scoop up a bunch of manga and spam our feeds with suppar scanilations that force us to go to your shit site and then pay for "newer" chapters that have ALREADY BEEN POSTED ON MANGADEX you fucking leaches

edit: I have been informed it's mangadex them selves spamming this shit

 

[RogueKitsune]

how about yall fuck off? come in try and scoop up a bunch of manga and spam our feeds with suppar scanilations that force us to go to your shit site and then pay for "newer" chapters that have ALREADY BEEN POSTED ON MANGADEX you fucking leaches

How about you calm down?
J-Novel Club has absolutely no involvement with the links being added. Its a MangaDex initiative to promote official releases by linking to freely available chapters from publishers. No one is forcing you to pay anything and links being added to series that have mostly be licensed for years now doesn't prevent groups from continuing to work on them.

 

[Jemnite]

how about yall fuck off? come in try and scoop up a bunch of manga and spam our feeds with suppar scanilations that force us to go to your shit site and then pay for "newer" chapters that have ALREADY BEEN POSTED ON MANGADEX you fucking leaches

Ultimately you can just block the publisher and not have the links show up on the RSS. I honestly don't understand the point in getting so worked up when 1. J-Novel is not posting these links, they're being added by MangaDex staff and 2. They're the official publisher and have the intellectual property right licensing for these manga in the first place.

 

[SomeConch357]

Ultimately you can just block the publisher and not have the links show up on the RSS. I honestly don't understand the point in getting so worked up when 1. J-Novel is not posting these links, they're being added by MangaDex staff and 2. They're the official publisher and have the intellectual property right licensing for these manga in the first place.

the reason I'm getting worked up is due to me not knowing it was manga dex and not these plebs doing it and the fact it has been absolutely destroying my following feed and I can't find the new chapters from all this old shit getting spammed in it

 

[BlueDsc]

the reason I'm getting worked up is due to me not knowing it was manga dex and not these plebs doing it and the fact it has been absolutely destroying my following feed and I can't find the new chapters from all this old shit getting spammed in it

So add them to your block list. It's not that difficult. Heaven forbid you get mildly inconvenienced while reading your legally dubious manga scanlations.

 

[SomeConch357]

So add them to your block list. It's not that difficult. Heaven forbid you get mildly inconvenienced while reading your legally dubious manga scanlations.

they are blocked now, I still find groups like this that have the token/subscription systems to be leaches

 

[BlueDsc]

they are blocked now, I still find groups like this that have the token/subscription systems to be leaches

They're literally official publishers. They're the ones that actually have the legal rights to post these manga. They're about the furthest thing from leeches in this context.

 

[SomeConch357]

They're literally official publishers. They're the ones that actually have the legal rights to post these manga. They're about the furthest thing from leeches in this context.

they are one of many places to get the "official" releases and from what I can see their prices are atrocious(not the worse but fucking bad) I'll stick to finding my manga other places and purchasing the physical copies

 

[BlueDsc]

they are one of many places to get the "official" releases and from what I can see their prices are atrocious(not the worse but fucking bad) I'll stick to finding my manga other places and purchasing the physical copies

In my experience J-Novel's prices tend to be on the cheaper side, though I suppose even they'll look expensive compared to just reading unofficial scanlations or pirated official releases for free.

 

[meeklee]

They're literally official publishers. They're the ones that actually have the legal rights to post these manga. They're about the furthest thing from leeches in this context.

To be fair they're specifically referring to the token system, which is an objectively predatory practise used to obfuscate the amount of money you're actually spending - spending 500 J coins or whatever the fuck they're called doesn't sound as bad as spending $5, but they're identical. It's one of the oldest tricks in the marketing playbook, and will always be scummy.

 

[BlueDsc]

To be fair they're specifically referring to the token system, which is an objectively predatory practise used to obfuscate the amount of money you're actually spending - spending 500 J coins or whatever the fuck they're called doesn't sound as bad as spending $5, but they're identical. It's one of the oldest tricks in the marketing playbook, and will always be scummy.

The only issue I take with currencies like that is when they're set up in such a way that forces you to buy more than you actually need, which is not an issue with J Novel's coins, so I can't say I particularly care that they use them, especially since, like I mentioned, their prices tend to be on the cheaper side for digital publishers.

 

[ezdez]

Official publishers who use coin systems are parasites.

If you're confused as to why I believe this, please see the post I made later on in the thread (with the rant spoiler explaining why I hate coin-currencies and JNC's system.

Can I offer Wuxiaworld as a good model? You can sub to get chapter releases 10/20+ ahead. but the free system is actually pretty decent: you unlock 1-2 chapters every 24 hours. You earn 100 coins daily (takes around 20-30 coins to unlock a chapter). First 5 comments of each day will earn you coins. It's a pretty fair system, easily read 5 chapters for free a day.

I'm reading 2 novels on Wuxiaworld that are on 2/3 releases a week. I've never paid a cent.

But yes, J-Novel Club is trash and they are blocked.

 

[SilentDan]

The best thing about this group is knowing when to visit other sites to read what mangadex is missing.

 

[meeklee]

The only issue I take with currencies like that is when they're set up in such a way that forces you to buy more than you actually need, which is not an issue with J Novel's coins, so I can't say I particularly care that they use them, especially since, like I mentioned, their prices tend to be on the cheaper side for digital publishers.

I agree that that's worse, but it doesn't make JNC's implementation not predatory - having packages that are worth slightly less than what you actually need is only one of the many flavors of extra fuckery commonly added to virtual currencies. Another one is to have the value of the virtual currency be far less than the equivalent in USD or whatever fiat currency, like JNC are doing by having each token be worth $0.01. This abstracts the true value away from the user when they are spending the tokens, and makes it more likely for them to spend more money. It's a tried and true marketing tactic.

The only time I don't take issue with this kind of thing is when there is price parity between the tokens and the currency used to purchase them (1 token = $1).

 

[BlueDsc]

I agree that that's worse, but it doesn't make JNC's implementation not predatory - having packages that are worth slightly less than what you actually need is only one of the many flavors of extra fuckery commonly added to virtual currencies. Another one is to have the value of the virtual currency be far less than the equivalent in USD or whatever fiat currency, like JNC are doing by having each token be worth $0.01. This abstracts the true value away from the user when they are spending the tokens, and makes it more likely for them to spend more money. It's a tried and true marketing tactic.

The only time I don't take issue with this kind of thing is when there is price parity between the tokens and the currency used to purchase them (1 token = $1).

I don't understand why 1 token =$1 is not bad but 1 token =$.01 is bad. In regards to visibility, I feel like the two are effectively identical.

 

[meeklee]

I don't understand why 1 token =$1 is not bad but 1 token =$.01 is bad. In regards to visibility, I feel like the two are effectively identical.

It's a psychological tactic used very frequently in marketing. When a user sees that, for example, $10 gets them 1000 tokens, spending 100 of them (or $1) doesn't seem that bad. Conversely, if $10 got you 10 tokens, suddenly 1 token looks like a much larger proportion, despite it being identical. It makes users much more comfortable with spending large amounts of the virtual currency. There's a reason pretty much every premium currency in games does this.

It doesn't work on everybody - which is likely the reason that you don't see why it's bad - but it works on a large enough percentage of the population that it's worthwhile doing it if you're interested in exploiting your userbase for as much profit as possible.

 

[pianopenguin]

It's a psychological tactic used very frequently in marketing. When a user sees that, for example, $10 gets them 1000 tokens, spending 100 of them (or $1) doesn't seem that bad. Conversely, if $10 got you 10 tokens, suddenly 1 token looks like a much larger proportion, despite it being identical. It makes users much more comfortable with spending large amounts of the virtual currency. There's a reason pretty much every premium currency in games does this.

It doesn't work on everybody - which is likely the reason that you don't see why it's bad - but it works on a large enough percentage of the population that it's worthwhile doing it if you're interested in exploiting your userbase for as much profit as possible.

Given that the price of the books in tokens is identical to their USD RRP on other stores, rather than some arcane gacha style multiplier designed to obfuscate price per waifu, I'm not sure how much heavy lifting this psychological trick is doing.

Also TIL the Japanese yen is a gacha style marketing tactic.

 

[meeklee]

Given that the price of the books in tokens is identical to their USD RRP on other stores, rather than some arcane gacha style multiplier designed to obfuscate price per waifu, I'm not sure how much heavy lifting this psychological trick is doing.

Also TIL the Japanese yen is a gacha style marketing tactic.

Fair enough if the price is the same, I have no intention of using JNC so I didn't look much into book pricing, only the conversion between USD and their currency. That doesn't change the fact that it is a very commonly used tactic, and just feels scummy when people do it as a result, whether their intentions are good or bad.

And if you read my comments, I quite clearly drew a distinction between actual fiat currencies and virtual currencies. Pointing at a fiat currency that has a lower value than USD as if that's some sort of gotcha is just fucking moronic lmao - do you really think that Japanese people are going to be comparing values to USD, or do you think that maybe, perhaps, they might use JPY as their baseline for that kind of thing? You know, the currency that they use on a daily basis? I only used USD as an example because I assume it's what most people on here will be most familiar with, it's not even my currency.

However, you can actually use that to illustrate exactly what this tactic takes advantage of:

Let's say you are an American travelling to India. You exchange $100 for rupees. You then go to buy something worth 5000 rupees - you are not going to intuitively know what the equivalent value is in your own currency. That is the exact same thing that they (not necessarily JNC, but more nefarious actors) are taking advantage of.

Anyway, I won't be replying again. I see no point in continuing to use this thread to argue about very well established marketing concepts.

 

[pianopenguin]

fiat currency reeeee33

You're putting too much stock in a one line shitpost mate, I only mention the yen as a curiosity because 1JPY ≈ 1 freedomcent is a rule of thumb conversion that people historically often used to estimate roughly how much stuff cost when importing their erotic dakimakuras, and that conversion happens to be the same as that of scroogenovel club coins (coin conversions being, obviously, more stable and accurate).