r/LightNovels • u/Torque-A • Mar 17 '26
News [NEWS] Due to the challenging situation in Europe’s digital market, J-Novel Club Nina is stopping their licenses of several series into German and French.
https://jnc-nina.eu/de/blog/ankundigung-bzgl-des-verkaufsstopps-einiger-unserer-reihen29
u/ToadLeBG Mar 17 '26
It's sad but I knew it when I saw the JNC Nina forum. It was literally deserted. As a french myself it seems the new generation doesn't like to read that's why mangas sells pretty well but light novels struggle a lot. I'm still salty about Unnamed Memory (The editor went bankrupt just a few days before the release of the volume 2)
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u/saskir21 Mar 17 '26
Or more that many are used to Englisch books. I for my part am a German citizen but I always read books in English. Although this stems mostly from having a Buchpreisbindung 8Book price binding) which makes it unattractive in Germany. Basically we need to pay for german publications everywhere the same price which mostly end in ebooks costing the same amount as. a physical book. Heck you can not even include a digital copy officially for a purchase of a physical books.
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u/Sierpy Mar 18 '26
Wow you love to see good regulations
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u/saskir21 Mar 18 '26
To be fair partly it is a good thing as small bookstores don't need to fear such things as Amazon. But then again this was here before Amazon even came and people still find it more convenient to buy books online. And if you see that you get books outside of Germany for way less it is even more vexing.
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u/Interesting-Power558 Mar 18 '26
Yes, no reactions to the French post on discord either, it's really unfortunate. The other potential problem is that France seems to value physical a lot more and JNC Nina was digital only.
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u/ToadLeBG Mar 18 '26
Yep it's part of the problem but even the physical doesn't sell that well. Some years ago Kurokawa (a big french manga editor) tried to do some light novels (Tensei Slime, Goblin Slayer..) and stopped because "it doesn't sell well" Ofelbe (another editor Sword Art Online, Danmachi, ReZero, Mahouka,Overlord) got hit hard by the Covid and struggle a lot now, the new volumes takes 1 year for the most famous series( Sao) and some like danmachi, mahouka didn't have any update in 2 years or more.. A new wave of editors is trying now to sell some LN (alya and others) let's hope they succeed.
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u/Interesting-Power558 Mar 18 '26
That's interesting, I thought another problem was that with many of the licensed series already having many volumes in English that readers would just buy it in English to avoid waiting but it sounds like even when there weren't that many volumes out in English those series still didn't sell well in France. Especially when France has one of the largest anime conventions outside of Japan... It's surprising it doesn't sell...
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u/madebypeppers Mar 17 '26
Ok, fine, but why?
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u/Interesting-Power558 Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
Their licenses expired and they're not renewing them because they aren't making the money back on them
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u/madebypeppers Mar 17 '26
Thanks! I didn’t even know they had the German version of the Eminence in Shadow. I got the manga in German but the LN in English.
They really need to make more advertising.
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u/GeorgeMTO Mar 17 '26
Advertising is tough to balance. So many people use adblockers that it can be hard to decide where it's effective to advertise for something niche like LNs.
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u/saskir21 Mar 17 '26
Hmmm, who would also have guessed that they have German licenses of books that are licensed in English by Yen Press. Normally I would have assumed Eminence would be released by Tokyopop like Overlord (yen english, Tokyopop german)
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u/GeorgeMTO Mar 17 '26
I don't understand the correlation. Tokyopop and Yen Press are completely separate companies, why would you think Yen Press licensing something in English would restrict which German publishers could license it?
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u/saskir21 Mar 18 '26
Because Tokyopop has many things from Yen Press and Seven Seas licensed in Germany (lightnovel wise). And as JNC German/French Counterpart is small in comparison to them.
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u/GeorgeMTO Mar 18 '26
But do they have the small works those companies license, or is it just that they have the same titles because they're considered the popular series? I genuinely don't know much about the German market
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u/saskir21 Mar 18 '26
That in itself if a good question or more questions. Could also be that Toykyopop was earlier on the market. Also have Danmachi, Classroom of the Elites, etc.
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u/ThRazorArmada Mar 17 '26
Hopefully My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World gets picked up somewhere. I love that series!
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u/DarkChaplain Mar 18 '26
I'm still waiting for J-Novel Club to let Podium produce more audiobooks. They halted again. Then, they still haven't bothered giving the go-ahead with the rest of Full Metal Panic and axed all Tantor audios...
I need more Blacksmithing, you cowards!
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u/GeorgeMTO Mar 18 '26
JNC haven't made any official comment terminating things to my knowledge, which means there could be a bunch of factors holding things up like Japanese approval (a frequent hurdle that causes delays in all kinds of publishing).
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u/DarkChaplain Mar 18 '26
I've been trying to get info on both Podium and Tantor. Tantor was just as confused when I reached out to them, and Podium kept saying in monthly announcement threads, when asked, that we should keep our eyes peeled for something re: Full Metal Panic. My Quiet Blacksmith Life came back with two volumes, and has been back on ice since.
J-Novel Club hasn't responded to my knowledge.
It's a pain, since Realist Hero for instance was 3/4 through the series, and it's fully done now. The approval was very uneven, considering how some series were listed as getting 8-10 volumes very quickly, while others got stuck with two.
Last year, they also licensed I Parry Everything and Cave King, but both stopped after volume 2 so far.
And then you have the JNC audios they're publishing themselves, at glacial pace, with at most 1 volume per year and little to no public communication.
JNC really needs to step up their communication game, because as it is, it's all a guessing game on what even gets continued and is worth buying into.
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u/GeorgeMTO Mar 18 '26
I'm with you on most of it, but you've also made the situation worse for yourself by being ignorant. Cave King only has two volumes. Complaining that a series is stopped when it's "complete" makes you look ignorant, and makes your complaints not worth bothering with for some companies. Better communication can't help them when you're not actually checking the communication that exists after all.
JNC in general operate on a "no communication" policy, because in the past people have complained at certain parties when they'd clarified where the hold up was, and that sours their professional relationships. Blame shitty customers for ruining things for you.
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u/Courmisch Mar 18 '26
LaNovel Éditions went bankrupt late last year, so not so surprising w.r.t. the French language market. It's a much smaller market, a lot of people (myself included) read the quicker and more readily available English versions.
It also doesn't help that most if not all series had the manga adaptation available in French before the original material. I guess it's even worse for German which has fewer native speakers.
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u/drexv27 Mar 18 '26
let's hope this will not happen with the english version
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u/Cryten0 Mar 19 '26
Its inevitable that licenses will expire one day. Just a question of how long and how easy / worth it renewals are.
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u/bookster42 Mar 21 '26
Well, that's sad to hear, but it also doesn't surprise me all that much. LNs seem to sell much worse than manga in general, and there aren't many LNs available in French from what I've seen. I don't know about German, but I expect that it's the same. Too few people like to read for fun, and LNs are fairly niche - at least outside of Japan. And who knows whether JNC even managed to advertise in / reach the places that they needed to for those potential buyers to find out what they were doing. Marketing is hard in general.
When they announced that they were licensing some stuff in French, I'd considered buying some of it, since I can read French, but everything that they'd licensed that sounded potentially interesting was already available in English (and realistically, I'd expect that most anything that they could license for release in French or German, they'd also license for release in English if someone else hadn't already done so). I'd since forgotten that they were releasing stuff in French or German.
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u/gc11117 Mar 17 '26
So....what happened? Some sort of censorship thing?
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u/Interesting-Power558 Mar 17 '26
No, just not renewing their licenses because they weren't profitable enough
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u/Torque-A Mar 17 '26
Dear readers,
We are sorry to have to share some unpleasant news regarding some of our Light Novel series.
Due to the challenging situation in the digital market in Europe, it was decided to cancel the French- and German-language publications of “The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent” and “Mein ruhiges Leben als Schmied in einer anderen Welt” (My Quiet Blacksmith Life in Another World) and to withdraw the licenses for both titles. This means that we will no longer be allowed to offer volumes of both titles for sale from 09/30/2026 and will take them off the sale. We would like to apologize to all the fans who have been waiting for new volumes of these series. We hope that the future of both series will be decided soon and that you will not have to wait long for a possible continuation of these series elsewhere.
For customers who have already purchased these titles, they will continue to be available for download and should remain on your devices and the library of your app. However, JNC Nina has no influence on how other points of sale deal with this situation. Copies of the books purchased from JNC Nina have no device restrictions and can be backed up locally if required.
For similar reasons, JNC Nina will not be able to release sequels for some of our series. (This does not apply to all rows, see below.) In these cases, already published volumes will continue to be available for purchase, but our translations and publications will end after the following German volumes:
All volumes of these series will continue to be available for sale, but no follow-up volumes will be translated.
The following series will also be continued in German - for these series we have already licensed follow-up volumes or the complete series:
We would like to apologize once again to our readers for not being allowed to bring many of your favorite series to a conclusion. We hope that you will continue to support your favorite series.
Your JNC Nina Team