Where did VM Publishing (Star of Depravity) Come From All of a Sudden?

https://www.vmpublishing.xyz/tsod/the-star-of-depravity-chapter-1/
https://www.vmpublishing.xyz/about-us/
https://www.vmpublishing.xyz/

Says they currently have 7 novels under preparation to be released officially, as in they licensed them. Currently, they only have the Star of Depravity. They also plan on becoming the next WuxiaWorld but for Korean novels. Where the heck did these guys come from? Anybody know anything?

Last time a site came along that "claimed" to license some novels but only released one was Pacific Novels, which was the translator site of The Second Coming of Gluttony for a while. And that whole thing later turned out to be a sham. Ngl, I'm kinda suspicious about this website.

 

Just read their statement of intent; it was hitting all the right notes...


making it all the more suspicious!

 

also, who uses an xyz Domain name???

 

snatching a spot first. will add info later.

 

The fact they "contract" the "original author" instead of the "publishing company" can say all about their "Buying the licensing"

additionaly, their statement is more like they asking author to write a novels, instead of translating....

 

eh?
not care at the moment, if they true to their word sooner or later da company related news will pop up, wuxiaworld and jclub cafe did that no?

 

the only site i see use that
is "www.machineslicedbread.xyz"

 

It is 3/4th most popular, but one of the cheapest. Figures you find so many spam emails originating from those domains.
If you're going legit TL with licenses, xyz isnt as good for SEO is what I read. So idk if .xyz would better than the good old .com.

 

Yeah I was suspicious of them since they own both English & Korean licenses but there’s not a link to the Korean raws when I was trying to read their stuff... rather fishyyy

 

It smells like they make it seem as translation to use novel updates for traffic.
I wonder if you remember that one time someone pretended to translate a novel but were releasing an original instead? they were caught later because of raws they gave.

 

yeah, "the empiran overlord".......they asked about 40$ for "translating" additional chapter, but where just writing an original story....

 

I think if they went to gravity tales or ww when they were taking in english originals their fate would've been much better cause novel was popular as far as I remember.

 

indeed, i was following the novels hoping they apologized and keep writing it...but they simply chose to disappear...

 

We are a group of avid Korean novel readers that raised funding to start this venture. Again, as stated by our "About Us" page, we "contracted the original authors for serialization of all novel series listed on our website."

So, what does that mean?

For The Star of Depravity specifically, we approached a starting up Korean writer, reviewed his work, purchased the legal rights to the franchise, and then provided developmental help for a Western audience like a typical publisher. After getting ahead enough in the drafts, we began translating the novel into English. We planned to serialize the work in English first.

We did not think that we would run into issues with Novel Updates since groups such as METEOR STRIKE MEDIA are doing something similar without any problems. The only reason this sounds so convenient is that, as stated above, the company was founded by actual fans that have been keeping up with novels here for years.

We have already conveyed our situation with the admins. They have agreed with our circumstances and temporarily approved the series based on the basis that we follow their suggestions for making the raws readily accessible. A site like METEOR STRIKE MEDIA had months to prepare their backend, and but we agreed to do it in a much shorter time frame.

The main issue we are having with Novel Updates is not a matter of our legitimacy, but of finding a way to compromise with our contracted Korean authors and the developmental and sales copy editors to provide the raws prematurely contrary to our initial agreement. Since we have agreed to a commission-based contract for their work in the Korean drafts to cut our costs, it has been a headache for us to come up with something. As we all know, a massive number of secondary sites automatically scrape all the content attached to Novel Updates and repost it, which is a major issue.

As we have shared with the admins, our initial thought was to make use of Novel Updates' large userbase to market our series. We have already agreed to something and are working a way to make it work. However, valuable the traffic is from Novel Updates; we are not willing to jeopardize such a crucial project just to get ourselves quick exposure.

Thanks to this forum post and petty gossip, the admins were forced to pause our releases from updating on Novel Updates while secondary sites rip our content. So sadly, in the meantime, we will pause all uploads and serialization on our website. It was such a shame; we were all very excited to provide fresh Korean content to the community. Those who have actually read it should understand our pain. We promised five uploads a week, with plans to increase it further. The other novel that we were planning to release this week had an upload rate capacity of 10 chapters a week, a feat comparable to Qidian's translation teams, which is groundbreaking stuff for a KR novel.

As for the domain, we have our reasons for having it as xyz. The difference between xyz and a com domain is only 5 dollars USD... With the amount of time, money, and resources we have invested in this project, you would think that we could afford to spend the $5 on the upgrade if we really wanted to. Please hold off on these wild 163 IQ claims of our legitimacy until we have settled this with the admins.

Best regards,

 

In the first place, a website with a bare bones design and an xyz domain name screams all kind of suspicious. Not only that, no official explanation was given. Neither in the NU site nor on your website. You have given no choice but to gossip. Also, this post wasn't what stopped you from releasing. Before this, I checked your novel and you had stopped posting days before this post, already breaking your promise to release everyday except for Mondays and Tuesdays I believe? Additionally, I can't help but feel like that, when starting an official business with official licenses, these kind of things should have been taken into account, making you seem even more suspicious imo.

Nevertheless, I wish you good look on your endeavors. This post hasn't gotten much attention, maybe I can ask a mod to delete it.

 

Smells familiar

 

Hi, Meteor Strike Media admin here. Guess I now know why one of our novels got taken down for a short time recently ;-;

As Tony has already said, NU Policy is pretty cut and dry. As long as you can provide raws, you can upload your content here. When our novel Fallen Monarch was removed, it took us under 2 days to get it back up by simply linking Tony the raws. Don't really know what VM Publishing means by us doing something similar to them, as we've never purchased a license where the raws are not already publicly available.