Discussion Can I just rant here? K-Authors taking down TLs.

Why are you talking as if every company in the world has international shipping? Tons of products aren't available in my country because many companies don't want to ship here.

Not to mention that paying a 60% tax on top of paying the price of a product that comes from a country with a currency 5x stronger than mine ends up making it stupidly hard to import anything even when it is actually available for me.

Also, assuming the average customer knows what a VPN is is kinda ridiculous. Not to mention the only ones that don't make your computer move at a snail's pace are the paid ones. Which are kinda hard to afford when you don't earn in USD or a similarly strong currency.

If by "many" you mean like... 5% of them or something, then sure.

Doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of students have no access to any meaningful form of income though.

Assuming your computer doesn't freeze by trying to load one of those that is.

It's not an excuse. It's a plain fact.

If you can't afford a product, you're not a customer. Regardless of whether the product has a pirate alternative or not, fact is you won't be giving a single cent to whoever is providing the product. Because you just can't afford it.

Having a pirate alternative just means you can consume the product you otherwise would not have access to. It's not really stopping you from spending money on said product because you were unable to afford it in the first place.

 

@sjmcc13 and @AliceShiki I have no ideas why you two even trying to argue over this lmao. Honestly, I see both sides of the argument and it's not like either side is "wrong". You may say that you should just "pay", but the reality is that a lot of people who consume these sorts of products just simply lack money. It's not as simple as a "get a part-time job". People not in poverty (and even those who get out of poverty) find it somewhat hard to understand the people who suffer from them. Many times, they are subjected to factors that are outside their realm of control. In Japan, light novels and manga are actually aimed at those in the poorer market since they are so cheap, but in overseas culture, we have changed the market more towards the middle-class market (due to various reasons such as markup, etc.). I do not believe that someone should have access declined to a series, just because they are poor or struggling financially. A type of a moral thing I should say. What the problem is, however, is the problem of consumption culture.

To put it simply, we're too used to having everything free. In Asia, web novels (Chinese and Korean) have always been some type of paywall. Reading one chapter costs less than a yuan (that's like 15 cents USD) sometimes, so many people are willing to pay a tiny fee. If you gave this to a Western fee, however, no matter how small the fee may be, the Western reader will always look for the "free" alternative. First, this has to do with the preconception that, using novels for example, books have always been for the middle-class and higher. I sometimes buy books and my mom would even ask, "Why do you keep wasting money on books?" Towards people with lower income, buying books (that are non-educational) are simply just a huge waste of money. A traditional novel cause cost easily over $20+ and a light novel that is almost half its length is like $14 retail from Yen Press. This is a huge difference from Japanese where a light novel only costs around 600~1000 yen. A book for $6 is TOTALLY different from a book for $14. This price gap is what causes Western readers to look for free alternatives. The mindset that books are just too expensive.

Some may make the argument like: "What about J-Novel Club?"
Personally, I have very mixed feelings about the platform. They are trying to pull a worse Amazon Kindle Unlimited, but for light novels. Money-wise, I think it's worth the purchase if you constantly catch up to every series, but does not change the problem overall that you need to purchase the previous light novel chapters. (For those who don't know, J-Novel Club lets you read chapter parts of a volume before it officially releases for $5, then locks it later. In a sense, you're only reading the latest volume.) This type of service is not very healthy imo. First, it reduces the amount of money the original author can receive, plus you do not actually "own" any eBook or physical novel, thus it's just like paying for library membership. For people who just started, not being able to read the previous light novel volumes just leads them to search for them, only to find out that you can't just spend $5 a month for a membership, but like $8 kindle or $14 retail physical per volume.

For light novels that can span easily over 10+ volumes, you can not really justify someone who is suffering from financial difficulties to spend over $80+tax (assuming they purchase the eBook ver.) simply just to catch up. Thus, I find it quite understandable to want to pirate to catch up to the latest volume. However, after tasting the glory of pirating, it really does not make much sense to pay when you can read for free, which leads to the current problem. I will not argue about how someone can earn more money or whatever, since that's something uncontrollable, but I just want to point out that there is never really a right nor wrong in these types of situations. It is also important to point out that many people will simply not consume this type of culture if you have to pay. If paying is the only option available, many will simply just not purchase and go to another form of entertainment media that does not cost money.

In the end, I hope you two (and everyone else who reads this) will understand that this is a problem that our community has been suffering from for ages. Piracy led to the huge explosion of anime/manga/novel culture in the West, but at the same time, it has come to bite their ass when it comes to trying to "officialize" it.

 

Ah, I was just trying to explain that some reader behaviors are understandable when you try looking at things from their point of view.

But for some reason the other party called my justifications as cheap excuses, so I figured I'd elaborate on them.

But yeah, books over here cost about 3-5% of the minimum monthly wage, so it's like... A pretty big investment to buy a book. I can buy 2-3 indie games (not accounting for sales) with the price of one book (or I can eat lunch outside 5x...), and those games usually provide entertainment for much longer, so... It does feel hard to justify buying them.

I still buy them anyways because I can, but I understand many people can't.

 

My last cent on this…

That is the thing. It is a product. And a product, except being labeled as free (like who does that except for promotion?) should not be derived of a return in terms of profit. Because costs happen. These materials did not came out of thin air. Many readers here forget or disregard that these materials are products. But they are treated as free stuff because scanalators took upon themselves to translate and distribute them on widely accessible platforms. Then, complain when they are taken down.

Reminds me of the time when I was a freelance writer and many Western clients of mine were always asking for ‘unique samples’ and my ‘payment’ is for ‘exposure’. Reality, they sold my material without financial gain for me. Even if they pay me, it was peanuts. All of my efforts just for exposure that will not feed me or pay my bills. Yet, readers are allowed to read whatever coz it’s suit their taste.
I don’t want to go off tangent but readers who used to having free stuff then don’t deserve quality. Something that many readers moan about when they do not even open their damn wallets.
You know what they say. You should get what you pay for. Want free stuff? Don’t expect anything resembling a plotline or 3rd grade drawing in my opinion.

1. I agree. I also pirate and free to label me a degenerate, entitled or whatever. I’m beyond being hypocrite being here and all.
2. A copout when I see one. However, it is a losing battle either way.
3. Entitlement in a nutshell.

It’s a losing battle and I accepted it long ago. Which is the reason why I will not ever go into web novels or any form of this kind. I also discourage people I know into diving in that. It doesn’t make sense if you’re the one creating these materials and supposedly get some satisfaction and some pride coz your material was enjoyed by people who steal from you first. Unless of course, the readers really like the starving artist trope.

 

sadge. the problem is that it's just too expensive here compared to japan (and asia). in china, piracy is more rampant over there but their sales are actually not bad because it's so much cheaper over there. they are paying a fraction of what we pay. all hail markups. i agree though, authors tend to get a shorter end of the stick. i mean, if you wanted a stable job, you would've never picked this path tho rip.

 

food for thought

Also this thread kinda reminds me of this tweet lmao.

 

What bothers me is that they ask that their translation be removed when it is official and many times the fault lies with the "fans" because they go to the authors' twitter to complain either that their work is bad or of the quality of the translation is low.

 

Why no one has said this.... many korean novels are locked behind an ID system. And by ID system if you take a look at kako it requires a Korean ID to use there product in general. This makes it extremely hard for foreigners (people not native to korea) to gain access to the novels.

In truth authors lose nothing...they gain something even...popularity from a different market and sometimes if a fan of to the group becomes big enough sometimes even reach out to become the Offical Translation.

 

That's actually happened quite a few times with JP LNs (especially with JNovel i believe).

On KR novels, who knows. Maybe they think that having any sort of international spread is bad (aside from those few mega series that can draw tons) and thus they're very anti-translation. Maybe it;s some unknown cultural aspect. i doubt we'll ever know.

back 10-15 years ago, EN licensers took a similar negative view (the great Baka-Tsuki purge being the prominent) which kinda ended up damaging the market for a while (i believe concurrent with the manga market crash and the GFC). There, it took a little while for the licensers to realize that fan TLs could be an indicator of what would interest western readers and it also took a while for the fan TLs to come back to life. Now, there's official translations by the bucket load and both authors and JP publishers are starting to realize that western anime fans are a reasonably lucrative market.

Maybe one day, KR novels might be widely officially licensed but if JP and CN are anything to go by that might be a good while in the future.

 

korean webnovels aren't that good anyway. they are more or less very similar to qidian wn right now. cookie cutter, good if you are just starting out, but boring and repetitive as they all copy each other.


as far as i know, japanese wn authors don't really send dmca and are usually happy that their work is being translated, even if it's paywalled.

but once they get licensed to produce an LN/anime, the company that licensed it will start sending out dmca, with yenpress being the one who is the most active.

it's not strange or unreasonable that they're sending out dmca tbh, but what sucks is how slow yenpress releases their stuff which is usually years behind the translation so many people get angry

 

tbh, I don't really mind when the translated novel i read suddenly dropped by the translators, and completely understands why authors and company removed the fan translation.

I'm tired myself seeing fans keep spreading illegal links and even tagged the authors in their sns, nagging about the continued translation or asking permission to ask when the author already announced that everything must go through their publisher first, and asking them is useless and only add fuel to the fire. I'm working in a printing company so i listen to author's woes often.

If I'm interested in K-novel usually I made my way to get the chapters. Kakaopage recently quite generous with events, which work perfectly for me to buy novel chapters (500 cash a week combined with daily lottery plus cash friends, I can buy the ongoing chapters daily!!!!) and thank god there are limited 19+ novels in my list and I can get it in ridibooks. I usually do my own MTL so I can read the novels at my own pace, too. I'm still pissed off over a dropped project because an author canceled the novelization contract, but hey it's a common story in novel and webtoon business there (changing staffs, injured artist, late payment, etc). that's why I have no qualm to buy raw chapters for a little support (and most of my cash is from free hunting lmao...I'm a cheapskate, limiting my spending max USD10 a month, kakao made me play a game for free cash and now I addicted to that game.. my time and money goes to that game now ).

I tried to send my request to local publisher in my country when I found an interesting novel/webtoon and well.. it works well (especially webtoon lmao, there is a strong fanbase in my country. Kakaopage in my country removed the novel section because of the small demands in that area, but their CS said that there will be another chance if there is a potential profit. they are already raking high profits just by manhwa only).

In Korea piracy is a real problem, too. i need to dig if anybody need references, but people sold the paid chapters in discord and telegram, the worst case (it's not much, but they took it seriously)... the translated version overseas wound up in Korea again and re-translated again to Korean .

The novels and webtoon platforms can't satisfy everyone, because they are targeted at specific market. kakao still hinder us in webtoon by releasing region-based app (KKP Kr, Indo, kkp th), most of Tapas manhwas is not available in my country, etc etc. When KKP blocked me by the ID and phone number, i tried to look for alternatives (bless ridi accepting my passport). that's life. I already accepted that i'm gunning for a luxury item. Of course I'm very grateful for the translators, but well.. if there is a means to supporting the authors, i'll make sure to buy the chapters myself especially when i like the story alot.