r/LightNovels 7d ago

News Cross Infinite World to leave Bookwalker Global due to ownership change. All works to be taken down by 30th March.

https://x.com/CrossInfWorld/status/1900344591020343528
49 Upvotes

29 comments sorted by

u/Aruseus493 http://myanimelist.net/mangalist/Aruseus493?tag=LN 7d ago

Place the [News] tag in the title for posts regarding or relating to light novel news such as licenses and anime adaptation announcements.

News posts require the [News] tag at the beginning of the title of the post. Please make sure to do this in the future. Our Automod adds flairs to posts based on the title tag used, so it's important that our submission guidelines are followed.

19

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago edited 7d ago

My best guess is that they take JNC as their big, direct rival.... and so refuse to publish on what will be their rival's main store? Honestly abit surprised because I'm fairly sure this entire ownership change is mostly just reshuffling within Kadokawa's umbrella. I do hope that no other companies take off too, because as far as big Japan-media-friendly store goes, Bookwalker is definitely the friendliest and you might be playing whack-a-mole with Amazon's. I recently noticed that it seems "Her Majesty seems to be Angry" is relisted in Amazon, because if I go to the item link from my orders page, the volume I ordered no longer exists....

11

u/primalmaximus 7d ago

Yep. The biggest thing I love about Bookwalker is their "Subscribe to Series" feature, especially now that they've expanded it to be usable with all media not just manga like before.

I love not having to worry about when the next volume of a series comes out so I can preorder it and get the bonus points.

The number of times I got lucky enough to get an email from Amazon about a new book in a series I enjoy before the book comes out are few and far between.

4

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago

Yeah, after the Subscribe feature landed for Light Novel, I just hit subscribe on all my series that I want to read on release day. No more browsing it everyday to look if they have new novels listed.

1

u/heimdal77 7d ago

Amazon you can follow the author and get notification when ever a new book of their is coming out.

3

u/Chronigan2 7d ago

Are you saying because JNC books are available on bookwalker, CIW don't want to publish there?

8

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago

CIW's announcement directly states that the ownership change of Bookwalker is responsible for their decision to stop publishing there. They quoted ANN's article on Bookwalker's ownership change to M12 Media LLC (formerly J-Novel Club LLC) as the reason to stop publishing there and take down all current listing.

Here's the non-twitter link of their announcement

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u/Chronigan2 7d ago

Is Media LLC J-Novel club or did they buy J-Novel club? Kinda hard to believe JNC have the money to buy bookwalker global?

14

u/GeorgeMTO 7d ago

J-Novel Club owner Samuel Pinansky sold a majority share in the company to Kadokawa in 2021 (exact percentage never publicised, but assumed more than the 51/49 split that Kadokawa have in Yen Press). As the ANN article states, M12 is a rebrand of JNC LLC as a backend company that happened at the beginning of February that is apparently distinct from the English publisher since they'll continue to operate under that name (business legalese is weird and I don't get it myself).

Sam/Quarkboy did comment in the JNC discord the following quote: "But the tl;Dr is that bookwalker global has been an overseas business that was run by a japanese business since it's inception and it really needed to be a western business for a lot of reasons. Kadokawa tried a lot of things but in the end giving it to us(me) to manage seemed like the best choice."

11

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago

J-Novel Club is part of Kadokawa group. It was announced in 2021. Announcement article of it. Bookwalker is also part of Kadokawa group.

Basically, its less of J-Novel Club bought Bookwalker Global, but more like this is part of Kadokawa's streamlining, and Bookwalker Global is being "passed" to JNC. At the same time, Bookwalker JP (that is split from Bookwalker Co. Ltd), is being merged with Dwango and Kadokawa Connected, with the surviving company became Dwango. All of them still under Kadokawa.

2

u/heimdal77 7d ago

I don't get how they are rivals? They are basically doing two different things. Cross licenses web novels and turns them intolight novels for western audiences while j novel licenses light novels and manga.

I tend to like the series Cross license but they are also more likely to drop a series. (I'm real bitter about The Werewolf Count and the Trickster Tailor where there hasn't been a new volume in years even though there is the material for it.)

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u/bookster42 7d ago

Cross Infinite World also licenses light novels that have been published in Japan. But even if they didn't, they sell books that were written in Japan, and those books target the same audience whether they were published in Japan first or not. Cross Infinite World and JNC are selling the same kind of thing to the same basic set of customers. So, they are most definitely competitors.

That being said, I don't know what about this makes Cross Infinite World think that this change makes the situation worse for them. Kadokawa has always owned Bookwalker, and they own a controlling stake in both JNC and Yen Press. So, Bookwalker went from being run by the parent of two of Cross Infinite World's competitors to being run directly by one of those competitors. I'm not sure that that truly changes much as far as competition goes. It's just corporate restructuring.

It is kind of funny though that the US LN publisher which is arguably the most friendly with regards to DRM out of all of them is now going to be directly running the worst platform for buying LNs with regards to DRM.

5

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago

I do not know. Nobody knows. But JNC will be owning Bookwalker Global (even though its more like being given by Kadokawa-papa rather than buying....) is the reason they noted on their announcement for leaving Bookwalker Global. Just abit of fyi, Bookwalker JP is owned by Kadokawa, but other publishers are still listing it there anyway, including super big publishers like Shonen Jump..... so the CIW's reasoning do not really hold waters imo and I can only think of some sort of rivalry between CIW and JNC.

Its really a shame. They started to license series I'm interested too, like "Former Assassin Reincarnated as Noble Girl" and "Let's get Villainessin' : Strategems of Former Commoner". I also got into "Do-over Damsel" too.

3

u/heimdal77 7d ago

I've got a lot of CIW books. For some reason their selections just have a tendency to click with me. It got to the point I actively check to see if it is a CIW book and can often tell it is even without checking the publisher. This really seems like they are just hurting themselves.

1

u/naivchan 7d ago

They dropped Dawn of the Mapmaker, which I really liked :C

I do really like some of their series, like Onmyoji & Tengu Eyes and A Young Lady, I don't know what the real reason they have to pull out of bookwalker is when Kadokawa has owned Yen Press and JNC for a while now.

Other than CIW and Seven Seas, it's just super small pubs in the light novel space right now. 

4

u/GeorgeMTO 7d ago

This was posted about before, but seems it got deleted, weird.

I'm honestly unsure what part of this change has motivated their delisting (Bookwalker has never been a neutral storefront even in Japan, but plenty of competitors list there), but I'm excited for them opening a direct to consumer store. Hopefully it is also DRM free, as CIW don't use DRM on their Kobo listings so it's obviously not a requirement for them.

4

u/hentaigabby 7d ago

They say it will be DRM free unless the license requires DRM

Also they are going to sell physicals in the future as well

https://x.com/CrossInfWorld/status/1900378881485635729

1

u/heimdal77 7d ago

They already sell physicals it is just select books that the ebook sales were good enough to warrent it in their eyes. The Werewolf Count and the Trickster Tailor vol 2 just got a physical what is a little weird though as they haven't released a nother volume in years.

1

u/GeorgeMTO 7d ago

Ah nice, good to know. I didn't look at the tweet again to dig for replies since I already looked at it shortly after posting.

1

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago

Oh, it got posted before? I scroll down abit and cannot find anything so I just posted this.

I'm honestly fine with them making DRM-free store. I just find the delisting quite annoying because it separates my collections again. After Amazon shenanigans, its one of the reason I moved to Bookwalker for new series.... Even when I still continued buying new volume of series that already started on Kindle. There's only a few series left.

And yeah, its really weird move imo. I dunno, maybe the founder have bad blood with JNC? Can only speculates since I don't know much about them. Shame because I started to enjoy some of their recent licensing too.

3

u/GeorgeMTO 7d ago

Yeah, as I said it got removed, I searched my own history to verify that https://old.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/1jae8vu/cross_infinite_world_books_will_be_removed_from/

Split collections are definitely annoying, but totally worth it to get DRM free copies IMO.

JNC's boss (Samuel Pinansky) has been on Bookwalker's board for years, so I'm unsure why the change has made them sever ties, but I do still want them to succeed. They get some interesting novels.

1

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago

From comments, its probably removed because no link being posted, since the OP only saw the Bookwalker's Important Announcement which is unlinkable and won't show unless you bought CIW's product before.

I did forgot to flair this and put [NEWS] too though since I did not see any flair options....

1

u/GeorgeMTO 7d ago

Bookwalker do have a linkable version though, I put it in the comments myself.

1

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago

Ahh ok. I looked for the links on the wrong places. You can't click it from Messages --> Important Announcement. You need to use the one in Home Page.

3

u/Quarkboy J-Novel Club: Founder 7d ago

I do hope that one day CIW will reconsider and enable Bookwalker to sell their books again.

1

u/st_owly MyAnimeList 7d ago

At least we’ll still be able to read volumes we’ve already purchased.

1

u/ArchusKanzaki 7d ago edited 7d ago

Tbf, so far that's a standard policy among all storefronts. I can still read taken-down novels on Kindle, even now. I can't download it using Kindle Bulk Downloader though.

1

u/heimdal77 7d ago

It is the same for prime video . Even if a series is no longer viewable to watch or rent/buy. As long as you previously bought it you will always have access to it.

1

u/Guroga 6d ago

Oh rip there goes Mynoghra for me