J-Novel Club digital light novel publishing company launches

Having been seen as an unsustainable element of the western business for so long, we've recently finally seen the publishing of light novels in English rise to prominence, with Yen Press in particular putting in plenty of legwork to bring big titles to a wider audience.

However, there are still both plenty of light novels that don't reach ours shores in English as well as a significant gap in terms of the digital availability of light novels - enter J-Novel Club, a new digital light novel service founded by Samuel Pinansky, the former founder of the now-defunct Anime Sols.

Here's how the service describes itself:

J-Novel Club is a digital publishing company started by translators and fans like you! Our mission is to translate and release the coolest, funnest, and newest light novels from Japan to the world. We saw that the fans really want to check out the latest light novels, but very few of them were being officially released in English. So, founder Sam Pinansky decided to gather together the best group of Japanese to English translators and editors, and headed over to the Japanese publishers to license content. To his surprise, some of them actually said yes!

By focusing on digital releases, and providing a membership service to let people read the books as soon as they are translated, our goal is to build a community of light novel readers and to grow the market, so that more and more releases can be officially licensed and translated. We won't just publish the big hit light novels that get anime adaptations, but also newer titles or books from small publishers and web novels... as long as it's a blast to read, we'll bring it to you! So pull out your tablet or ereader, sit down in a comfy chair, and join the club!

The service's plan in terms of providing content is to allow for free previews of titles to be read, with volumes of light novels made available to subscribers to the service via a monthly fee, before finished works are also published to the likes of Amazon and Kobo to be bought and owned. Premium members will also receive a monthly credit to own an eBook of their choice, and both iOS and Android apps for the service will be made available.

The service is still in its infancy, but titles already secured for release over the coming weeks include Occultic;Nine, My Little Sister Can Read Kanji, Brave Chronicle: The Ruinmaker and My Big Sister Lives in a Fantasy World.

You can find all of the details and learn more for yourself at the official J-Novel Club web site, with the first volume of Occultic;Nine promising to launch today at the time of writing - you can also follow them on Twitter. We'll certainly be keeping a close eye on the service to see how it shapes up!