J-Novel Club has announced an ongoing sales and distribution agreement with Hachette Book Group through a new partnership with Yen Press for J-Novel Club’s physical book catalog.
Beginning July 1, 2024, all J-Novel Club backlist and backlist titles will be distributed by Hachette in North America. International sales will be handled by Diamond Book Distributors.
What does this mean for the current J-Novel Club and Yen Press branding?
The company claims that all books will be listed for referendum under Yen Press’s JNC imprint and appear on the Edelweiss platform as “Yen Press/JNC.” Meanwhile, branding on books for titles directly produced by J-Novel Club will continue to feature the full J-Novel Club and J-Novel Heart logos. Titles produced by Yen Press under the JNC brand will continue to use the simplified JNC logo.
Does this affect J-Novel Club’s digital products?
This arrangement is for English print editions only and has no impact on J-Novel Club’s digital offerings.
How will this affect inventory and stock levels?
Retailers globally can continue to order all J-Novel Club titles—including all new June 2024 releases—through June 30, 2024 , then the inventory will be transferred to Hachette’s warehouse. This may result in delays in order fulfillment for both retailers and customers while shipping and catalog title ingestion continue. New July 2024 releases are registered with Hachette Book Group and are available for pre-order.
Why aren’t new episodes coming out as often as before?
J-Novel Club has switched to an attractive solicitation system. Each month, new production volumes will be offered for retail, allowing the company to manage a more flexible release schedule and provide increasingly precise metadata such as page numbers.
Source: press release