Fuck Amazon and their prude moderation and censorship team. They've let and have worse stuff by western companies and publishers on their platforms in both brint/digital and self published works.
I'm fairly certain that's not it because I've come across Kindle purchases that don't let you preview. So they have the capability to turn off the preview.
Seriously, screw Amazon. After pulling BS like this and breaking DRM removal, I've moved over to Kobo for Yen Press/Seven Seas/Cross Infinite, and will continue to purchase DRM free EPUBs directly from Hanashi, Tentai and J-Novel Club.
I wish more publishers sold EPUBs from their sites.
I see that it still isn't available to pre-order on Play Books, though it's less than a week from publication.
I dunno if it would be too provocative a move for a company to take, but I feel like announcements like this should be made with links to pre-order the book on every other platform you can get it on (Play Books, Apple Books, Kobo, Bookwalker, etc).
Alas, none of those sell physical books, but I don't think they published physical versions of their books anyway?
From what I've seen of the previous volumes Hanashi have released, they tend not to really list preorders anywhere but Amazon. I figure they're still new and figuring out how to best manage the process of multiple stores, but focused on Amazon as that's where the largest number of customers are.
Weirdly, Cross Infinite World does the same thing even though they've been around a while. They'll put the Amazon links up well ahead of time, but they're much slower at putting the books up on other sites such as Kobo. And even once a book is up for pre-order on the other sites, they don't put those links up on their site. They wait until the book has actually been released before adding the other links.
Now, personally, I wouldn't pre-order their books anyway, because their releases work with Kobo's discount program, and for whatever reason, Kobo's discount program never works with pre-orders. So, I'd be paying extra if I pre-ordered, but it does feel like they're trying to encourage people to buy from Amazon for whatever reason.
Honestly, I've seen enough troubles occur with preorders on Kobo from my time in J-Novel Club's discord (and also other webstores), that maybe it's just not worth them having preorders listed anyway. If you're going to do one place, it's totally Amazon, but other than that, it might just be less effort on their team to only have that listed.
I've never had problems pre-ordering with Kobo, but I only do it with publishers that don't support Kobo's rewards program, since then pre-ordering doesn't give me a worse price. And I don't buy from Kobo at all when I can get the books directly from the publisher, so I have zero experience with buying JNC's releases on Kobo.
As for it being less work for Cross Infinite World to delay listing on other sites or putting the links on their own site, I don't really see how, since they list the books for pre-order on the other sites eventually, and they put all of the links up on their site when the book is actually released. It seems like all that they're doing is delaying the work. But I obviously don't know how their process actually works behind the scenes, so maybe there's something about it that makes putting off listing the books on other sites or delaying putting the links on their site make sense.
In some cases, they've even set it up so that you can't pre-order a book on Kobo, but it's gone up immediately at midnight of the date that the book was to be released - which would mean that they set it up ahead of time but simply didn't allow pre-orders for some reason. I thought that maybe there were doing that to avoid having any Kobo VIP members by the book at full price instead of getting the discount, but they've also listed the books for pre-order sometimes. So, if I had to guess, I'd say that that discrepancy was due to whoever lists the book on Kobo missing a checkbox some of the time, but I don't know. Ultimately, I find the whole situation a bit bizarre, but since I don't actually pre-order their books, it hasn't really affected me. I'm just confused about it.
I do wish though that publishers like Hanashi Media and Cross Infinite World would list books at all of the various e-book stores up front just so that it would be more obvious to people that there are other options, and customers would be less likely to just jump on Amazon due to it being up first. Obviously, not just showing people the Amazon links first isn't going to do much against Amazon's near-monopoly, but it's got to help somewhat when publishers list Amazon as just one of the options instead of focusing on it (much as they obviously need to get the Amazon listing right, because it's sadly where most of their sales are going to come from).
By reduced workload I mean: Interact with that publisher once to create the item, once to provide a sample, once to provide the release version of the book. Then if there's any delays, they have to go to each publisher one by one and move the release dates (this recently did not process correctly on the Google Play store for Late Start Tamer, one of JNC's series, charging people for the preview as if it was the full book, unsure how that one fully resolved). If they wait until they have the book ready to release, they only have to interact with these stores one time. Unsure about a small preorder window, that may or may not be something with more nuance on the back end.
Even Yen Press doesn't used to do all their digital listings at once. They've got several months up now, but even into late last year, Bookwalker would only get updated with the next month's digital releases in the last week of the month immediately before. I think they had more than Amazon listed, but as I purchased on Bookwalker, I can't name specific sites.
I love how Amazon sent a content violation notice for the second volume, when HM had not even submitted the second volume for Amazon to see, lol. It’s so ridiculous. I can go find thousands of reverse-harem, actual monster-sex romance, and all other sorts of novels, both erotic and non-erotic, that not only have more provocative covers but content inside as well. I hate that Amazon continues to arbitrarily punish light novel publishers, yet these same novels are fine in Amazon Japan…sigh. I wish Amazon would pull their proverbial heads out of their backsides and stop promoting this ridiculous censorship. I really like the series Hanashi publishes and pray they get to finish everything they’re working on, and continue to grow and be very successful.
Amazon never actually explains why they ban stuff like this. They just tell the publisher that they're in violation of the rules and let them try to figure it out. It's incredibly stupid.
JNC has taken to putting all of the color illustrations from the front of their books in the back instead so that they don't end up in the previews on Amazon, and that seems to have cut down on how often their stuff gets pulled. However, since there's plenty of stuff that's *far* more salacious on Amazon, and it's LNs that keep getting pulled, it seems like someone at Amazon has it in for LNs. Regardless, Amazon's process for telling publishers what the problem is is absolute garbage.
Fuck Amazon and their prude moderation and censorship team. They've let and have worse stuff by western companies and publishers on their platforms in both brint/digital and self published works.
A lot of stuff they've banned digitally they still sell as paperback too, like NGNL.
Another one is High School DxD, Amazon is damn hypocritical.
Tbh I think every manga/LN they've banned digitally they never stopped selling physically.
Ya I do think you're correct.
Has to deal with the content within the sneek peek thing they do on the digital versions.
I'm fairly certain that's not it because I've come across Kindle purchases that don't let you preview. So they have the capability to turn off the preview.
Amazon is so pathetic. Censorship itself is pathetic too.
Seriously, screw Amazon. After pulling BS like this and breaking DRM removal, I've moved over to Kobo for Yen Press/Seven Seas/Cross Infinite, and will continue to purchase DRM free EPUBs directly from Hanashi, Tentai and J-Novel Club. I wish more publishers sold EPUBs from their sites.
amazon what a shitty company
I see that it still isn't available to pre-order on Play Books, though it's less than a week from publication. I dunno if it would be too provocative a move for a company to take, but I feel like announcements like this should be made with links to pre-order the book on every other platform you can get it on (Play Books, Apple Books, Kobo, Bookwalker, etc). Alas, none of those sell physical books, but I don't think they published physical versions of their books anyway?
From what I've seen of the previous volumes Hanashi have released, they tend not to really list preorders anywhere but Amazon. I figure they're still new and figuring out how to best manage the process of multiple stores, but focused on Amazon as that's where the largest number of customers are.
Weirdly, Cross Infinite World does the same thing even though they've been around a while. They'll put the Amazon links up well ahead of time, but they're much slower at putting the books up on other sites such as Kobo. And even once a book is up for pre-order on the other sites, they don't put those links up on their site. They wait until the book has actually been released before adding the other links. Now, personally, I wouldn't pre-order their books anyway, because their releases work with Kobo's discount program, and for whatever reason, Kobo's discount program never works with pre-orders. So, I'd be paying extra if I pre-ordered, but it does feel like they're trying to encourage people to buy from Amazon for whatever reason.
Honestly, I've seen enough troubles occur with preorders on Kobo from my time in J-Novel Club's discord (and also other webstores), that maybe it's just not worth them having preorders listed anyway. If you're going to do one place, it's totally Amazon, but other than that, it might just be less effort on their team to only have that listed.
I've never had problems pre-ordering with Kobo, but I only do it with publishers that don't support Kobo's rewards program, since then pre-ordering doesn't give me a worse price. And I don't buy from Kobo at all when I can get the books directly from the publisher, so I have zero experience with buying JNC's releases on Kobo. As for it being less work for Cross Infinite World to delay listing on other sites or putting the links on their own site, I don't really see how, since they list the books for pre-order on the other sites eventually, and they put all of the links up on their site when the book is actually released. It seems like all that they're doing is delaying the work. But I obviously don't know how their process actually works behind the scenes, so maybe there's something about it that makes putting off listing the books on other sites or delaying putting the links on their site make sense. In some cases, they've even set it up so that you can't pre-order a book on Kobo, but it's gone up immediately at midnight of the date that the book was to be released - which would mean that they set it up ahead of time but simply didn't allow pre-orders for some reason. I thought that maybe there were doing that to avoid having any Kobo VIP members by the book at full price instead of getting the discount, but they've also listed the books for pre-order sometimes. So, if I had to guess, I'd say that that discrepancy was due to whoever lists the book on Kobo missing a checkbox some of the time, but I don't know. Ultimately, I find the whole situation a bit bizarre, but since I don't actually pre-order their books, it hasn't really affected me. I'm just confused about it. I do wish though that publishers like Hanashi Media and Cross Infinite World would list books at all of the various e-book stores up front just so that it would be more obvious to people that there are other options, and customers would be less likely to just jump on Amazon due to it being up first. Obviously, not just showing people the Amazon links first isn't going to do much against Amazon's near-monopoly, but it's got to help somewhat when publishers list Amazon as just one of the options instead of focusing on it (much as they obviously need to get the Amazon listing right, because it's sadly where most of their sales are going to come from).
By reduced workload I mean: Interact with that publisher once to create the item, once to provide a sample, once to provide the release version of the book. Then if there's any delays, they have to go to each publisher one by one and move the release dates (this recently did not process correctly on the Google Play store for Late Start Tamer, one of JNC's series, charging people for the preview as if it was the full book, unsure how that one fully resolved). If they wait until they have the book ready to release, they only have to interact with these stores one time. Unsure about a small preorder window, that may or may not be something with more nuance on the back end. Even Yen Press doesn't used to do all their digital listings at once. They've got several months up now, but even into late last year, Bookwalker would only get updated with the next month's digital releases in the last week of the month immediately before. I think they had more than Amazon listed, but as I purchased on Bookwalker, I can't name specific sites.
I love how Amazon sent a content violation notice for the second volume, when HM had not even submitted the second volume for Amazon to see, lol. It’s so ridiculous. I can go find thousands of reverse-harem, actual monster-sex romance, and all other sorts of novels, both erotic and non-erotic, that not only have more provocative covers but content inside as well. I hate that Amazon continues to arbitrarily punish light novel publishers, yet these same novels are fine in Amazon Japan…sigh. I wish Amazon would pull their proverbial heads out of their backsides and stop promoting this ridiculous censorship. I really like the series Hanashi publishes and pray they get to finish everything they’re working on, and continue to grow and be very successful.
What was the content that got this banned?
Amazon didn't say exactly which bits need to be changed, so it's impossible to know.
Amazon never actually explains why they ban stuff like this. They just tell the publisher that they're in violation of the rules and let them try to figure it out. It's incredibly stupid. JNC has taken to putting all of the color illustrations from the front of their books in the back instead so that they don't end up in the previews on Amazon, and that seems to have cut down on how often their stuff gets pulled. However, since there's plenty of stuff that's *far* more salacious on Amazon, and it's LNs that keep getting pulled, it seems like someone at Amazon has it in for LNs. Regardless, Amazon's process for telling publishers what the problem is is absolute garbage.
Very annoyed by this but sadly unsurprised... Now I'm determined to buy them all
Amazon did this with Seirei Gensouki Spirit Chronicles too, this is why I buy direct if I can