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So many great titles for such a short list, Saving 80,000 Gold, Chivalry of a Failed Knight, The Ride-On King... ...all lost like tears in the rain. Sad

From hereafter, might be harder for smaller startups, like j-novel in the beginning, to acquire licenses from Japanese publishers, when they have these kinds of experiences under their belt...

Blanchimont wrote:

So many great titles for such a short list, Saving 80,000 Gold, Chivalry of a Failed Knight, The Ride-On King... ...all lost like tears in the rain. Sad

From hereafter, might be harder for smaller startups, like j-novel in the beginning, to acquire licenses from Japanese publishers, when they have these kinds of experiences under their belt...

Why, as long as they pay a license they should get it.

Hope another company gets Chivalry, unless, of course, the ship for it's popularity and relevance has sailed

I wonder what exactly happened. The only thing I understand so far is that their CEO had apparently bailed and went AWOL.

Яeverse wrote:

Blanchimont wrote:

So many great titles for such a short list, Saving 80,000 Gold, Chivalry of a Failed Knight, The Ride-On King... ...all lost like tears in the rain. :(

From hereafter, might be harder for smaller startups, like j-novel in the beginning, to acquire licenses from Japanese publishers, when they have these kinds of experiences under their belt...

Why, as long as they pay a license they should get it.

Well, that’s the thing. It’s been an open secret in LN/VN circles for a while now that Sol Press hasn’t been paying for their licenses, just like they didn’t pay their contractors or their taxes (which is what eventually did them in). Check out the replies to that @DistantValhalla tweet cited as an article source for more details.

One of those replies is from Miles Formerly Crunchyroll, who says:

Quote:

Always disappointed when folks do this, it happens surprisingly often and makes it so so hard for new companies to come up in the industry.

yea sol stopped paying after the vn side of things imploded japan just learned all of this NOW.

BlueAlf wrote:

I wonder what exactly happened. The only thing I understand so far is that their CEO had apparently bailed and went AWOL.

There was some sort of tax evasion thing going on. It was actually really big news in the visual novel scene. The Sol press VNs were delisted months ago; I'm sort of surprised the LN take downs took so long.

The article should probably say "FTB Forfeited" instead of "Fortified." Though I guess a company called Sol Press would be high in vitamin D.

Яeverse wrote:

Why, as long as they pay a license they should get it.

Hope another company gets Chivalry, unless, of course, the ship for it's popularity and relevance has sailed

Because it raises doubt about whether they can and will pay.

Sadly, I'm expecting all of these series to be dead. I doubt anyone new could reuse the translations for early volumes, and I don't think they're big enough to get redone from the start.

...And yet another series on my list gets it's translation dropped so I can't finish it (Chivalry of a Failed Knight). Sad

This s*** happens to like everything I try to read.

09jcg wrote:

BlueAlf wrote:

I wonder what exactly happened. The only thing I understand so far is that their CEO had apparently bailed and went AWOL.

There was some sort of tax evasion thing going on. It was actually really big news in the visual novel scene. The Sol press VNs were delisted months ago; I'm sort of surprised the LN take downs took so long.

I took this long for Japan to find out that he bailed. They were trying to be nice/out of loop

Twage wrote:

The article should probably say "FTB Forfeited" instead of "Fortified." Though I guess a company called Sol Press would be high in vitamin D.

Lol I appreciate the pun here, and thanks for pointing that out. I fixed the spelling in the article.

Where was this article yesterday? I literally looked up Sol last night as I was wondering why we never got the promised physical release of IS THE ORDER A RABBIT? Laughing

Never heard of this company, didn't know any of those titles were even being translated

Яeverse wrote:

Why, as long as they pay a license they should get it.

At least with anime licenses, the license buyer usually has to agree to actively exploit the work they are licensing, meaning offer it for sale in some manner rather than just let it sit in a vault. Sometimes they have to agree to pay a percentage of sales back to the licensor. They definitely have to report back on copies sold and so forth.

In either case, the licensor wants to license their works to a company that has the resources to accomplish those requirements and sell lots of whatever the work happens to be. It does them no good to license out something to a company that can't execute on it. In fact, it damages the license.

Licensing manga is probably similar to licensing anime. But may not be.

09jcg wrote:

There was some sort of tax evasion thing going on. It was actually really big news in the visual novel scene. The Sol press VNs were delisted months ago; I'm sort of surprised the LN take downs took so long.

I don’t think there’s evidence of deliberate tax evasion as much as simply not paying them. The LN takedowns are most likely happening now because the MD of a rival publisher spoke with the various Japanese publishers, who figured that something was up because they hadn’t been getting any response to emails for a while but were unaware the Sol Press site had been down for months etc.