J-Novel Club is a digital publishing company specializing in publication of Japanese light novels in English. They stream light novels in weekly installments before publishing the finalized e-books. By 2017, J-Novel Club has licensed 23 light novels, some completed, some still ongoing, and have published more than 40 e-books. They have licensed titles from the Japanese publishers Hobby Japan, Overlap, Kodansha, PHP Institute and Earth Star Entertainment.
History
After coming to the conclusion that "there was a whole universe of content out there in Japan that's hardly available in the west at all", Pinansky began working on the business model for J-Novel Club in 2015 and "took inspiration from what the fans had started to do on their own, as well as the more traditional models for book publishing". J-Novel Club's overall purpose was "to create and grow a worldwide market for Japanese light novels translated into English." The original name for the project was 'K-Novel' because kei is Japanese for light, but before launch the K was changed to J to avoid confusion with Korean novels and 'club' was added when it was noticed that the.club top-level domain name was available. J-Novel Club was founded in 2016 by Sam Pinansky and announced they would release light novels in weekly installments for their members before releasing the finalized books on e-book format. They launched with the titles Occultic;Nine, Brave Chronicle: The Ruinmaker, My Big Sister Lives in a Fantasy World and My Little Sister Can Read Kanji. Shortly after they announced 2 more light novels - Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash and I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse. On January 19, 2017 J-Novel Club announced they would be collaborating with manga and light novel localization company Seven Seas Entertainment who would start publishing print editions of 2 of J-Novel Club's light novels - Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash and Occultic;Nine. On July 3, 2017, Seven Seas Entertainment announced they would be publishing print editions of 2 more J-Novel Club light novels - ' and Clockwork Planet. On November 20, 2018, J-Novel Club launched an online manga reader and licensed 5 titles for that reader. The 5 manga titles include A Very Fairy Apartment, Seirei Gensouki - Spirit Chronicles, Infinite Dendrogram, How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, and Ascendance of a Bookworm On October 7, 2019, J-Novel Club launched their first Kickstarter project for Invaders of the Rokujouma!? print edition and successfully funded it with over $100,000 over its initial goal. At their Anime NYC panel on November 16, 2019, they announced a new Heart label that focused on shojo titles and also announced print editions of popular series in 2020 for Sexiled: My Sexist Party Leader Kicked Me Out, So I Teamed Up With a Mythical Sorceress! and ' novels.
