J-Novel Club

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. It was acquired by Kadokawa Corporation on April 28, 2021.
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 (as in the K from K-On), but before launch the K was changed to J (for Japanese) 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", "", "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 ' and ' novels.
On April 28, 2021, Kadokawa Corporation announced they acquired the company.