My Life As A Writer: Why We Talk About Light Novels

For those of you wondering why any of us in the #PulpRev talk about light novels, it's because of stuff like this.

That's the 10th volume in the original novel series for Legend of the Galactic Heroes. The author, Yoshiki Tanaka, is also behind The Heroic Legend of Arslan, so this is not new to him. He's been successful as a novelist for decades, and these are two of the works he's most known for due to their manga and anime adaptations. The last few years have seen both of these series become officially available in English for Western audiences, and I recommend both.

This is part of a wave of official translations and releases of well-known stuff in Japan that's been going on for a while. Getter Robo, Gundam: Origin, etc. have all come out in light novel, manga, or both into the West now. We all know that it goes the other way--Western novels are translated into Japanese and sold there--so what we're wondering is what it would take to do so and can we do it with what we've got.

It's that last part that may well prove to be the problem for now. The rest I think is within our means; we have better intelligence on the markets of the world than ever before, so it's really a matter of being able to act on it.

Because we're not in the business of writing books. We're in the business of entertaining audiences, and that's a global affair now, like it or not. Sure, the odds that I'll go big in--e.g.--Mongolia are slim, but it's no good not trying when all it takes is just being present and spreading word of your existence as far and wide as you can with cheap and easy-to-use tools. If you can access the Internet, odds are good you can find indie SF to buy and read.

Yes, even in deeply censorious regimes. Hello, VPN.

And Japan's light novel scene is a remnant of what used to be the norm for global fiction publishing: cheap genre fiction paperbacks. It still exists, and despite its own big problems it remains a key component of Japan's entertainment business infrastructure- often in the form of A/B audience testing prior to intake to a more popular medium such as manga.

I'll think more about this with my work in particular between now and New Year'.