I hope everyone enjoyed my little joke yesterday, for this week’s Light Novel Thursday I’ve got something a little unusual. It’s An Open Letter to American Publishers!

To Whom It May Concern,

I love reading, and I really like Light Novels, but when you license a series for publication in the United States you do so starting with the first volume. I don’t have a problem with series that have few volumes, but when you license series like A Certain Magical Index which has over 33 volumes in total, you put the people who really enjoy the series in a huge bind. Sometimes people will go to other less official sources to read series that they may like, but they do so because there is no other option. People like myself go through novels very quickly and Light Novels aren’t very long. If you would release starting with the more recent entries in the series, you probably would sell a whole lot more volumes than you would starting with the first volume. You could even take it a step farther and release the most recent and the first one at the same time, working your way into the middle before continuing with newer novels. I want to see Light Novels do really well in America, and the rest of the world by extension, but I don’t want to wait 8.25 years to catch up to a series that is still running. Again you probably won’t listen to my suggestions, but it wouldn’t hurt to see what it would do for your sales. I’d be more willing to buy Light Novels if I had the latest in Japan get translated into English.

Thank you,

Michael Blaker