New books download

Why would you expect the digital to be available right away if it's not ready yet? Should they just hold off preorders until they are ready? What purpose would that serve? It's a free bonus, they never promised you'd get it instantly. I really don't see what you're complaining about, you're just coming off as incredibly impatient to me.



If you don't want to be charged early, then don't order early? That's what a preorder is lol.

Frankly I'm a little shocked that this is being made into such a big issue, I thought it was really cool that they were posting chapters early.

I believe he was talking about a download for the chapters that were already available on the reader.

I honestly don't see the point of ridiculing the constructive criticism of other clients, for every customer that complains about something there are a bunch that don't say anything and just don't buy it again.

We absolutely messed up with the downloads this time. They might not be up on the same day as the last chapter is released, but it shouldn't take over two weeks to get them out. Part of it was due to the holiday season, but mostly it was poor prioritizing on our part.

The downloads are one of the few areas where I have hardly any involvement, so it was stupid of me to give estimates on something I can't control, and for that I apologize. I promise I'll push even harder for the next few books to make sure the downloads are released in a timely manner (within a week following the last chapter).


It is. However—and this has already been pointed out—the definition of a pre-order is "an order placed for an item which has not yet been released." If you pay for an item and get it instantly, it's a purchase and not a pre-order. We could've decided to release the digital and physical version on the same day, but the fact that anything besides Renai Sample is available at all at this point in time is and should be seen as a service.

The main reason you should pre-order—and this goes for anything—is to put your name high up on the priority list. If you're the first to pre-order a book, you're the first to get the book shipped to you once it's released; if you wait until the complete download is ready, there will be about a months worth of pre-orders that will be served before you. In case you know you're absolutely not gonna read the book online and just want the digital version, then yeah, there's really no reason to pre-order—just wait a month and buy it.

That's the thing though, there's no "extra" month. The wait is the same. You're asking us to rob some users of a service while you gain nothing in return.

It's essentially the same as asking a restaurant to stop putting out a bread basket while its customers wait for their steak. The bread is there to give you something to chew on while waiting for the meal. If you don't want to fill up on bread, don't. Removing the bread basket will not get you your steak any faster.

Alternatively, you're asking for more when we're already offering a considerable service. Continuing with the restaurant analogy, you want burgers instead of bread.

Thanks YQII but I have a feeling no matter whats said here these people will always find something to complain about its just sadly second nature for society now. other companies who are far more established have missed more deadlines then we can count. when its something you care about they lose there minds about it.As long as y,all are posting updates that's enough for me.

And I'm especially going to give them extra latitude on delays when this is all new to them. People need to be more patient.

I don't see how my suggestion is robbing anyone of anything. You provide downloads(using the exact same files from the reader) for individual chapters and that's it, all problems are solved.
What I really don't understand and will never understand is this mentality that if you criticize something it means you're just bitching and/or you hate it. People should complain if they are unhappy things, Fakku is no longer providing a free service where we should just shut the fuck up and be grateful that we get anything at all.

I agree with this. Why are people hating on our comments and telling us to be patient? We are patient and were just voicing our opinion on the matter. If Fakku continues what there doing now I won't resent them or go against them. I'm expressing what I think should be done. They don't have to agree with it.

You suggestion falls into the second category of wanting more. Early downloads might be a thing in the future, but it's not feasible at the moment.

If I can go back to the pre-order discussion, earlier today I remember that you also get the digital version for free when ordering the paperback. We've been doing this since the start, so even I forgot about the fact that pre-ordering is basically a 33% discount, which is quite considerable when you think about it. I would also like to point out that this offer is still active for Renai Sample, almost a month after its release. Not all delays are bad.

Because the staff gave you an answer and said it would be too much work for them or not feasible in some other way. I don't have a problem with you having an opinion, and yes individual chapter downloads would be convenient for some people. But they said they don't want to do it right now, so we should leave it at that. It's not as if they're ignoring you, but they can't fulfill everyone's requests.

We didn't just make a request, we were debating and trying to reach a consensus, Fakku is a small enough company where it's actually possible for customers to debate things with the devs instead of just suggesting and waiting for a Yes, No or Maybe. Hell the only reason I bought the first book was because I talked directly with Jacob on IRC right after the whole Wani deal and he personally assured me that Fakku would do things differently than other companies.

also


Which is why I offered to do it myself for free.
But yeah thanks, I'll send all my suggestions to staff via PMs for now own. So you won't be forced to read someone else opinion. We wouldn't want the forums to be anything else but a echo chamber now would we?
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Edit: Downvoted before I even finished editing my post, thanks for the warmth guys
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I'm fine with discussions, as most others here I assume, I'm not looking for an echo chamber. I like reading suggestions too. I just thought they made it pretty clear that what you wanted wasn't what they wanted to do, for whatever their reasons are. I wasn't aware that they were making their business decisions based on a consensus of forum users, but I also haven't spoken with any of the staff members personally, so I'll take your word for it.

Not all business decisions obviously but for something like distribution wouldn't that be the most logical way to approach this though, their main job is to keep us, the customers happy and buying new books.
I don't know about you but being able to personally discuss things with the CEO of the company you're buying is a huge plus.
Oh by the way I didn't mean personally as in person, I meant talking to him directly. Should make that clear before this creates confusion.

Agreed, I love that they're involved in the forums and we get quick responses. I can forgive a lot of mistakes but I really hate poor communication, there's just no excuse for it in my opinion with the Internet available. Unfortunately in my experience that's become the norm for many businesses these days, so again I'm glad Fakku has gotten that right.

I have nothing against you and I have no problem with you voicing your opinion. In fact the team has heard your opinion by now, loud and clear.

You want individual chapter downloads. The response was as follows:


And that's the bottom line. Whatever is viewed on fakku.net at that point in time is like "early access". FAKKU wants you to be able to enjoy your purchase as soon as possible, but to allow a download would mean that any downloads are going to be stuck with any errors and issues that might have evaded QC. FAKKU doesn't want that to happen. And that's the end of that.

You offer to do it for free. Now, you weren't quite given a straight answer to this, but I'm sure this is a terrible idea. Unless I'm ignorant and you are a veteran editor FAKKU can't guarantee that you'll do a good job unless they actually open a paid position for this task and the most capable person is hired. As soon as you work on something that is to be distributed to FAKKU customers your work becomes representative of FAKKU. Maybe it's a stupidly easy task to perform, but even if it is, allowing that tiny chance for a disaster would be a huge mistake for management. So even if you were accepted as a volunteer Jacob would want to QC every last chapter you prep for download. As long as they don't offer downloads for each individual chapter, they can quickly fix all errors in their work on the fly without any major concerns. It really is all about representation and the quality that comes with it. Maybe it's not even a big deal if a download has a spelling error here and there. The magnitude doesn't matter one bit if FAKKU doesn't want to allow it.

That was the impression I was getting too. Not only are they thinking about their own company, but they have a responsibility to Wani and the artists since they're licensing the material.

Why exactly is that the bottom line? I wasn't aware that once Jacob says something we're not allowed to debate him and try to change his mind. (He's a pretty accessible guy, you should try talking to him one of these days)



That's why those downloads would only be temporary for the customers who can't or don't want to use the reader, they would also be lower res than the lowest res download available right now, images from the reader are x1800 if I'm not mistaken and those would be just put on a zip file and maybe a cbz file and made available to the customer if he was interested in downloading the early access version.

But let's say I'm wrong and once Jacob says something there is no way in hell he'll ever change his mind again and offering further suggestions and trying to explain the reason behind what some customers would like would be just like talking to a brick wall, you could still let the staff themselves "deal" with us. You don't have to take upon yourself to keep people having a civil discussion from doing so.




Ok so, few things
I wouldn't do any editing whatsoever, and all the chapters already go through a QC before even being uploaded to the server and made available on the reader, what I offered to do was take those files from that specific chapter put them on a zip and cbz file, upload them back to the server. As little confidence as you have in me what I just described is a pretty hard job to fuck up.

I'm not saying you can't do any of that. I'm trying to get it across that this is what's important to them, this is their priority.



Yes I understand what you're saying but it's still going to go out that way. Not everyone is going to go back and download the final version or maybe some silly customer doesn't even know that the final version is going to be improved. I don't know if this is even a noteworthy concern but pirated / redistributed copies would be in this form simply because they got out that way first. And there are people who insist on "try before buy", in which case they would be getting exposure to an inferior product.



But to get someone outside to do it for free is a matter of trust. If we we're talking about a scan operation it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But if we're talking about a new company that's trying to gain credibility, then I don't think it's so simple. Really, I don't. Yes, supposedly all you have to do is repackage a bunch of images (but maybe we're wrong and there's actually more to it than this). If someone doesn't check up on your upload before letting it go live, you could sneak whatever you wanted into them and nobody would be able to tell without going through it. It would be plain irresponsible to allow that kind of vulnerability. I'm not questioning your trustworthiness. I'm just saying a public release of anything is dangerous to give out.

Also I brought up being an experienced editor because it would mean you'd already have some credibility in the scan community. That's all.

I think now would be a good time to actually explain what goes into making the downloads. Right now, it involves manual effort from three people - the editor of the book (exporting source images), me (encoding all the digital versions) and Jacob (uploading and managing the digital files on the actual site). Which is to say, it's not a very simple process at the moment. This is something that I am actively working on improving, with the goal eventually being that you'd only ideally need one person involved, because that kind of simplification (and process automation) is the path to scaling things up. But with the process currently being what it is, putting up downloads for individual chapters would not just be a matter of "just putting them up", especially when we offer multiple formats for downloads (whereas the online reader only needs one).

I do understand that having individual chapter downloads would be nice to have, but besides the quality control factors brought up before, the technical factors do also matter. Not to mention that right now we're just selling whole books, so it makes sense to just offer downloads for whole books only. If, however, we also allowed people to buy individual chapters (similar to how you can buy individual songs compared to full albums with music these days), then things would obviously be quite different. So I guess I could ask: is this actually something that people would be interested in (being able to buy individual chapters vs whole books)?