Rosmei Officially Announces Ning Yuan Licences

[douqi]

Today Rosmei 'officially' 'announced' on Twitter that they would be publishing English translations of two baihe novels by Ning Yuan, as detailed in this post. The announcement was accompanied by what I hope are two placeholder graphics for the novels (and not the actual covers). Rosmei provided no further details about the genre or general plot of either novel, and no information about the author herself. I therefore took it upon myself to do it, and graciously refrained from sending Rosmei an invoice for my marketing services, notwithstanding my long-standing principles about not working for corporations for free.

(As an aside: I'm fully aware that I'm being very snarky about Rosmei and this whole situation. I would prefer not to be snarky. I would prefer to be happy and enthusiastic about announcements of this kind. I enjoy feeling positive emotions, which are in short supply at the moment! However, for the reasons detailed here, as well as this latest failure on Rosmei's part to provide basic information about the books it is planning to sell us, and for which more promotional efforts are needed in the absence of a large and established fan base, I have very little confidence in them at the moment.)

The books are due to start releasing in 2025, according to the announcement. Rosmei has not said whether they will be available as ebooks as well as print books. However, in response to a query about whether several danmei titles announced at the same time would be available as ebooks, Rosmei replied that: 'For books licensed from jjwxc, there is no ebooks licensed'. As both of these Ning Yuan titles were initially published on JJWXC, chances of ebook versions being available seem dim. The translator for The Creator's Grace (造物的恩宠, pinyin: zaowu de enchong) has been named as Shigure, whose work I am not familiar with (a very cursory search of her Twitter timeline reveals no previous mentions of 'baihe' or 'GL', though that in itself doesn't necessarily mean anything). The translator for At Her Mercy (我为鱼肉, pinyin: wo wei yurou), which Rosmei have chosen to title At the World's Mercy (so I guess I'll have to start using that now), has not been named at the time of writing, apparently because... they're currently on vacation? 

One thing I am curious about is how they will handle the sex scenes in The Creator's Grace. As far as I'm aware, these were never published on JJWXC, being far too explicit for the platform. Instead, the JJWXC version of the novel fades to black and ambiguity at crucial moments. Ning Yuan posted the sex scenes to the smut-focused platform PO18. She appears to have taken them down, but my pack rat instincts mean that I have a copy saved.

Edited to add: Rosmei has now confirmed that these two titles will not be available as ebooks.

Edited again to add: This artist has posted some (mainland) fan-commissioned art pieces for At Her Mercy!

Comments

[profiterole_reads]

Thanks for your work! I posted the Twitter links on Tumblr and tagged you.

[douqi]

Thank you! <3

[hazevi]

Honestly you should be charging Rosmei at this point. Similar to you, while I am glad that the licensing has at least brought baihe a few eyeballs, I am a little concerned about their pick of novels and Rosmei's track record in general.

Outside of the technical difficulties that might come with translating a novel of the size/length of 我为鱼肉 (At Her Mercy), the English speaking baihe community has never had much of any exposure to Ning Yuan's works, ie translations of her works or content related to them at all. Throwing readers immediately into At Her Mercy, which has impressive length and a really deep plot (so much so that I quit reading after 30 something chapters two years ago when my Chinese was still ehhhh and never got back to it) without prior knowledge of the whole plot/scene/characters from fan translations and fandom exposure might still be an issue for their sales.

I guess I'm worried about them not make them enough profit such that they turn away from baihe entirely and this situation encourages other companies that might have had an eye on baihe to also give up on the genre since it doesn't bring them a lot. While I'm in no way being sympathetic to these corporate businesses and their loss of revenue, exposure is valuable for baihe's current state as a genre and if the mismanagement of Ning Yuan's IPs forms a harmful cycle of good publishers ignoring baihe -> bad publishers pick up baihe novels -> bad translation and bad exposure happens -> good publishers and readers grow disillusioned, it would be difficult to get out of the cycle. Again, similarly, I think that it would be better if those who really cared could set up a little publishing house for baihe novels, if not for the cost of running a business like that. Sigh.

[douqi]

I share your concerns, especially about the vicious cycle. I rate Ning Yuan highly as an author (she loves melodrama and mess; I love melodrama and mess) and I would find it very upsetting if they mismanaged these titles.

Generally, I don't think international baihe fandom has grown or matured to the point where a publisher can expect to make a reasonable profit by employing the same strategy as they use with danmei. Baihe is always going to be much more niche market than danmei, and even leaving that aside, we need more fan translators (who are not using MTL), and we need more of the major titles and authors translated. I guess we just need to persevere.

(also ning yuan needs to start releasing burning passions (焚情) (i still need a better title translation for this) asap so that i can fall in love with it and then translate it both quickly and perfectly and then pitch it to not-tor books as the first baihe title to be aimed at a general sci-fi-reading audience. a mostly-girl can dream)

[yuerstruly]

Honestly, I'm a little upset. When the licenses were revealed, they made no effort to say that At Her Mercy and The Creator's Grace are baihe novels. Now they're telling people they have baihe licenses, but not giving the synopsis for either novel.

They've yet to actually release anything and their translation previews do not inspire confidence. The English is either stilted or vague, and does not even match the tone of the original text. What is the point of hoarding all these licenses if you're paying pennies for people to translate from scratch, then throw in a horrendous editing job? Not to mention, the graphics leave much to be desired. It is a bunch of inanimate objects thrown together, with nothing meaningful attached.

Edit*
Buying licenses for the Singapore region is also a cop-out and they are being cheap about it. They should focus their sources on fewer IPs and produce better quality.

[douqi]

The complete lack of effort put into any sort of marketing or promotion is breathtaking, and not in a good way. That's not to mention the lack of effort that seems to have been put into the final product itself (I've also not been impressed by the translation previews).

I'm not sure they've realised that they need to do a lot more to market baihe compared to danmei, where they've been scooping up licences with established fanbases. I'm also quite curious about their sales figures — people have been interacting with them a lot on social media, but that doesn't necessarily translate into sales, especially given the many logistical difficulties involved.

[halfcactus]

Thank you so much for all the updates + links! The lazy marketing actually really annoys me.

I skimmed a Twitter thread the other day about how JJWXC licensing works so I'm definitely not holding out for an ebook license.

[douqi]

I would have thought 'tell people what the book you're selling is about' would be Marketing 101, but apparently not!

And yeah, they've now confirmed that the licence doesn't cover ebooks :(

[aurumcalendula]

Thank you for the updates!

Considering the extra effort required by someone outside the region to buy the books (plus the fact that they're print only), they definitely need to put any more effort into marketing them.

[douqi]

Not to mention the extra cost as well! When did basic competence stop being a prerequisite for doing business?