r/IsekaiQuartet • u/Some-Landscape6554 • 1d ago
MISC How come Overlord dominates in Light Novels Volume releases ?
i just checked older fiscal reports and or icon rankings for LN sales till 2012. Overlord sold around more than 100k+ copies for its every new volume released. For some of them, a new anime season wasnt even airing that year. Like Overlord volume 14 was released at the time Re Zero Season 2 was airing and somehow beat of all it’s three volumes and sold around 135k copies in 3 days.
i was expecting Re Zero to dominate light novels but surprised to find out it’s LN sales are dogshit in every released volume.
i won’t be surprised if overlord’s vol 17 sold 100k copies too.
But is there a reason behind it ? Even other light novels like apocathery diaries and Classroom of the elite does that with it’s new volumes releases.
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u/EasternChildhood9247 1d ago edited 1d ago
my theory is threefold:
-the number of release of vol betwen the two novel is double for re zero. even worse than overlord has abyssal speed for release. when a overlord book is made, every fan purchasse it and has the money to pay for it (this logic is why you can have a the full dungeon meshi collection but not one piece, because it's just to expensive).
-the fact that rezero is pretty much easy to pirate. you just go to witch cult translations or rezero.db and you can read it.
-the fact, and the more important, is that ovelord has a web novel kinda stopped existing after the light novel. this is not the case for re zero where the ligh novel is more of definitive version. those that pay for the light novel do it more for the author or having the materialized version than anything else.
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u/gamebloxs 1d ago
Especially for the LN yenpress is very slow and not that great for the rezero light novel. While overlord has been both fast and very well translated.
Like witch cult in alot of cases is straight up better then the official release. Also the overlord lightnovel vs webnovel are night and day difference so that also is another factor
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u/thunderB60 14h ago
Witchculttranslations is not pirating, its just a translation from the author's webnovel. That's why everyone read it, to top it off the light novel is like 15 volumes late in the US
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u/According-Pea-9541 1d ago
As everyone else Said , the rezero web novel is free and also has barely any difference from the light novel after arc5(which was covered in season 3).
Reading the wn you don't lose much aside from ln exclusive interludes and some illustrations which you can find easily online.
Plus the ln is severely behind the wn in the west because yenpress is a shitty company.
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u/Confused_soul_OG 1d ago
Re zero has all Web Novel issue while overlord is still well written from Isekai standard. It is fun and not overly complex to read so fans like it. Old times 1 season anime were costly advertisement for light novels. Only after 2019-2020 that some of the series started getting season 2. Tensura was among the first to recieve follow up season for Isekai anime
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u/Smart-Force-7351 1d ago
nós fans de overlord somos realmente apaixonados pela obra e por seu potencial, tanto que ficamos putos com a kadokawa por não valorizar overlord, se overlord tivesse uma animação nivel LOM ou Demon slayer seria muito mais popular e seria considerado por muitas pessoas como o melhor anime e melhor isekai, mas a realidade é triste e isso não aconteceu, alem disso por algum motivo frieren que é um anime mais calmo ganhou uma animação melhor oque nos deixa deprimidos, eu tbm tenho a impressão que a media de idade dos fans de rezero é meio baixa oque faz eles terem um empedimento monetario para comprar as LNs
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u/GoldenWhite2408 1d ago
Because there's no reason to read the re zero ln bro
U can read it for free every chapter by chapter release on narou which he publishes FULLY before the entire ln releases
The only difference is an extra 2-3 prolouge content that someone even in Japan would rip for you anuways
It's literally why bother buying the ln to read when you finished reading everything in the wn already and there's almost ZERO change
We checked
Beside content removal occasionally and the as mentioned added prolouges There's no difference u might as well read the WNs if you're in JP If you're a gaijin just read WCT tls instead of sucky yen press tls after arc 6(which is where the sales dropped yes) and is where the changes stopped happening
Konosuba is over Shadow doesn't release nearly enough to justify a sale and there's 3 other media people can use if they wanna catch up to LN content so there's also less incentive for ppl to buy that
Shield bro is just absolute garbage anywahs fck that
Cautious hero I'm not aware
Tanya as well
And yea so you're left with overlord
Other LN tensura and mushoku also sell a lot but they both also ended recently and they'll be getting by with spinoff side stories which naturally won't do as well