Based on context, I think @brandon just misspoke and meant 小説家になろう, but I may be wrong.
3 Likes
So, you’re right, I’m mostly thinking syosetu. However, I do think there’s a nuance which we will need to contend for when it comes to web-based books. For Natively, are webnovels more about how they’re published? Or how they’re consumed?
Right now, i’m imagining progress-marking in webnovels will be done via chapters, not pages. If someone is reading a long book on aozora, that may be nice too.
Idk, we’ll have to think about it aat some point, as i’m sure it will come up.
Video games by default handles all languages because IGDB does. Webnovels will purely be source dependent, but yes, I expect to expand to syosetu relatively quickly after launch.
3 Likes
But, in that case, the book will have been published before. It’s the same as reading the ebook version.
That’s not the case for webnovels. Even if they eventually get published, there will be enough difference between the two versions that you can’t really tell.
8 Likes
I would say published; just like @Naphthalene said, if we consider it by how it’s consumed, any book I read through the Kindle app on my PC is now a webnovel, which doesn’t fit the spirit of the definition.
8 Likes
Yep, fully agree with you two.
AFAIR @brandon was worried about not being able to determine the number of pages read when reading a webnovel, but in all honesty this is the case for any digital media, be it bookwalker or kindle or anything else, and we all have to cope with this in one way or another. 
For me “webnovel” implies it’s published on the web and not through a book publishing company, while Aozora ist just one of many distributors of (already published) books. Most of the Aozora books are available through other channels as well (e.g. Bookwalker and afaik also Kindle distribute many of them for free).
On top of that, ironically, all Aozora books have been published before the web even existed 
11 Likes
Btw, is there an update to this? I don’t want to hurry you obviously, take as long as you need - I’m just curious how to set my expectations 
5 Likes
Loving the site Brandon!
No other tool has motivated me to learn native content like this one. The most valuable items for me are:
- Seeing the difficulty ranking of content to isolate exactly my level and know when I am going to be pushing it or if totally out of my league. Combined with this, the reviews. It might help if possible, to pick up the native ranking from another website as well since the number of reviews on this website are quite limited.
- Tracking progress. This, with the minor charting, is gamifying language-learning and motivates to continue. Totally personal only as it is self-reported, but I could see how this may be suggested to be expanded as competition with others, that might ruin it in some ways though. Just want to see maybe a more pronounced progress bar on current content, frequency of updates and progress per day/week on the dashboard, and then just a list of content that I have completed per month/year (I manually created a List for each year). I think the current charts only show the genres/type of content, not the individual titles.
- The forum and book clubs - this is awesome, group motivation to select content and read together, ask questions, etc. At the moment digging into the forums is quite cumbersome and book club threads scattered. I don’t see this scaling well as-is so it would be great of the total list of clubs, home threads and order of weekly threads per book, history of the reading in the club (activity), could be cleanly grouped somewhere, or taken out of the forums? Maybe list of “recently read book club titles,” “in progress content book club titles,” etc, would really help to bring focus on the content and peak interest to join the clubs as well. “Book club progress” bar?
Awesome stuff! I really should donate or purchase via your links soon!
4 Likes
I agree with this a lot. As soon as there’s leaderboards or whatever if I can’t be on top I totally disengage.
But I could see something like setting your personal goals and keeping track of them on your profile page somehow. I love seeing other people reach their goals that are independent of mine. That’s way more motivating to me than a zero sum competition.
10 Likes
I’m also a bit iffy on the idea of a leaderboard. If I’m near the top it’s a great motivation booster, but if not, either I don’t even try or I try too much and tire myself out. It might be nice to have that as an opt-in option however.
5 Likes
I really agree with all of your suggestions @freddyg, thanks so much for the feedback!!
Bookclub tracking is definitely a high priority, after I finish up video games / webnovels.
Goal setting is definitely something I want to get done too… that’s pretty standard functionality. Leaderboards are a bit lower priority I think and would of course be opt in, but I agree they probably should be added.
If you want to explore more in detail, you can also look at our Product Requests - Natively Forums category… where you can participate in discussions / vote on the product requests you want to see.
I will be honest and say progress hasn’t been super fast the last month or so (been focusing on my Korean language learning), but this week i’ve been diving back in, so we’ll see how quick I can get those things out 
17 Likes
I feel like maybe you missed my question before freddyg’s post, @brandon. (Apologies if you just wanted to answer later.)
1 Like
Sorry, yes i did miss that!
So, I am about a week away of hard work from that release. As you might have seen in the my recent comment, I somewhat burned out in mid march. I think I’m revving back up to get back at it, we’ll see.
There are some more pressing issues that I need to address (Amazon ES & Amazon DE book upload has run into issues).
With all that said, perhaps around first week of June? I’ll keep you updated.
16 Likes
Not trying to rush you, but any updates on this? I’m really looking forward to adding a bunch of web novels and webtoons to the site!
5 Likes
Any updates on this roadmap? The latest anticipated feature release here is May, but the list is less than half-done as of mid-September and it hasn’t had anything crossed off in 6 months. 
12 Likes
Any updates on this? Even a new roadmap with everything moved to later dates (or next year), so we can know what to expect a bit, if that’s possible for you to do, would be great.
18 Likes
Looking forward to the Video Game feature. Even if levels might be difficult to settle on, I’m looking forward to games being taggable (ex: fully voiced, fully voiced for main story, dialog log included, etc…)
11 Likes
I’m waiting for this too. There’s a Game Gengo video on YouTube where he ranks the over 100 games and advises if they are partially voiced, fully voiced, have furigana etc.
7 Likes
I was surprised that Natively didn’t offer videogame ratings given that it seems like a very straightforward extension of the concept (and arguably it’s harder to gauge the difficulty of a videogame without trying it in-depth compared to a novel or manga).
I’m happy to see that it’s planned… but also a bit confused that it was planned for imminent release a year ago and we haven’t had an update since.
7 Likes
@brandon, the site owner, has been busy for a while now, but he’s hoping to talk about an updated roadmap in February.
10 Likes
Hey all!
Thank you for being patient as I’ve been thinking things through the past few weeks.
So, there’s no beating around the bush, I unfortunately burned out last year and refocused on other things. I’ve spent a ton of time on Natively (3 years) and I guess I lost some of the fervor I had before. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and, while i’m still not entirely sure of the best way forward, I think the primary motivation for the next few months is to reach a more self-sustaining level and potentially adding a development partner. If we do this, I would be pretty darn excited!
What does reaching a more self-sustainable level look like?
- Reduce all data correction / editing that requires my action to basically 0%
- Begin a notion of a ‘premium / supporter’ user and introduce a few features for premium (advanced stats / potentially other things)
- See if there’s interested, competent developer who’d want to join Natively (with opportunity to a large percentage of the company and control of company vision)
If we reach a more sustainable footing, not only would data requests be handled faster, but it’d take a large portion of work off my plate and I’d be allowed to focus only on features, potentially a few profitable ones.
In that spirit, here’s the roadmap for the next 2 months:
Roadmap (2025 Feb & March) - Let’s Get Natively Sustainable!
- Create posting on forum & site for open developer/partner position at Natively
- Go through all my incoming data requests and automate everything that I can
- For anything not automatable, develop admin flows for editing
- Develop a community-librarian role for users that will take over the non automatable process flows (right now handled by a freelancer that’s been off and on the last month)
I know, it’s not the sexiest roadmap, but I know i’ll feel a heck of a lot better about everything. After that, we can do some of last year’s roadmap, like better book club support
Let me know what you think!
(PS: I’m also committing Tuesdays & Wednesdays fully to Natively, so I’ll be more online then ~~ )
57 Likes
