Does Natively have a standard procedure for how to handle books that have been repackaged for a younger audience? I have heard that for some books, like 本好きの下剋上, the younger reader edition has identical text to the original, just with the addition of full furigana and split volumes. In that example, each edition is listed as a separate series on Natively. By contrast, the Percy Jackson translation includes both the standard and full-furigana 2-volume editions in the same Natively series entry.
I’ve held off submitting a request for a manga series, ねこねこ日本史, due to this. I own the junior edition for volume 1 and did a quick comparison against the digital sample for the standard edition, and noticed two main differences:
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the essay/biography for each chapter is in a different place - chapter end for standard, chapter start for junior, and the text appears mostly identical. (At a skim, I’d guess 90% of the text is the same.)
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The junior edition also has little trivia snippets and mini-biographies alongside each essay, which the standard does not (again, based on sample comparison).
Would this mean each edition should be treated as a separate series (like the 本好き example above)? Should different demographic editions be separate listings across the board, or is this a case-by-case issue?
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Our standard procedure is no - they’re both the same text (usually), just with furigana & pictures. We do have a few exceptions we’re running as tests, but we don’t normally allow them.
While junior versions with furigana and pictures do change the difficulty i’m sure, we already have that bit of noise with how people read e-versions of books and use Yomichan or some other parser / reader to help them along.
Splitting editions also splits written reviews & difficulty gradings, which isn’t particularly good.
In the future, we’d like to be able to allow you to choose an edition type and potentially see how difficulty grading is different between them, but that’s one of the things for the future.
Right now, I’d only approve an additional edition to an already listed item on the site if:
- the series has different number of volumes depending on the edition (makes tracking your progress difficult)
- the edition has substantially different content (some junior versions drop chapters and change vernacular)
If it’s not one of those two cases, let’s not add it! So your case seems like it’s ok not to request.
Makes sense? 
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Yes, it does, thank you!
I hadn’t even thought of that angle - I far prefer physical copies for reading, so I haven’t attempted digital books at all. (Unless you count Syosetu, in which case I’ve barely attempted it, and without any browser plugin(s).)
So, to be perfectly certain I understand this: going back to the ねこねこ日本史 example, if I request this series to be added to the site, that means I should request the standard edition, even though I own and have read the junior version? Additionally, if/when I write a review, I can mention that I read the junior edition and elaborate on any known differences there?
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