Oh that’s interesting. I wouldn’t have expected it on official summaries.
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TOブックス is having a フェア on BW with some nice discounts (99 Yen volumes!)
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Hmm, not much I recognise at a glance, but it is the 99c sale. I’ll have a closer look later
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Not sure why some sales are automatic and some require a coupon, but Bookwalker offers two separate coupons for Shinchosha books until July 9. They can be used as many times as you like, but they don’t work with other offers (so if there’s a coin back, you lose it). There’s a 30% discount coupon for all eligible books, and a 50% discount coupon for purchases over 2500 yen.
Several books I recognize (but haven’t read) are eligible.
Some examples:
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干物妹!うまるちゃん (2) | L21 is 50% back on Amazon Japan right now.
There are a number of other series that are also 10%-30% back, but this was the largest percent back that I saw. Might be worth checking some of your wish list to see if they have points back right now.
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Amazon is having a 50% points back campaign for some Young Jump Comics until 7/17, including:
It looks like the full series have points back. Plus there is the perpetual まとめ買い campaign for more points back if you’re looking to buy more than 3. Just make sure to activate it before you start buying anything.
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Two more:
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50% points back on Amazon for all 17 volumes of the full color version of Shadows House. Highly recommend this series!
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I tried to buy it and Amazon locked my account. Apparently, trying to buy something that is on sale is “suspicious” to Amazon. Thankfully, I already ripped all of the manga/LNs that I bought from Amazon so I’m not locked out of anything that I own.
This happened before with my US account too. I think I’m done with Amazon at this point. If they don’t want my money, then I won’t give it to them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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While I understand your frustration and have felt it myself, if you use a VPN to place a few orders it should unlock your account. I’ve had to use a VPN a handful of times over the last 7+ years to satisfy Amazon’s bizarre rules, but it’s not necessary in general.
If other platforms provided a decent service I’d also probably jump ship, but I’m not particularly happy with the alternative options.
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I was using a VPN at the time (I always do), and it was set to Japan. If anything, using a VPN might be part of the problem. Sites tend to trust you less when you use one. Usually it just results in a lot more captchas though.
I haven’t found Amazon’s services to be so far above everything else. In my experience, they are easier to rip media from, but that is less because of Amazon themself and more because they have a large user base that quickly develops DRM workarounds.
I’ve never liked giving money to multi-billion dollar corporations, so this is just as much me justifying as it is frustration at being blocked multiple times for doing nothing. I might go back eventually if I truly do find other resources lacking in the long-term, but for now I am fine with my decision to abandon Amazon.
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I instantly rip the DRM of anything I buy from Amazon, due to fear of them removing my shit.
They did it in the pass with my Spanish (local) account, when they didn’t like a Japanese author writing style, so not giving them any chances.
If I had the possibility to rip as easy from other services, I’d probably jump too.
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I mostly use Bookwalker for my manga. It’s definitely more annoying to rip from there as you have to manually scroll through each page for the tool to grab them all. Also, I don’t think it works with text as it simply downloads the images of the manga pages into a folder. Hopefully I can find a site that I can rip purchased LNs/Novels from, otherwise I might have to go back to Amazon for those at least. But I am almost exclusively reading manga atm, so that’s a problem for the future.
I’ve heard that you can rip from CMOA using Hakuneko, but I haven’t been able to get it to work on Ubuntu. I’ll try to remember to test it next time I need to boot into Windows as it might be an OS exclusive problem.
Edit: I tried Hakuneko for CMOA in Windows too and couldn’t get it to work there either. Maybe I’m just doing something wrong.
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HakuNeko is for manga, so I don’t think it will behave very well with light novels on CMOA. Maybe for the manga will be decent.
Even if it downloaded the LNs, you would need to manually pack it in an epub or something similar, making it a very manual job.
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I had this recently trying to sort some US admin from EU and using a VPN didn’t help and actually led to some security flags.
So for books I order through local shops (which all have large online catalogues in the meantime), local importers, or for digital - Bookwalker. I just don’t buy more than I’m willing to lose (digitally) and don’t worry about downloading it, but I can understand why people want to have that ability. For me it’s just more hassle than it’s worth, and Bookwalker has sales so regularly, why bother buying more than I can read in the next 2-3 months?
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50% coin back on Bookwalker until July 22nd.
Quick question about the campaign. It has this text:
1回のお支払い金額1,500円（税込）以上でコイン50％還元！
Is “1回のお支払い” saying that you can only get 50% coins back one time? Or is it just saying that the 1500 yen minimum must be in a single purchase?
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I’m inclined to read it as the latter, but would definitely look for a second opinion.
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You get 50% coins back if you spend 1500 yen or more in a single purchase (all books in your basket combined are over 1500 yen). You can use it as many times as you like until the campaign ends. Speaking from experience 
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Here is the relevant sentence for confirming this. 
- キャンペーン期間中に複数回にわかれた決済での合計金額が1,500円（税込）以上となってもコイン還元の対象にはなりませんのでご注意ください。
And be aware that this is only valid when you purchase on the web in the Japanese store and not through the app or their global store.
(Also, usually, this stacks with the first time buyer 50% coin-back giving you a 100% coin-back.)
Edit: They are actually actively advertising this.
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