Graded Readers in the App Store

[maxhodges]

@Abstormal

to those complaining about price, THESE ARE SO GOOD I BOUGHT THEM TWICE!
. . . I have several kinds of easy readers, but these are by far my favorites. You can tell how much work has been put in to making sure the vocabulary and grammar starts at a easier point, and the repetition to help you gradually understand and learn new concepts.

Thanks so much for the awesome testimonial @Abstormal! We really appreciate it!

[maxhodges]

Can you tell me the number of active WaniKanji users (count of people who have used the app in the last 30 days)? Knowing that could certainly help us prioritize development efforts.

Cheers!

[Abstormal]

@maxhodges

But because you decided it was important to mix reading practice with kanji recognition (instead of unbundling your study objectives and tackling these two things separately) you’re no longer reading effectively

But I think what most, if not all of us, really want is to read the story first - as intended - but then go back and read it over again and see if we can learn some more from it, check out specific vocab we are unsure about, pick apart the grammar if needed, and this is when we’d like the toggle. It should be simple and easy to switch. We could have them on all the time when reading the story the first few times, but then try again without if these are all kanji we know. A simple all or nothing would be easy, and not really a multitask if you are going back for a forth read through with a different focus.

If people are already holding paper over to hide it, wouldn’t it benefit their focus to have a simple off switch?

If nothing else, remove it from katakana? I find those more distracting than helpful ^^;

[maxhodges]

@Abstormal

Will there be more stories anytime soon?

Is private messaging turned off on these forums? I tried to PM you.

To answer your question: we have a few stories in production with the aim of delivering them before the end of the quarter. We have some ambitious content creation goals, but those efforts largely depend on sales. The more we sell, the more resources we can direct into new story development!

[Radish8]

I’d personally be very happy with a simple switch, as I anticipate attempting the ‘no furigana’ approach with stuff that’s easy enough that I’ll know all the kanji anyway. I’m not saying the API integration wouldn’t be awesome, but as it would require a hell of a lot more work on the part of the developers I just wanted to emphasise that a simple toggle would still be a great selling point for me.

@maxhodges

You have to stop reading so you can flip a switch or tap a link to show the ruby and BOOM you let yourself get distracted and lost your flow.

If the developers are concerned about interrupting flow, the toggle could be held under the app’s settings rather than being accessible during the reading experience, to discourage users from toggling back and forth? You ought to know most of the kanji, and you can take the usual graded reader approach of continuing to read anyway if there are one or two which trip you up.

@Abstormal

to those complaining about price, THESE ARE SO GOOD I BOUGHT THEM TWICE!

I’ve seen lots of comments about the price, but am not clear how much they actually are? Graded Readers are always expensive because they take so much work, and a digital version may not have manufacturing costs but I wouldn’t expect it to be wildly cheaper than a physical version.

[sornvru]

They don’t publish their user numbers, so @viet is your point of contact for questions, but as a very rough benchmark based on the numbers that people have pulled previously, we’re talking around 30k total users and 15k actively paying as of last year. Any numbers like active monthly is data we don’t have access to, but hopefully this will give you the rough ballpark estimate.

A pretty large number of users (35-40% ish) buy the lifetime subscription which is on sale for $200 in December. WaniKani users are very dedicated to their language learning and so they’re willing to put down money for it, but they expect and will search out high-quality learning material. We pay for WaniKani because it is highly effective for our learning and it’s arguably the best kanji learning tool there is.

If you want to attract WK users, you need to consider what you can provide that we don’t have, because we have a handful of developers willing to create things to fill those needs.

See KaniWani and Bunpro which are both highly valued sites that were developed from the WK community.

Right now, reading is one of the niches that doesn’t have 1 main site everyone is using, which is an opportunity. I heard about your site from other WK users, but it is far from being pushed to the level KaniWani or Bunpro are. What you have is promising, but doesn’t give me any reason to use it over Satori Reader, especially when they have WaniKani integration.

The users know what they want and they are telling you here in this thread. You need to listen to them if you want them to consider using your app.

And also yes, PMs are disabled on the forums for all users.

[lamarozzo]

@sornvru

Satori Reader

Thanks @sornvru, actually I didn’t know about it.

[Abstormal]

@maxhodges

Is private messaging turned off on these forums? I tried to PM you.

To answer your question: we have a few stories in production with the aim of delivering them before the end of the quarter. We have some ambitious content creation goals, but those efforts largely depend on sales. The more we sell, the more resources we can direct into new story development!

Yeah, PM’s was turned of not too long ago.
Ah, that sounds like it’s not too far of then! Great to hear!
And this is also why I like to push making a good footing with this community; Get their grace and you get more sales = more stories for me to buy

[Arzar33]

@maxhodges

To answer your question: we have a few stories in production with the aim of delivering them before the end of the quarter. We have some ambitious content creation goals, but those efforts largely depend on sales. The more we sell, the more resources we can direct into new story development!

I’m a bit confused, are you not going to first convert and make available all the stories from Japanese Graded Readers Complete Set – OMG Japan ? It’s quite the treasure trove already. Are the digital app and books coming from two separate entity ?

[Abstormal]

I like that they are separate, since I have those already.
And honestly, I like these digital ones better anyway. Just, more entertaining stories than the ones I’ve read so far (I have finished all of 0 and 1, and a good bit of lvl 2 of the physical set. Not sure if I got to 3 or not… I ended up joining reading groups so I stopped for a while, not sure where I got to. Keep planing on getting back to them =P When I read them 0 was easy, 1 was Fine and 2 fair enough, but 3 challenging I think. But the easy and fine levels are the most enjoyable when you just want to read a fun story without thinking too much to understand it I started to comprehend lvl 2 of the digital ones quite well, and that was a good while ago so I’m probably competent enough to actually ready the level 3 ones by now too. I never actually got around to read those before, I bought them anyway cause I knew I’d get there one day ). But I guess if they where converted it would make for a faster way to add more to the store faster. Just make sure to mark them if so, and keep making some exclusives as well

[Talena]

@maxhodges

But because you decided it was important to mix reading practice with kanji recognition (instead of unbundling your study objectives and tackling these two things separately) you’re no longer reading effectively nor are you drilling your kanji recall very effectively either. As zen teachers like to say, “When reading, only read. When eating, only eat.” In other words, no multitasking.

I’m not sure if you understand that for me, and many users on this site, reading kanji independently in native text >> is << a part of reading. I’m not sure why these should be separated. There is a difference between studying kanji independently and being able to recognize them in a block of text in the wild.

@maxhodges

I’ll try once more to make my point. Let’s say you hide the ruby with some setting. Now what happens when you come across an unfamiliar kanji? You have to stop reading so you can flip a switch or tap a link to show the ruby and BOOM you let yourself get distracted and lost your flow.

This is a great point. Going back and forth with a settings toggle could interrupt the flow of reading.

In my ideal app, I would see a word such as: 日本 with にほん written in furigana. 日本 is a word I know very well. Because of this, I would like to be able to tap the word 日本 and にほん would disappear. The story would remember this setting, so I wouldn’t have to keep tapping it. This way, if I’m in the middle of reading a story and want to make sure I read the kanji correctly, all I have to do is tap to check, then tap a second time for it to be hidden. This wouldn’t interrupt my reading.

This is essentially what I do already while reading the physical books and covering furigana.

@maxhodges

Can you tell me the number of active WaniKanji users (count of people who have used the app in the last 30 days)? Knowing that could certainly help us prioritize development efforts.

There definitely are a LOT of users, Most people on the forum are active users, and there are plenty who don’t use the forums. To give an idea of the demand, the website doesn’t have an official app, but last I checked there were at least 3 user made apps for ios. It would be awesome if we could use the Wanikani API to automatically account for our kanji knowledge. I wasn’t counting on it, but it would be great if the company could look into it. Personally, I’d be thrilled to be able to toggle each word manually.

@Abstormal

If nothing else, remove it from katakana? I find those more distracting than helpful ^^;

This was one of my original thoughts. How many levels have furigana on katakana?

[Tiltbox]

Awesome! Sugoi! Excited to try this out

[rotry]

@maxhodges

I’ll try once more to make my point. Let’s say you hide the ruby with some setting. Now what happens when you come across an unfamiliar kanji? You have to stop reading so you can flip a switch or tap a link to show the ruby and BOOM you let yourself get distracted and lost your flow.

Now if ruby was always on, you could have stayed with the story. But because you decided it was important to mix reading practice with kanji recognition (instead of unbundling your study objectives and tackling these two things separately) you’re no longer reading effectively nor are you drilling your kanji recall very effectively either. As zen teachers like to say, “When reading, only read. When eating, only eat.” In other words, no multitasking.

I understand. I guess the best approach would be to show furigana according to kanji known to the reader. You could do that by JLPT level or by WaniKani level.

[Beani]

Hi all! I am working with White Rabbit on the Graded Readers application so thought I’d stop by and pickup where Max left off.

Mainly I’m here to say we listened and the Furigana feature is currently being worked on. It’s almost complete but I can’t guarantee which version it will go live with on the app. But the feature should be arriving soon! It will be a toggle with a bit of extra functionality (if testing goes well!)

Thanks for all the feedback, it really helped in making the decision to add this feature. For those who’d like to help drive our story selection as well we have made a quick survey that should take around 2 minutes to complete: JGR Story and Feedback Form

We have a couple of coupon codes for the stories in our app to give away to random respondents so would love to get your feedback again there! (You can pick the story you might win as well).

For those talking about the physical readers found on our store, these are actually published by another unconnected company (Ask). We just sell their books on the online store. Since those stories are owned by another company we don’t have the rights to bring them to digital at this time.

[Talena]

I’m very excited to hear that the furigana toggle feature is coming! It means a lot that the company listened to our request. Thank you!

[Tiltbox]

I am having some trouble. I purchased the level 0 book successfully. I try to purchase any other book at any other level I get this message:

Purchase Error
Could not purchase product.
Invalid Product.

[Tiltbox]

Purchases are working today!

[Beani]

Glad to hear it’s working today! Was this error happening on Android or iPhone?

And thanks to everyone that has filled out the survey so far!

[Talena]

I’m really excited to see that the iOS update today has an option to turn off furigana!

[maxhodges]

JGR Adds Show/Hide Furigana Feature

yes, the latest Japanese Graded Reader app updates (both iOS and Android) include a show/hide furigana feature in the story settings menu (top).

Additionally, when furigana is hidden, a long-press on the story text (about one full second) will reveal furigana (just until you release your finger).

We’ve also made image sizes larger, and fixed a few typos in the stories.

How to re-download your stories for the latest version
from the main app (back out if you’re in a story) click the Settings button in the bottom navbar, then click Delete stories. Don’t worry; it’s safe to do this. Your license key will be remembered so you won’t be charged again… Then from your Library, click to read a story and you’ll be prompted to download the story.

We are here to help. so let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

Cheers!

PS: Happy with the new furigana feature? Your app store review/ratings are sincerely appreciated!