MasterRabbink I doubt the common people could afford following 10 novels. That's pretty much enough to pay half of my monthly food budget. And i'm not kidding $100 is quite good money where i'm from, i'm actually eating pretty lavishly with $200 food budget. $100 actually would be more than enough for the food budget of one person if i wasn't eating whatever i want...

I think if they are going full premium, regional prices is a must as i doubt majority of the readers from my country would pay that much. Steam would be a good example. Ok, just looking at a random game with no discounts. Metro Exodus, costs $59.99 in USA. Here, it costs $34. Actually, even that is kind of expensive, but i guess even steam can't go lower on a pre-purchase game. Lets look at another game, Post Scriptum. Costs $29.99 in USA, here it costs $8.21. Now that's more reflecting of the buying power difference...

      MasterRabbink I'm curious as to how many are casual users though. As far as I could tell, people I've seen here seem to come from weeboo/koreaboo backgrounds who discovered Chinese webnovels by affiliation with aggregators. All cheapskates by nature.

      QI is experienced since China has no sense of copyright but I wonder how many will continue the habit of starting and reading series with these parameters? They don't give enough hope to paying users, imo.

          MaryFord True, and they are not even accounting to the different buying power of people from different countries. For example, 250g regular white bread costs $0.2 here. Yeah, i'm not kidding... Do they really expect people with such buying power to pay $100 to read 10 novels per month? Isn't that dreaming too much? Or maybe they have just given up on us completely haha. That's probably the case...

              MaryFord Dunno. However I believe they had over hundred thousand users (check Google Play download), but how many this forum users?

                  axae Write your own novel. Webnovel don’t think you are a target market. Sad, Painful, but the truth.

                  Try to invite more friends for SS and reducing premium novel read. Check free Originals.

                  There is another method, but couldn't be said.

                    N0xiety US people had high minimum hourly wage. Webnovel didn't think about us from 3rd world country. While I do spent a lot money for freemium games. Only very few translated novels would worth my real money.

                    This Rabbink place, you could also eat that much. Try Warteg. You will die from being too full.

                    Rather than using US buying power, I believe benchmark to Philippines or India (where their other big major English speaking reader came should be better.)

                        MasterRabbink Regional prices would be the answer. I get that Qi seems to be going for quality instead of quantity in people, but webnovels generally have been something that the people with lower incomes frequent, as it has always been free or donation driven before Qi took over. If there are 100 free readers, there may be one donator. And even in donators, people who donate $1 is in the majority, as the big spenders that go over $10 per novel are even rarer. They are like the top %10 of donators. So people who actually pay more than $10 monthly per novel is like 1 person in 1000. So it's strange that they are aiming for that 1 person while discarding the rest completely, which should be their biggest audiance actually. Or maybe i'm wrong, maybe the top % of the world reads webnovels more, who knows? I'm just going from [donations/number of people who read the novel] when creating this theory, but it may be that more people start paying when push comes to shove. Then again, that would require there to be no aggregator sites...

                            Disperson Did u guys know that in china there are massive project of anime and Live action serial.? Mostly are novel adaptation, like Desolate era, spiritrealm, duoluodalu, BTTH, Xueying, etc etc. So they need more MONEY for funding the projects, because QI is the sole ownership of those novels allowed to make the adaptation or not. And it implicating us so deep, scew us over and over with paying SS.

                                AuxiliralyMAx I believe those adaption didn't matter, those contents were created to make more money. Selling those contents for public broadcast, etc.

                                The reason of Webnovel goes premium is they want to make money. That's it. It is legal. They are a business, but the method they activated it so suddenly left a sour taste. They could at least show some 'goodwill' before activating it.

                                    axae But some of us do. The message I am hearing is that the money that I am spending (and I am really spending) is not enough. It really discourages me from spending more

                                        N0xiety that doesn't matter, tbh. All they have to do is know how many users are coming from what country and what % of them are paying. Easy data to know. They do not care about leeches because they don't pay anyway so they will focus more on getting them to pay.

                                        MasterRabbink this is easy to estimate by dividing the powerstone votes by 3 and there are thousands of user. Of course, there are multiple accounts but let's assume they all pay.

                                        However, you are underestimating what you call, "common user". One doesn't get exposed by alternative cultures randomly. You usually find it by association with another thing.

                                        Unless tencent pumps out the adaptations, you're not going to get many new people coming to this site (not with many people badmouthing it). If you reduce the engagement rate of the people already here, you are not aiming to make the site grow.

                                        Thus far, the goal of all these changes will stagnate the site, tbh. Which means QI only wants the person who randomly walks into a novel and tries to get people to pay through there, not the person who actively pays to read it.

                                        It's their business I guess

                                              Morning_dew doing the same thing. Super Gene became my focus, so once that is done, i guess i'll go back to another story

                                                  Welcome to communist capitalism. Don't like it? This is not a democracy platform. You vote on the next novel, but that is only to give you the illusion that you might have some small say in something. Give in on the small things and stand firm on the large. Webnovel will do what is best for Webnovel.

                                                  I mean I see so many people comparing this site to Amazon or other ebook corporate platforms with cost, etc., but you have to realize that's just the American or other country that is not China structure. For a company that wants to go international you might have to face their home turf rules. Not saying that its correct or incorrect, it just is.

                                                  This is just my opinion that I've come to after being disappointed or frustrated as well on the high SS costs or the route Webnovel seems to be headed. Maybe my pragmatism is misplaced or I am just jaded. You can yell out "BOYCOTT!" but realistically QI has a strangle hold on most of the good novels and there will always be people who will break down and pay out for that quick fix that the free SS sucks you in with.

                                                    Wabbitz I don't really care for a boycott. I just find this whole thing funny because it's terrible business sense. They are constantly changing the business model without telling people, which is losing consumer trust.

                                                    Their business is founded by piracy. All the readers can go back to that if QI is really being crazy. We're not that loyal.

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