h3national We don't know whether the money truly goes to their pockets or straight to QI (translators). For all I know, the authors are only paid the money according to contract and not getting any cut from our SS because the contract they signed back then didn't include international readers.

Yep. Nobody knew. However, you could read Qidian's financial statement. As a public company like Google and Apple, they had to report their income. Webnovel as a child company usually would also be reported. Including in the report perhaps the amount 'paid' to the authors. If they didn't pay the author, there would be complaint.

However, similar to Apple, Google, and Amazon, the transparency is hard. We don't know the 'algorithm' and the detail. Actually I believe you don't care. Only the author and translator would care. (There is one who quit Webnovel, because he lost his Patreon and didn't believe in Qidian calculation. However, some are still in here.)

People, including me only care their 'free' thing turned paid.

A contracted author had already got the payment. I also don't think Qidian would dare not to pay some Chinese authors because of Webnovel's income, they would lose authors if they did that.

Based on I read, giving free chapters already making some complaints from the authors from China. This things happened then.

PS: I think only few fans-translator shared Patreon with original authors. So they have never tried that morale ground.

      SS should just be a way to donate, not force us to pay. If we like the story just let us decide if we want to donate SS and not force us to pay to read the story we like. It is not our duty to pay someone who is writing a story because they want to, it should be an option.

        StarSpell someone who is writing a story because they want to

        Because they want to live from their writing. Nobody ask McDonalds to give their food for free for example. Or Google to give free advertising for advertiser, or Apple for free iOS or iPhone.

        Ryukishi Too little. There is not many ads, after you watch certain amount it would gone. You can try to calculate, they need 100.000-300.000 readers per chapter just for translation cost. (Based on Youtube rate to its content creator).

              MasterRabbink They're goodwill would just be rubbish like a mass unlock for two weeks before locking every single chapter except the first 100.

                  BrokenDao At least, it would show that Webnovel 'care' about their readers.

                  A company needs to pretend as part of their PR. Especially since this is a bad decision. Properly announced that, also tell the reader there would be change. Tell the reason... And blablabla... Readers would still flame them. Nothing beats free.

                  In reader opinion including me: "Shit! We have get this for free for years. Why the owner suddenly want to charge us?"

                  It is like people like us who stayed a free house, suddenly the owner asked us for rental. Of course we would hate him. At least, if the owner said, I will give you a week to move. It is better than "Just go out!!!".

                  Or perhaps we are like a person who loves to eat at our friend house, however suddenly they closed the door and told us to eat using our own money. That is fucking cruel. They should at least told us a day in advance so we could buy some ingredients or book a restaurant.

                  We know it was theirs, but at least, some communication is better. They are still silent. A good thinking would hope for a 'negotiation'. However, doubt it.

                    MasterRabbink Doesn't a million views in youtube get you a thousand dollars on avarage? That's counting the people who are using adblock and youtube's cut. So normally a million views makes like $2,000 but youtube takes almost half of it and then there are some additional fees. So i doubt translators are getting payed $200 - $600 per chapter. If so, i might as well start learning chinese since that's some mighty fine pay considering that some full time translators can even pump out like over 100 chapters per month! I would surely like a $40,000 per month pay...

                        What I really don't like about the entire stone system (especially the one on chinese QI) is that the authors are paid according to how many words they produce so some stories seem to be wrtitten with that in mind - lots of fillers, lots of repetitions and not a lot of content. But hey they get the money because you didn't know that there is actually nothing in that chapter. I epsecially hate chapters with crowd reactions where every other person says two sentences about the situation and I think it could be summed in two senteces for the whole chapter. They don't even seem to reread the chapters before posting it since in like almost every novel I read there are at least mixed up names, even those translated here - right now I can think about Trial marriage - where in one chapter Tang Xuan was called Tangning and sometimes even translators put up notes that the author wrote name A but since it doesnt make sense they put what name seems appropriate according to the scene.

                          N0xiety Based on research 2 dollar per 1.000 view. However, do you think a chapter read by that many people?

                          Translator get around $30 based on a translator. The number would change depending on the novel length. Don't know about the royalty.

                          For us in third world. $30 per chapter is big. Most people only get $5 per day. Lol.

                              Morgana_lefay Try writing. That is the trick to get words count. I play a joke about that in my novel.

                              Now you could see another big offender. The Poem Battle!!! That is some freaking words count.

                              I am still proponent of WW Patreon system. However, it caused some problem with readers with impulse.

                                  N0xiety No. Adblocker didn't gave anything on youtube. A skipped ads also might not give. There is a minimum duration must be watched. If I am not wrong.

                                  $2 per 1.000 ads view. Some said 5~8.

                                      MasterRabbink Hmm, maybe you are right tho, i'm not sure how much these video ads get which everyone most certainly skip. $30 may need somewhere around 100k views. Tho there are also static ads, i'm not sure if people even click them, especially when they are binge reading.

                                      Anyways, ads probably are not enough to run a site like webnovel with too many employees indeed. Maybe they could make enough to keep it going i don't know, but it would be hard to pay the authors anything really.

                                          N0xiety Perhaps it could, but Webnovel had to grown as big as Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, or Google.

                                          This is why I am disappointed with chasing out free readers. They would run to agregator sites and they have. This will be a case study for economics book in the future. Is their decision correct or not.

                                              MasterRabbink it's a terrible decision, i'm mad not just as a user, but as a professional too, who said this was a good idea to them has problems, didn't people learn from EA

                                                MasterRabbink I must admit that I envy people who can write. I can't write at all. But lots of chinese webnovels are no better than free stories on fictionpress or somewhere else, there also don't seem to be any kind of editing going into some of these stories, sometimes it seems there is also no planning involved which is why I think the prices are too much. It seems like buying a first or maybe second draft of a book not the finished product. I'm not saying it's all of them but lots of them. Sometimes it feels like the authors are trying to make the book as long as possible since they get paid for that book and if they started a new one they would have to hope it would get put as premium again.
                                                On the topic of no free chapters. Maybe if they implemented a method to donate money to the novel like they have on the chinese site (I think) instead of taking away free chapters they would probably get more money out of it since I think people are more likely to give money if they feel they have a choice especially if you can also choose how much you can donate. Or like you said the WW Patreon system. And then put some effort into putting the stories into ebook format, they could even sell them from the website and not use amazon - which would get them all the money.

                                                  N0xiety Don't forget the shareholders. They surely want a piece of the cake as well.

                                                  They really should have hired a proper manager & put them in charge of Webnovel. They most probably thought that since they pretty much rule the market in China, the international market would be a piece of cake. They should try charging 0.15$ per chapter on Qidian for the current "quality" content, the site would be full of curses.

                                                      N0xiety I know of maybe 2 translators that made around that much a month through Patreon alone. It's possible, but not common.

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