First estimate without any (Bonuses) 2000 premium chapters would cost 400$ USD which is INSANE!!!
If you buy them in bulk and get the bonus for 50$ which is unlikely it would cost 310$
Qidian what's with this price?
The only reason I'm making this post because I hear little kids maxing out there credit cards couple months ago didn't really care until I looked at the pricing.
I know there's really no novel with 2000 premium chapters more like a thousand currently ,but in the future there will be.
The pricing is insane cause you can get a high quality complete book for 20$ this is BS.
Spirits Stones Being Overpriced Is An Understatement
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The reason people pirate is because of this bullbad a bad quality book should not cost more than 5 dollars!
But higher quality books like Reverend and others I'm more willing ,but COPY AND PASTE NOVELS NOPE!!!
Even if you argue there's no book with 2 thousand premium chapters here there are 1 thousand chapter premium books on here the only difference it would make is just half the price and lets not even talk about the future.
Bad books should not even make it premium... I CENSORED MY COMMENT
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Rorsharch Dude I know there are novels which aren't worth the price but all you have to do is not reading them. Also micro transactions are almost always way too expensive. Look at games with lots of stupid micro transactions. Wanna use this item? It's just 1.5 USD !! Do you want the full set? Now with our once in a lifetime discount you can get it for 14.99 USD!!! Then you realize you paid 500 USD for some stupid game. This is how it works. Since you pay it over time in small sums it doesn't look like much.
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qi1di1an What I am trying to say is while it may look like a predatory business model, it's not something webnovel came up with. Micro transactions has been around for years now. It's proven to be a profitable business model. Also you can't expect novels to be free just because they are bad. I mean translators and authors still spend their valuable time on it. If it's bad and too expensive, people won't buy it and it will earn less compared to better novels. That's how free market works.
Also one last thing. When you pirate novels it hurts qidian correct but they are a huge company. It won't really effect them too much even if webnovel goes bankrupt. But you can't say the same for translators, editors and authors. AFAIK webnovel has a revenue sharing contract with authors and translators. When you pirate novels, you are harming those people who makes it possible for you to read any Chinese novel in the first place.
So please refrain from pirating.
Other than a medical book nothing is worth 400 usd for a goddamn book.
Rorsharch
I'm not sure I fully agree with you. Let's assume an average chapter has 1500 words. Let's assume 2000 chapters. That's a total of 3,000,000 words. Most novels average between 70,000 to 120,000 words in length. Most fall closer to the shorter end of that so let's use 90,000 for this example. 3,000,000 words divided by 90,000 = 33.33 books. Let's just round down to 33. So you're paying an average of $12.12 per volume of a book. Actually, the first 200,000 words are free. So we can subtract an additional 24 dollars from the total cost, bringing it down to $11.40 per volume. If you get the bonus you mentioned so we're only spending $310, Then subtract 24$ from that, then we're bringing the total cost down to $8.67 per volume. All of this isn't even factoring in free SS.
So, is it overpriced? It's debatable. Most print books and light novels would cost about the same or more. Self-published amazon books are probably much cheaper with an average price of $3 - $5 per volume. However, none of this is factoring in free spirit stones you can use to unlock chapters as well.
I'm not saying I agree with the SS model. I feel there may be better alternatives out there. But I think it's a bit farfetched to claim it's overpriced. At least for books you're willing to pay for, I feel the price is reasonable. Now some of the poorly translated novels, yeah that's a bit of a ripoff.
Rorsharch
Is it really 'a book' though? In this example, it's more like 30 - 40 books depending on what length you assign per volume.
SnoozySloth 3,000,000 words is around 20 books compared to most fiction books not 30 to 40.
Yes I'm willing to pay for good books ,but when every trash novel gets locked that has ratings lower than 3 before they deleted them is a huge rip off.
Rorsharch
3,000,000 Words is definitely not 20 books when compared to average fiction books. Not even close. That would be an average of 150k words per book which is on the insanely high side.
Harry potter and the sorcerers stone was less than 77,000 words.
Chamber of secrets was 85,000 words.
Book 3 was 107,000.
Book 4 through 7 went insane and varied between 160,000 to 250,000. But that is very far from the norm and Rowling was already incredibly successful at that point, so she could pretty much do whatever she wanted for length.
Google the average length of a novel and you'll find multiple resources stating the average sits somewhere between 70,000 - 120,000. Technically, only 40,000 is required to be considered a novel. According to writersdigest novels should aim for the 80,000 to 100,000 range. 70,000 is a little short, but fine. Anything lower = bad. 110,000 is a little long, but fine. Anything higher is too much. There are obvious exceptions such as Harry Potter, but these are the exceptions, not the norm.
Word range for novels also vary by genre. Again, citing writerdigest.
Scifi should aim for 100,000 - 115,000. They tend to be on the longer side.
Middle school fiction is generally shorter and should aim for 20,000 - 55,000 based on age and genre.
Young Adult suggests 55,000 - 80,000. (I'd argue this is where webnovel target audience is)
Based on all the above stats, I'd say I was already generous for choosing 90,000 for my previous example as opposed to 75,000 - 80,000.
So your saying these books are better than harry potter and deserve to be more expensive than it is.
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Rorsharch Nah he's just saying that the word count of the novels here is more than one actual novel. A completed book here is basically a total of 40 books. Example harry potter and the Sorcerer's Stone There are 76,944 words, and the whole harry potter series is 1,084,170 words, that's not even close to the amount of words used in one completed novel here.
If you separate the arcs into different volumes, then like I said the whole thing will be like 40 volumes of a normal book.
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For fantasy the average is 140,000 your including romance and thriller tends to be a lot smaller while most book publishers won't even publish a book if it's below 80,000 if it's fantasy.
Also we were talking about price before this the problem is there locking all these worthless books.
Rorsharch
Googled your claim out of curiosity. All resources I looked at suggested average fantasy novels aimed at young adults average between 80,000 to 120,000. So, I'd argue my previous example still holds. Of course, many are much much longer.
Based on my previous calculations these books wouldn't be more expensive than harry potter based on how much HP costs when it first came out. That being said, I do believe some novels here are in fact better than Harry Potter. I always thought HP was a bit overrated to be honest. It started strong in the first four books and went downhill after that. I'm of the opinion Coiling Dragon and ISSH both outclass it. There are even rumors that Rowling used a ghost writer for the later books. Is it true? I've no idea =p
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Coiling Dragon whole series costs 30 dollars for a masterpiece willing to buy 50 which is a fair price for no paper back the problem is Qidian books don't come in paper so costing 400usd is again retarded.
Yeah Coiling Dragon and ISSH are masterpieces ,but novels like god emperor and Medicine God going premium is retarded.
I Don't mind prices if the novels are not retarded especially original since you won't find the novel if it's not good in the first place considering how many there are.
My problem is Qidian is doing this predatory stuff where if they mass release a novel they go Premium imagine every freaking novel and they decide to mass release when they hit 100 chaps of translation they go premium even if there garbage.
Rorsharch
Well CD is a completed series. Perhaps paperback will be available when some originals finally finish? I'm not sure to be honest =p.
SnoozySloth The word count argument is total BS and you all know it. How many hundreds of chapters are complete filler that have no plot relevance and only exist to pad the price of each novel?
SnoozySloth The wordcount argument is flawed. It's like comparing buying 1 kg apples versus buying the photo of 10 kg apples, where somebody put his foot onto the scale.
By the way, there is at least one rumor about you sniffing bike seats, whenever you come across one while feeling unobserved. At least there is one now.
I mean, you guys obviously want to keep reading these books that cost SS. So the demand is obviously there. You're just cheap and don't want to pay to read them. I myself am cheap and don't pay to read any premium novels either. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's kind of a dumb argument to say the chapter length to cost ratio is unjustified because filler or lower quality than novel A or novel B. Price is set based on market demand. If the novels weren't good enough, then no one would buy them and they'd drop off the popularity charts. The fact that it bothers you they cost X money means you guys want to continue spending your leisure time reading them. Or you want them to be significantly cheaper when compared to similar products.
Sorry to say, but I disagree with you. Then again, I'm an author, so I'll have different biases than readers will. Personally, I'd like seeing how a system similar to twitch does instead of SS.