WigglerGod Yeah, thats what i often read and the reason i was proposing a premium model with variable amounts. People are ready to pay for their entertainment, but they will never be willing to get screwed over for it (dont factcheck that).
Another take on (seemingly) everything going premium
lozlo the previous translators were doing it as a hobby with around 2-5 chapters a week, that's why QI contracted these TLs and EDs for a steady pay and stable 7-14 ch/wk. Even back then these TLs have reserved or lock chapters that could be seen through paid subscription. Everyone kept praising the old Patreon pages when $ 1 could only make you read 2-5 chapters ahead per month. depends on the translator. Some translators don't even translate unless the donation pool is filled.
bachingchung we aren't in China, look at YOUR reality
bachingchung What you don't seem to understand is that, we don't HAVE to get used to anything, also respect goes both ways okay
sinx facepalm you're hopeless.
bachingchung I don't believe for a second that they did it for those reasons. However, it is true that there are a lot more novels out, and some of the projects are coming out faster. So there are upsides.
As for those locked chapters via patreon. That's true, but they had a more involved system than what you're mentioning. The good ones released more chapters per week/day according to the total donations, on top of giving early access. And, the ones that did that really raked in some money. Also, those are the projects they went after first. But, nothing in life is simple, so I'm sure there are other hidden issues as well.
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bachingchung Pretty much most authors in China are on royalty-based contracts, similar to the ones the English original authors have. The higher level authors (Platinum or Phenomenal level) have even better royalty contracts. There are, however, some that prefer to take a fixed rate. And authors are still more important than translators. There will always be someone willing to translate a work if you pay enough, but you can't replicate the originality an author comes up with for their novel (Regardless if people claim that there is no originality in web novels, the success these authors show is that their works are popular among readers, and I believe English original authors are realizing that it's actually not that simple.)
bachingchung No, i live in a Place called Real World, where Reality exists...
lol! The whole 'well, if I translate it into a different language, I should get that copyright' argument again, only wearing different clothes...
If it was MY work, you'd be hit with a DMCA so fast, your heads would spin and you'd be crying because I would go after every single cent you made off my stuff without my permission. I think WN was being pretty soft and obliging when they officially showed up in the English market. Arrggh...now i want my writer's block back!
bachingchung arent ss way cheaper in the chinese website? As well as having a higher user count than webnovel?
bachingchung Chapters in China are also a lot more cheaper
Dontlookdown
ker0ppi well that's because it only involved 1 team, the translated version will have to pay royalties to the raws then pay more for ENG TLs and EDs. Imported products will always be more expensive than local prices.
CKtalon indeed, some fools want to believe in their own ridiculous "reality". Those bunch of millenials only know how to be spoon fed and "it's my privileged" mind set. XD
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What do you think about Inkstone?
do you guys think it was for you, Authors?
Qi won't read every new novel sent to their office, there will be 100's,1000's of new novels every day and they need to exhaust a lot of money and manpower to read every novel and select the novel with the potential to earn some income.
and this is where they use Inkstone, everyone will post their novels and we will read and review them freely. After that Qi will select the top novels we review and comment and make a contract with them.
Now they have many potential novels which were contracted and some in the queue to be contracted.
Say, Now they achieved their goals, is there any need to release new chapters for free?
They used Inkstone to kill many ducks in a single shot, they got a kill and were well fed, their stomach's got bloated so they locked the chapters digesting whatever they ate.
Lagrange7 I was thinking about it randomly... To make sure there is no misunderstanding, this is what I would do from here, and I don't feel that it is the right choice or the best choice. It's just what I would do while moving forward. As I said before, all models have flaws.
Edit: This really doesn't look like something I thought of randomly... But you'll just have to take my word on it... I was eating breakfast, about to do some work on the side, and started thinking about it...
I would generally leave the current setup as it is. Changing the system would probably be more harmful than beneficial. The first thing I would do is create a second stone currency. There never should have been free and paid spirit stones. It should have been free spirit stones and some other kind of stone that you can only get if you pay for it.
The spirit stones would be a participation reward and their value would remain the same, as would the way they are calculated when used on novels. 200 words = 1ss.
I would leave the second stone at their current price, but greatly reduce the cost of novels that were read using those stones. Naturally, this would require the user to choose what method to pay with on premium chapters.
For the moment, I would go with 1, 2, and 3.
Here's where it gets tricky though. I wouldn't base the cost on word count. I'd base it on the popularity/quality of the previous "book." The first section, whether it's a book, half a book, or a set number of chapters, would be free. Then, carrying on with that pattern, the next section would be priced according to the overall popularity/quality of the first section. I would also split the ratings into two parts. One for the story and one for the translation quality, but only the quality of the story would determine the price. The quality of the translation would determine if the current translator got to keep their job, lol.
To encourage, yet limit, the participation values, I would change the way ss is given. I would limit the number of chapters you can rate per day, but it would be a reasonably high number. Something like 50, which should be fairly close to the number of chapters a reasonable person could read. Each vote would earn you something like 1 or 2 ss, up to the limited amount of ss. Which would be set at 10 or 20 a day I guess. Also, I would want to setup something in the background that would flag certain things to be checked. For example, any series that ranked 1-2 stars for over 3/4 of the ratings. Anyone who rated 1-2 starts 50 times in a row. Anyone who rated 50 stories a day, especially if it was all in one series.
As for the prices... Hrm... I would say 1 paid stone for a previous 1-3 star average. 2 paid stones for anything that was 3-4 star average, and 3 for anything that rated over 4 stars. But that's just a preliminary idea. It would have to be adjusted after considering other issues. Like people who go through and vote 1 star just to lower the paid cost, and people who get others to go through and vote 5 stars to increase the cost.
As a side note, the exact rating per book should not be listed. Instead, only the overall rating for the entire series should be listed. The paid stones required is all the information readers should need.
Hrm...There are a lot of other things that would need consideration, but I'm tired of rambling, and I have some things I need to stop slacking off on for a bit... T_T
I don't know if Qidian would even consider my ideas anyway. shrug
lozlo It will simply be unfair for all parties. So what happens when the previous book warrants a low price for the next book? Should the translator/author simply drop it since why waste efforts working on something that you know will earn you lesser? For authors, it's a natural choice, but for translations, it will only lead to numerous books with translators just dropping it. Also the highly dynamic nature of it makes this problematic for some translators. Some of them are living paycheck to paycheck on the work they do. Doubt people would like that.
Also the reason why word count is used is because that determines the amount of time you need to work on the translation of that chapter. If it's all the same or based on some dynamic pricing system, what happens when a translator encounters a 15,000 word chapter (I've faced that before)? 5-6x the usual work for the same pay? It will very likely drop the release rates as there's so much inertia to work on something like that.
Translation quality is hard to judge. The readers generally rate very high ratings for all the translations. Even the shittiest translations are something like a 4.2/5, and the highest is somewhat closer to 4.9. When you only have a 4.2 to 4.9 range, it's hard to determine if it's really due to translation quality or not, or simply that some NTR or rape happened in the plot (and how are you going to determine which one is it when there are thousands of chapters produced by Webnovel translators every month?). 'Educating' the readers to rate properly is an endeavor that's even more daunting.
The current system is working okay. The grumblings are mostly from the verbal minority.
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CKtalon You already have stories that have been dropped by the translators, so spare me the nonsense. It is true that there are issues with it though. And all of that would depend on how the translators get paid. You previously posted saying that some translators get paid per chapter, and some take royalties. So your issue only holds water for the translators that only get paid via royalties. But, as I said, every model has issues, and this is just a preliminary idea, that I wouldn't expect Qidian to even consider anyway.
Again, that's why it's a preliminary idea. There are issues that fall outside the general rules and would need to be addressed. Also, I don't expect Qidian to consider it anyway, so I didn't bother to delve into it further.
This is true. Which is why I specifically said, and I quote "But that's just a preliminary idea. It would have to be adjusted after considering other issues." If you noticed, the issues I listed were all related to voting. I also started out by saying that I don't feel my ideas are right or the best. They are only what I would do in general.
If the current system is working, then so be it. But it's only just started, so whether it's really working or not will be decided in the future, maybe a year or so from now. I wouldn't be surprised if everything pans out, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it's not just the grumblings of the minority. However, I think the number of people willing to pay $150-$300 per story isn't as big as you'd like me to believe. I'm also fairly sure it's not as small as some of the irate people on here want me to believe.
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lozlo I'm saying that your way of doing things will only exacerbate the dropping of novels by translators. The current drop rate of novels on Webnovel is about 5-10% of its books by its translators, which is actually very similar to other sites (they are much smaller in scale, so maybe they have 1 translator drop a book, and that makes up the 5-10%). Many of Webnovel translators are translating novels, hopefully to one day earn enough from Premium to switch to royalties, since it's in their long-term interests (they get decades worth of royalties). So the fact that somehow earnings will somehow drop because of a preceding volume is quite ridiculous.
I do foresee there to be price drops in the future, but overall, the system is working fine. The only problem is chapters are expensive. So there's no need to come up with a completely untested model and hope that it somehow does better. Very few companies will dare take that risk.
CKtalon That could be true for the most part. The only thing I'm truly confident in is that there should have been two "currencies" from the start.
Everything else is a matter of opinion, unless it's put into practice in a way that allows comparison. And most people prefer to stay on once they mount the tiger. So that's one of the reasons I don't expect Qidian to consider anything said. Well, that and my low faith in them because they're completely untrustworthy. But that's to be expected from most businesses.
Agree to some extent. iv noticed that some of the novels Im reading here after getting premium the quality just drops. i got my library full of them but i cant seem to remove them so they just lay there as a reminder of what used to be good! this has forced me to go back to my old site that i dropped to come here, what a let down!
So sad! so sad!