mholmen If one chapter is 10ss, that would be 2000 words per chapter, For 1000 chapter, that's 2 million words. A normal novel is around 60k words. So, a 2 million words book would be around 33 books.
Purchase book instead of chapter
Myddin they already did have auto buy/auto unlock new chapter.
LuoYeYouLing and how many $ total is that?
Gohgh
I will kill WN in so many fucking way that even zombies will look away from their decapicited corpse. Make it Netflix. That is basically taking my rights, the rights of a cheapskate, away. I will go to the UN justice court and demand justice!!!
I'm just pure cheapskate. Don't take any of this to the heart, frnd. Just happy and shocked that something like this MAY happen.....
LuoYeYouLing
Welp! I haven't read too many books but I've read many WNs and all I can say that out of 2M words, 50- 60% is filler or repeat info dump. It's helpful, I will give u that, but one for every fight scene and telling '...she is as beautiful as moon or... Sun or.... Starry skies..' or the male counterpart dialogue. All I'm saying is that it is a bad way of gaining money and hella expensive
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GegeSadewa I don't know how much books cost in USD, but in malaysia, imported english books cost around 10 dollars? (the stuff i read anyway) ...so if 33 books, about USD 330?
JunkieOverThe_Moon Oh yeah. I know what you mean. I don't like that either. But not every author are like that...i think...at least, I'm trying to avoid filler or info dump in my own novel.
LuoYeYouLing
Me too but webnovrks with their vast diversity and world setting kinda need it. I don't like it to be repeated but .... Its also kinda needed. On the other hand about free stones, at max u will be able to read 2-3 chaps with it, daily. And seeing that there are nearly 1000 to 2000 chaps in each novel, it's pretty impossible. Not impossible but pretty. I tried reading I Have A Mansion in Post-Apocalyptic World like that and it sucked. Every chapter becomes a cliffhanger and the ss keeps on decreasing and decreasing. Not a fabulous experience if u ask me.
GegeSadewa How? I cant find the option for it in either account settings, or reading settings. I must be missing a button somewhere.
mholmen I did a comparative calculation. If you buy books, a paperback is about 8 dollars and a new book (1st or 2nd print) twice that, trade paperback, or three times that. Assuming 1 stone is 2c, one page two stones, 4 cents for a page here, and 500 page book, 20 dollars. That's a bit pricy but comparative with Amazon. One should also observe that there are bonus stones, free chapters etc. So called full novel here corresponds to a series in traditional publishing.
However, it would be wise to cater also to those who have less money and the way traditional publishing does it is to have the cheaper editions released after one year. I would recommend offering chapters that are released a year ago on volume basis and 50% smaller price, and the chapters that are two years old, at 25% of the initial price. People with more money may afford to be impatient, those with less money would still contribute to the welfare of the authors. Mind you, less popular books appear in paperback in their first print, and they are not necessarily any worse.
pliszka Thing is, most books on amazon arent 30-70% filler. These stories are filled with useless stuff to make them longer so the author got paid more. Generally actual print books dont have that problem, cause the author is not paid on word count or chapter count, but on sales. Ofc we can argue what is filler and what isnt, some people dont like downtime where they just talk, while for others that is fine. When i say filler i mean uselessly long descriptions of how beautiful every single woman is, even if that woman doesnt matter for the story at all, and stuff like that.
Myddin when I want to unlock a chapter, before I press the spend ss button, I see there are a small checklist box underneath them with the text that said auto unlock for future new chapters.
5 days later
GegeSadewa Cant tell if im blind or not, but dont see it anywhere. You on mobile or pc?
Myddin hes probably on mobile. I havent seen it while using pc either so its probably mobile only
pliszka No, prices here are not comparative with Amazon. The market segment is different. You're comparing against the full-price, established publisher, hard copy part of Amazon. The comparative part is the independent publisher ebooks available on Kindle. Those prices are generally in the $3 to $5 range instead of the $20 charged here in your comparison. The free SS are good for roughly one and a half premium novels per day, so if you are reading more than two premium novels, you are paying more than Amazon, and the amount extra you pay increases the more premium novels you read!
I read Way of Choices over on Gravity Tales, and supported it by buying the Amazon releases when they came out. Each volume was from 450 to 550 pages in length, and cost $3.99, which is about what it should be. (Unfortunately, they stopped after 4 volumes - anybody know why?) So by your calculations, Webnovel is 5 times more expensive than Amazon once fee SS are exhausted. (My calculations is only 3 times more expensive). That's not going to work for Webnovel long-term.
/Agree. I've bought plenty of spirit stones, but laying down 250 dollars for a single story? I could buy the entire Wheel of Time series in hardback for that price.
They need some better pricing options or they need to come up with another currency.
I think WN should create another function like subscription system.
If u like the novel, u can subscribe that novel.. After subscribe all chapters in that novel will be unlock from 1week, 1month, etc. It depends what subscription you buy.
And spirit stone function is for people who cant afford to subscribe the novel. So they can only read 2-3 ch daily from daily rewards.
a year later
Iam pretty new to this side and bougth for 20€ 2000 points to read the supreme magus. but iam only half trough it and have used 3/4 of my coins that doesnt really feel great. I dont know if my coins will all be used at a important point in the story or how much it will cost me to really unlock all chapters this way. I really want to support the author but i think really want to know what exactly iam getting for my money. When i buy a normal finished book i know how many sides there are. On Webnovel they dont even tell me how many coins i would need to unlock all chapters and it feels like that dont want me to see how much money iam investing if i will purchase every single chapter on its own. It really leaves one with a bitter after taste.
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I don't mean to offend anyone, but 20 dollars buys you about 400,000 words. The average novel is about 80,000 words so 20 dollars buys you about 5 novels. Some of these stories are millions of words long, so it makes sense that the pricing here would be a lot more expensive then on amazon. For instance, Coiling Dragon on amazon is like 3 dollars a book and there are 15 of them, one per volume. That's still almost 50 dollars, and that's after it's been free on the internet for years.
If they started to sell volumes on amazon, they would then also have to pay amazon money for hosting their books. Economically, it may be worth it because amazon has a ton of readers, however, they would make less percentage of profit and no money on ads. I think if each volume was 5 dollars, as well, you'd still be paying the same amount.
However, that doesn't mean it might not be worth it for web novel to have an unlock all chapters feature. Maybe 30% off all chapters if you unlock all of them at once. There is a chance that some readers won't even finish the volumes, and they could make more money off of it that way...
Maybe not a bad idea to have a discount?