Webnovel.Forum

I don't mind paying for a translation or original novel. What I have a problem work is paying too much.

A typical book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or elsewhere is going to be between $2 and $20. On here one novel can be hundreds of dollars if you purchase SS. Right now $20 gets you around 600 SS. In a novel where a chapter is 10 SS this only gets you 60 chapters.

I would like to ask/suggest if there can be some way to purchase a whole story at once for a reasonable set price even if the story is not completely translated or written yet.

Wouldn't make much sense. Currently, people are paying for the chapter they read. Imagine a scenario where you are paying for something that is not ready, and it eventually doesn't get translated/written, what happens? It will be more of a PR nightmare.

I'm no expert on creating proper business models but maybe a system that allows you the option to purchase complete volumes at reasonable prices and still allows spirit stones to be used to unlock newer chapters. (Assuming novels are split into volumes.)

I understand what you are saying. But let's look at the opposite as well where we have a 1000 chapter book where each chapter costs 10 SS. That would be $333 to read the book. How is that a reasonable cost for me to read a book? What about a cap per book whereas if we hit a specific number of Spirit Stones shown q all chapters are unlocked.

Why not a Netflix model where you pay to have access to everything on a monthly rate

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Comparing the cost of a webnovel to a book on Amazon will vary. As has been pointed out, one webnovel is more comparable to an entire series. You can find box sets for pretty much every genre. Sets that have anywhere from 2+-12+ novels inside them. If you know where to look, there are tons of box sets priced at $0.99 USD. Their quality is comparable—or better—than those here for the most part, and I haven’t run into any yet that contain high levels of filler. They exist, I’m sure, but are not the majority.

Amazon takes a 30% cut—provided the price of the book is between $2.99–$9.99. As for WN losing the money from ads, we've been told many times that they make next to nothing on the ads, so I don’t know why no ads would be a deterrent for them.

I joined right after they shuttered the subscription service. Even so, I would have become a paying customer if the cost for the novels was reasonable to me. Yes, I know you get longer books, more comparable to series, but I can find the same lengths act Amazon, via box sets, for a lot cheaper. After watching how the company does things—customer service, etc.—I will not likely ever become a paying customer even though that means reading significantly less.

Focusing on the customers with bigger wallets is a valid strategy, but if they started out by focusing on attracting and retaining free or low spending customers, it’s to be expected that some will complain. Anyhow, I’ve learned a lot about business here, for which I am grateful. :)