LastError It is a terrible price point that is a double loser. It reduces money from the whales and it vastly reduces the audience as well.

Price points for ebook subscription services have an established ceiling of $9.99 for a vastly superior service. An extremely high, but supportable, price point for a niche service like this is $4.99; given the quality and quantity of books (both of which are low), $25/yr is more reasonable. If they are making tons of money off of whales, then moving to a subscription service is a terrible idea.

      Hm~ so a subscription does exists; I just have to update the app. Ok, good to know.

      The $25 does seem high right off the bat, but I suppose people can subscribe only once monthly when they're not busy and then binge..

      Just like another similar topic, $1 is about 5 chapters. So $25 of SS regularly equates to 125 chapters. Reading as a "free" user, you get about 20-ish SS a day, so that's 60 chapters a month.

      In other words, $25 seems a premium for getting about double of what you can already read for free. But again, if you're reading well over 125, say 200+, then it is indeed technically worth it.

      However,
      ramses01
      You make a good point about reducing from whales and deterring free readers.

      In that case, it would a win-win situation if Webnovel were to make a survey about desired price points in order to capitalize their revenue.

          Chryiss they already did.

          I forgot the exact question but they asked how much do you spend in online reading within the last few months in the last survey or something to that effect.

              MaryFord
              Hmm, I haven't come across that survey yet, but it's good they did that. I'm surprised that it would yield $25 an optimal amount however. Perhaps, because it's spend rather than how much would you spend.

                  Hi.. I paid my elite membership yesterday. It said 24 hours. Y until now I can't see any notification that my membership is activated? Pls enlighten me. Thanks

                    I'm a student,
                    I'm an avid reader,
                    everyday i read on this website.
                    But for the subscription price, it is a little bit much for me, moreover if i converted it to my currency, it is pricy.
                    I sometimes i buy ss, but for i am right now I don't think it's worth it to subs due to several reasons. I don't have that much money to burn each month. Many of my favorite novels stopped updating.
                    Though maybe you "whale" have money to burn why not.. For me, i think sooner or later i will lose interest to this website and delete it altogether. I can survive not readingthe uncompleted stories. Amd that way maybe i don't need to waste money on this kind of uncertain ending novels.

                    Even though, i said all those things, i hope they can lower the price to let us who does not have money to burn or on a budget can afford it too..

                    That's my two cents, just want to rants..

                      Chryiss that was the 20 ss survey. A lot of those questions were related to how much you read online and spend for it.

                      The question was how much you spend in TOTAL, but we would never know its true intent because that survey had terrible English.

                        Kheuen Glad to see I am not the only. i have contact customer service but they have not gotten back to me.

                            The price is prohibitive. Instead of reading it on the app people will flock the websites that repost the translated works here.

                            For a little bit of effort and inconvenience you still get to read them anyway. The only thing not yet on these sites are the originals.

                            But if the price was lower, the convenience of having an app shines through.

                            After lowering the price, you can have 2 prices for elite members. Say 4.99 for translated works 7.99 for translated works and originals.

                            Then you can give discounted ss prices for those on subscription so they can provide additional support for original works through gifts.

                            garethgg Because it's been answered multiple times and explained in the original post. Only Android users as of now can buy the subscription via the beta app apk. When it's released for all others, they'll post it.

                              I guess I'm considered a "whale" without realizing it... I spend on average $50 every 30-45 days to keep up with all of the novels I am reading as I am a fast reader. I love it. I think it is a good price point. With good reason. You can tell they did market research before picking this price point.

                              Real world e-book pricing you are looking at:
                              · SHORTS: Works under 20,000 words will be referred to as shorts. They will sell for 99 cents.
                              · MID-LENGTHS: Works between 20,000 and 39,999 words will be referred to as Mid-Lengths(Mids). They will sell for $2.99.
                              · FULLS: Works with word counts of 40,000 or greater will be referred to as Fulls, or full-length works. The minimum price for a Full will be $3.99. Fulls can sell for any price above this minimum pricing floor that the author deems appropriate (I have Fulls that sell just fine at $5.99 and above). But no full should ever dip below the floor price.

                              Now as an example:

                              Full Marks Hidden Marriage: Pick Up a Son, Get a Free Husband the completed version is 2165 chapters. Chapter cost varried between 3-4 spirit stones it is 200 words per stone. So lets do REALLY rough math... lets say half of the chapters were 3 stones and half (+1 odd one to make it easier to divide) were 4 stones. 1082 chapters @3stones = 649,200 words. 1083 chapters @4 stones = 886,400 words.

                              That is a total of 1,515,600 words. Just think about that for a sec.

                              Now according to market research on pricing. At Fulls pricing it would be 38 books.
                              That is $151.62 @ $3.99 to $227.62 @ $5.99. Averaged out you are looking at $189.62 for the entire series.

                              You did not pay that much for the series and you enjoyed it... Why are you griping....

                              ESPECIALLY considering that the new price point of $25/month which if you look at the maths on the following post:

                              https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/fun-with-math-and-spirit-stones.60538/

                              It covers roughly 300,000 words a month which is approximately 1,500 Spirit Stones. I know I read more than that... Sometimes in a binge night. So it really isn't over priced at all.

                                Tanalei Don't compare American books and Chinese books.

                                Chinese authors are usually paid by word count and monthly views, so filler, unnecessary text and repeating information is rampant to amp up word count. If you've ever reading anything by Fengling Tianxia (Realms of the Firament, Otherworldly Evil Monarch). He loves to make every each character repeat the same information with slightly different wording sometimes entire chapters of 2000-4000 words contain little to nothing in new content. He is still insanely popular in China like top 20 authors).

                                American authors are paid a sum of money upfront when they sign a contract with a publisher, and through royalties. Royalties are the amount of money paid to an author for each book sold, which will usually be a percentage of the book’s sale price. so they don't need to amp up word count like Chinese books.

                                  Not true in the eBook/self publishing arena which is the prices I went off of. These are prices for books that don't have a paper release or necessarily even have a publishing house just uploaded to Amazon Books and the like.

                                    Tanalei Amazon books has a section against "superfluous" word count in there for sale books. My point is many Chinese novels are needless long, and overly fluffed up especially Female novels small areas of text broken into 16 sub chapters :cry:. Engaging price point by word count is ineffective

                                      well I can't afford 24$ a month i know I'm not only one I love this app downloaded it when it just came out should I go looking somewhere else cuz I'm not gonna paying that much

                                        If you feel 24 is too much. Wait for your fav novel(s) to stock a lot of chapters and pay for one month and binge. It's not a bad price. Do we wish it was lower? Of course but it beats buying spirit stones.

                                          ForeverFrozen Ya it’s steep. I’m just going to be waiting for 2-3 months of premium novels to pile up before paying for a month then dropping it.

                                              I think that's actually why its $25. Because most would only get a month out of maybe every 2-3. I agree for a monthly system $25 is too much.

                                              And to the person who was defending it through word count of American ebooks well Kindle Unlimited kinda breaks your point. You said that one series was about $182 which is true for spirit stones. Yet that's the price Quidian set for it not market price. There's thousands of Full length novel on KU for $9.99/month which can probably rival half of qudian's Chinese site and all of this one.
                                              I do like a lot of the books here and I will probably get a monthly sub maybe a few times unlike my KU which I have always. So its $120/year for kindle n maybe $75-100 for quidian at best. Not that different until you get the number of people using KU (which I'm too lazy to look up) but I'm sure they are making millions vs the hundred thousands quidian stands too make. It's really their consumer base is a lot smaller which is why they made the price higher to compensate I think.

                                                Can you subscribe to Elite Membership? I can't subscribe to it. There is no subscribe button in my App

                                                  OnlyReal only on android at the moment, may be u are using iOS?

                                                      Nope. I'm using android. When I click on green Get Elite Membership button there is no subscription button. What should I do. I tried it from different Android, still same.

                                                        LittleSleepyFox let’s compare it to an equivalent service from Japan: Shonen Jump. For $2 a month, you get access to the back catalog of manga from most of SJ and it’s popular series. They are also continually adding new series and currently releasing in Japan series. There are limitations, but reasonable in my opinion, of reading 100 chapters a day. I think this is comparable. Otherwise, $25 is just whack. I don’t even pay $25 for Spotify and Netflix combined!

                                                        Obviously, Webnovel should use different limits/counts. But I think that their sub service should not exceed $5-7. The manga service has completed series and new/ongoing series. It’s fully translated and professionally edited. Qidian is using fan translators and editors.

                                                          I have problem with cost of this program. I'm not living in USA, Canada or France, so because @WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL don't change price depend of region it's cost 2 times more than Netflix Premium. I don't think that you have enough content to justifie this price. Think about less wealthy countries. If @WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL change the pricing to around 20-30PLN I would buy this service. For 115PLN I could buy enough food for 2 weeks . It only cost 75 PLN for one month unlimited access to city transportation network(Warsaw capital city of Poland). So it's simply cost too much money.

                                                            Shaaya Thank god! Someone said it! Most if not all the novels i came to webnovel to read were just dropped! Although reading sth new is fine but come on! Most of the time i just check in or try to find sth satisfying for a while only to be disappointed again! Yes! There are dropped or suddenly finish and all the chapters reset!
                                                            The price is well pricy. I am sure that many can follow but.. who says that that's the end? From zero to here in a year... I could justify a lower price, comply to it even especially if i could read my fav novels. But. This crossed my bottom line economically.
                                                            Plus, i don't get the difference between subscription and membership. I pay for the membership, can subscribe to x number of novels or i pay the subscription of each novel either way or pay membership get free access to all novel subscribed or not? I don't get it.

                                                                good try qidian, but the price and delivered quality content don't add up. I don't wanna criticise the translators, since it all started out as fan translations, but there are still many faulty translations, spelling mistakes, irregular updates or even novels on hiatus. Why should I pay 2,5x the price of kindle unlimited or 3x the price of a netflix sub for subpar translated novels full of fillers?

                                                                Web Novel Novel Ask