SS are expensive, period.
The chinese novels also abuse the pay per word model by repeating information, dragging on explanations etc.
SS aren't that expensive, you just read too much
Nice post and your argument is valid, but can already see people are going to disagree with you, most are going to complain that the quality of work on WN is not to the same standards you would buy on Amazon, and they would also be right.
There are premium authors who also abuse the system, using filler words, repeating sounds etc. I do think that WN should have a system where 201 words would fall into the 200 brackets and not the 400 brackets, but then as a "buyer" you should be aware and if you notice that the premium author is abusing the system, then stop unlocking their chapters.
Maybe also a survey should be done on Premium authors, which could be used by WN to flag novel which should be checked for abuses.
Most of us write for the love of it, and as an author nothing makes you feel better than receiving some sort of monetary reward. From what I have read, authors only get 50% of paid for SS, so the smaller guys aren't coining it.
Writing also takes time, I know that I usually spend 3 - 5 hours writing per day, and that is not counting the number of hours I spend going back and editing my work over and over again, so I feel for premium authors, translators, and editors.
These guys are working their butts off, and they deserve to be rewarded. I think next time before complaining ask yourself how you would feel working 8 to 10 hours a day and having some people continuously complain about how much they are paying you for your work.
I think WN is trying their best to keep everyone happy, and their new VIP premium account was created specifically for avid readers. For the monthly price that you are paying - you get access to thousands of novels and comics, if you purchased novels from Amazon you would get what 3 - 4 books?
And with this new system, all those premium authors are surely going to take a knock in their earnings, as I am not even sure how WN is going to split the monthly subscriptions with all of them.
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DJRogue As DJRogue has already brought it up.
Your whole argument is based on a logical fallacy. You are comparing Harry Potter, a famous and world renown novel series that commands a higher price based on its current and long lasting international popularity, to bottom of the barrel web novels only people familiar with QI know and are only popular within China (yes, im aware this website exists for the sake of bringing said novels to international audiences, that is besides the point). You might as well have compared them to the GoT series or LotR series.
They are quite literally incomparable. They are written under different standards. "Your father, I!" "YOU DARE!?" "Brat, die for me!" and similarly limited insults/retorts essentially make up 10% or more of any wuxia novel on here (yes, i pulled that figure out of my ass, but anyone who's read any of the martial novels here will know what i mean). You aren't gonna find any of that nonsense in a HP novel. And as has been mentioned numerous times in numerous posts in numerous threads here, web novels such as these focus on word count rather than word value. You get inflated descriptions and repetition galore, this is true for MOST novels available on Webnovel, not all, but most.
If you're going to argue that the prices of SS are fair, compare it to similarly amateur writings available on amazon. Yes, the ones being sold from anywhere from .99c to $10, quality for quality. Only QI prices novels based on word count. Amazon does not.
QI's business model really is clever however. Novels are written with the intention of fitting as many words and as many chapters as possible into a novel, it is no surprise that they charge 1 ss per 200 words. That however does not make it a good investment of $.
I agree that translators should be paid for their work, and they are. What QI is doing is trying to turn that small amount of investment into HUGE returns, which is what's getting peoples' panties in a bunch.
It's not a logical fallacy, you can compare rates against any novels. Using HP was merely a single example. The massive popularity of it is why they can constantly update editions and rebrand it. If you were to purchase every new edition of it as it came out, you would be spending over $1,000 (this ones a guesstimate, I haven't added all the editions prices together) which of course isn't comparable.
Novels such as GoT and LOTR are normally much higher in word count per book, and as I said, they are priced less per word count because of the size and standard value. These paperbacks are more expensive due to larger books equaling more production cost, but I am only comparing digital media which doesn't have the production overhead cost.
If you want to be more specific, webnovels transaction system with SS is basically micro transactions. They aren't expensive, but they very easily accumulate.
The standard base price of an ametuer ebook on Amazon is about $3.99 (for a 70,000 book, but that doesn't always reflect quality. There are those priced too cheap or too expensive) those priced at $0.99 are usually either very short or very poor in quality and the seller Justice wants sales. You can't use the cheapest price and hold it in comparison to the rest of works.
The same goes for Chinese authors, there are those that are good authors and bad authors, even though Qidian targets quantity over quality as that is what most readers want. You can argue that works from bad authors should be cheaper, but you can't hold that as a standard for all Chinese authors.
There's is nothing wrong with being a bit superfluous in writing, it simply adds color to the story and character personality. The greatest sin of authors is basically running off a cyclic template of face slapping/story arcs, but at that point it is the readers decision whether they continue to read. If a novel is poor in quality, why not just read the free chapters first and then move on? $0 cost
Wolfick I mean, it's both, SS are super expensive.
So is the monthly membership for unlimited reading, bigger companies with more content charge less than half the rate and they actually have some quality control on their content unlike webnovel who allow any dipshit translator work for them regardless of quality, look at swallowed star being butchered by the new translator all because qidian is quantity over quality when it comes to translators.
in typical amazon novels, you pay for quality. but that 100k words book you're paying for takes at least two years. in wn, you pay for time. for example fmhm, 200k words within the same time frame two years, or even lesser. well ye, that's the translation, not the original lol. chinese to english. count how many chinese characters do you need to know to translate it. raws don't help. same with radicals, it helps a bit but not a lot.
and if you talk about originality stuff cause cn novels are fvckin' cliche. ye, right. cliche stuff are pretty fun to read in my opinion. for extremely original and complex ones... meh. this year, the only amazon book i have read that was actually interesting was Dorothy Must Die which is $6.99 as ebook. lowkey promoting
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Monthly membership cost is independent. Just because Company X charges $10/month, it doesn't mean anyone who charges more is overpriced. Competitive pricing is only in regards to competition. Kindle Unlimited is something like $70/year for unlimited books in the program, from what I've heard, but that doesn't mean everyone else shouldn't charge more than that. Webnovel can choose if they wish to compete with that price, but they are both offering different products (yes both are books, but different styles) so there is no need to compete.
Translators, and more often editor flaws are a genuine concern though, I can't agree with you more on that part. There certainly needs to be a stronger supervision on the quality of those, especially older chapters where any comments you make on errors will simply never be seen or noticed.
I completely believe the price of SS is reasonable for a novel like swallowed Star, but lack of translation/editing quality truly brings it down.
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I would also like to bring up another point no here is mentioning - is that 90% of the original authors' books here are free, and I have read a lot of them, some are brilliant, while others are well ... not.
And one thing I have to mention is that so many of the novels here are original, while one can complain about the grammar and spelling mistakes, the plot itself is brilliant. There are so many hidden gems on WN that you could spend weeks reading and not paying one SS.
Look, not to brag or toot my own horn, my novel is already sitting at over 118k words, and I think by the time I have finished I will be at 2 maybe 3 million words. Firstly if I went the self-publishing route, it would take me a year or two to finish before I could publish on Amazon. Secondly, I would end up having to cut 80% of my scenes.
As with regards to translators - that is also a mixed bag, but no matter how much a translator messes up - it is still better than MTL the novel, believe me, I have read dozens of MTL novels, and besides the immense headache you get, your own English goes south for about a week thereafter, and you do get incredible translators like EndlessFantasy Translation, who I have to take my hat off too, their translations are one of the best I have ever come across.
What I do find unfair is how WN promotes so many books on the homepage, that are either horrible or haven't been updated in months, and half the time it is the same book over and over again.
No one is forcing anyone to buy SS, you can always cut back on your premium novels, and spend some time looking for those hidden gems. An example, Indigo Emperor by holachica, the novel is only 7 chapters, but the writing is superb.
A blog started by Book_Keeper https://virtualbookshelf.home.blog has started a good ranking system and reviews some of the original novels here - check it out if you are looking for something to read.
At the end of the day, no one is forced to pay for SS. WN has given their customers multiple options to gain access to premium chapters. And users of WN are given the unique opportunity to find budding authors, some who I do believe will go on to become published authors one day, and in the future, as a WN client, you were there when they just started out.
PS: Just my opinion but I do think that the monthly subscription is a bit too expensive. I think it would sell better, and eliminate many of the complaints, if they dropped the price to $10 to $15.
'What expensive is your reading habit.'
All argument have their own point and stayed logical. But the phrase above is what sum it all for me. Hobbies tend to be expensive as you get addicted.
If i like it, i pay for it. If i don't, then i won't.
If i can afford, then i'll purchase. If i can't, then well, i can't, so no reading then.
Really simple, if you ask me. shrugs
2 months later
i have no problem paying tho when i first found this site chapters where 3-7 Spirit Stones now they seems to be 7-20 Spirit Stones per chapter
11 days later
The fact that Advent of the Archmage has around 500-600 locked chapters with an average SS cost per chapter at around 10-13SS (some cost as high as 18SS), translates to anywhere around 5000-6000SS to unlock the whole book (we can lower the daily rewards from that) at the current rate you can buy 3250SS for 50 USD meaning a total cost to read AoA is somewhere around 75+ USD. I think this is a case of SS being wayyyyy to expensive for the good of the site. Personally I spent around 20usd unlocking 100-150 chapters until I realized that this is *** stupid and that I'm getting ripped off thus decided to go to other websites to read the book for free. (As a reader I'm not interested about how these sites got the story for free.) All I'm saying is that because webnovel isnt the biggest player in the market and people aren't stupid (like me) if the prices are as high as 100 usd to read a fantasy novel, people are not going to read anything on webnovel.
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veinglory But then you got to remember, those books normally at that price are professionally done. Have gone through extensive professional editing as well.
I don't think any of us can sit here and say the majority of stories on this site are getting professional editing done to them. Also in many cases we can't even say the same for the translations. If any we might be able to say 1% of them are close to professionally done.
So from the stand point of those 2 things, its still not fair to be charging that much for them. When the work being done isn't even professional. Because as stated before in this thread. Webnovel doesn't care about quality, they want quantity.
I can get everything on amazon ebook section for $10/month.
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WN premium novel authors are all amateur writers, their income is relative to the amount of words they put in their chapters. I dont think there is any editing either being done (might not even be allowed by qidian, idk) on published chapters.
The translated novels are pretty much all copy/paste. Almost all of them suffer from extreme repetitiveness, which i assume is directly related to the wordcount based income.
Asking money for these novels is a joke. Saying that it's not expensive is an even bigger joke. If you ask money for works of fiction than it should be an amount relative to the quality of it.
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I've had work professionally published (Wiley, Cleis etc), and I feel confident in saying that many of the books on WN are of a professional standard. That is why those authors have to consider their options carefully. If they submit to a traditional press their work will be edited; if they self-publish they may earn more than enough to pay for editing. Or not. It's all about weighing your options. It is certainly not all crap authors who should be grateful to grovel for pennies.
a year later
Can anyone advise other sites or content sources that I could use to read these types of material. This one has a confusing pricing and charging model (just search for "Webnovel .com Scam", and find all the many posts... I don't see that when I search for "Audible.com scam" or "amazon.com books scam" and I'd rather buy books using $ than words using SS, what ever that is. The fact that this thread even exists demonstrates the confusion and why the unhappiness is justified.