non_refert I don’t think so, because usually the same novel will have more or less same size of each chapter, but a few days ago I paid 10ss while I usually pay 3-4 for each chapter. I was shocked. I made the setting automatic but that chapter made my heart bleeds the whole day
This privilege thing is pure nonsense
Lordyken They will make more money with the privilege scam than they would by increasing the already outrageous prices for SS.
As for the elite membership system, it was NOT too good of a deal for readers. It was the ideal solution. It made more contenr available to the readers and allowed them to start gifting their free SS to their favorite authors. This in turn increased the authors revenue. It was only the poor stories (or poorly translated) ones that saw a decrease in revenue. This was good as it encouraged quality.
However, the memberships allowed WN to see how desirable their product was and thus they dropped the system in order to make more money themselves. A single "whale" is more profitable than 100+ normal customers.
Pokko There's a reason for this. The authors in China were dissatisfied with how things worked on Webnovel, which used to work a bit differently from Qidian. But that still doesn't change the fact that we're made to pay more than what is charged in China & that too for sub-standard translations (for the most part, though the quality has improved quite a bit now).
Sos91 oh I always thought it was bc of word count guess I saw wrong or rmr wrong.
It is based on word counts... 1 SS = 200 words. If you paid 10 SS for a chapter, there must have been 2000 words in that particular chapter.
Cantiara yeah but it seems either the author or translator like to add redundant words for the sake of increasing word count.
For example:
- in cultivation novels they kept explaining the same skill again and again. They kept spamming these long ass skill names.
- in gaming novels they kept showing the status screen and skill details with only minor to no changes at all every few chapters. Sometime these status took up half the chapter.
- in foods novel they keep describing the same cooking processes over and over again and sometimes too much details.
- in superstars or entertainment novels they freaking wrote part of or even the whole songs into the chapter. Songs that was available online.
- in medical novel they describe the same treatments in detail countless time and sometimes an illness' treatment took hundreds of chapters and each chapters described the same treatment processes.
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Alright :D As a web novel writer from China I think I can explain the situation a lil bit for ya.
First the whole "privileged chapters/episodes" model is already pretty common in Chinese video streaming platforms and some web novel platforms are also experimenting this, too, getting readers paying for "unlocking" the chapters then buy and read it. Its sole purpose is to squeeze money out of the users, to put it in the direct and ugly way, and the income doesn't increase much for authors directly, really, unless, potentially possibly, for future fixed-rate contracted writers because they are getting paid by words at the price settled in the contracts(e.g. 50 dollar per 1k words) and the increasing wealth of the website might lead to the increase in price for them(if the website wanted to), and for the same logic it could lead to the improvement in Minimum Guarantee System, too, IF WEBNOVEL WANTS TO.
I guess Webnovel is doing so out of their eagerness to explore and profit from the international market, because the domestic market isn't looking all good and friendly to them now. Yuewen Group--the company behind it--is the largest online publishing (I dunno if you guys have a proper name for this industry yet) group in China, indeed, but they probably see threats in the high competition they face in there(again, the business model of Webnovel has been developping in China for at least 15 years, it's really nothing new and because it's frigging lucrative lots of strong, new entrants are getting in the game), and the upcoming restrictions on webnovel contents resulted by governmental bans--just imagine, the whole "horror novel type" is going zip because newest policies don't allow writers to write about supernatural contents, I believe? And how great the loss it has caused for both authors and the website.
And also there's problem of user habits, too, for until this day, a quite large percentage of Chinese webnovel readers are still used to reading pirated novels and even feel rightious about it, and even if some writers try to fight for it, it's usually moot(:з)∠)the result of a general lack of legal education on IP protection in the entire society, whereas international readers are more used to...well at least "pay to read/watch", so they probably want to try take advantage of that and see to exactly what extent the price will be acceptible for you guys.
But they are just experimenting. If the market turns out to be rejecting it they will definitely cancel the thing. The whole "webnovel" thing is still new here, after all, there's plenty of room for changes and the price for changes is quite low, since Webnovel doesn't really have competitors in the international market yet ┑(￣Д ￣)┍ as far as I know, at least. They might be shitty at identifying good novels--especially for english readers--for they've been doing this too long in China but still new to you guys, so sometimes they might apply what they know about chinese readers to yous and it goes wrong, they are nevertheless good businessmen.
p.s. @RekiChan this kind of doing is really no secret among webnovel writers in China if you know about them XD we call this kind of act "watering", especially common for fix-rate contracted writers because they are frigging paid by words XDDDD
Fiona_Singer Fiona_Singer wow... Then shouldn't cultivation novels also included in the supernatural categories? Because cultivation of going against the heaven shouldn't be natural right? And all those novels with systems? isekai? Reincarnation? Sci-fi? All of them are not natural, so shouldn't they be in the supernatural category too?
I think there was once someone that did a calculation on how much it cost to read a novel to completion in webnovel. If I'm not wrong the average chapters count for Chinese novel is around 1500 chapters, most at 800 chapters and some at 2000+chapters. The average word count is around 2000 word per chapter so that's 10SS per chapter. So on average you'll need to spend 15000SS per novel. So that's around $230-$250(if include tax) to read one novel to completion. I'm not sure if that's normal in China but in Amazon the complete Harry Potter novels only cost around $50, complete Lord of the ring for $40, and the current Game of Thrones for $35.
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RekiChan For your first question I'm not quite sure. I stopped writing in China two years ago and have been in EU countries for a year now, though I still keep in touch with my Chinese writer friends, since I'm "out of the game" for quite a while I don't really know the details. Based on what I heard and my understanding, the reason for Chinese government to ban horror--or to be exact the "ghost story"--is that they believe it "promotes the ignorance of the feudal-age superstition", so based on this point of view, I guess they are mainly having problems about supernatural contents in realistic backgrounds, not with more otherworldly fantasies--at least for now.
It's rather political, tbh, because the nature of the ruling party CCP, our country should technically be atheistic and materialistic, but for a long time the government (especially since open-market age) didn't really pay attention to the "cultural regulation" so we pretty much have been very unrestricted in this area...well at least we allow ghost stories to exist :D But now there's this new political trend coming from "the highest command" that states something like "we have to build a national culture of socialism", and that starts the whole freaking trend of the bans on novels you guys probably already hear about ┑(￣Д ￣)┍ So I can't believe I'm saying this but I'M REALLY NOT SURE IF THEY WON'T FURTHER BAN ALL SUPERNATURAL CONTENTS IN THE FUTURE, based on all the crazy stuff that's going on. And it's not just on novels/scripts, games, too, like it's not allowed to have blood spary and corpses in FPS. HILARIOUS.
As for the price, I've just discovered this site about like a week ago so I didn't know the numbers you mentioned, and when I read about it I was like WOW. It's much frigging more expensive, and the writers aren't paid more proportionally, too, at least based on the minimum guarantee system thing. That's some freaking cold-blooded, greedy capitalism, Yuewen, you should be harmonized XDDD.
Fiona_Singer hiya, are u still writing in the EU and publishing in web novel??
Im also curious whats the minimum guarantee system like, because im writing a novel and not sure if its good money
Lordyken https://acts.webnovel.com/2018/62185143/index.html I'm not contracted but here's a link that summarizes everything officially
Thxs for the link :)
Fiona_Singer
Thanks for the Information.
We have over 1k comments in the announcment post about the cancellation of the subscription.
If you have time read it. We have diss and everything in it.
The only thing we don't have is an answer from Webnovel. 
I like to pay the authors but me and many others don't read on this site anymore (or only with free ss).
They do everything to loose paying customers.
Fiona_Singer Wow, you opened my eyes
PoeticPenguin XDDD what can i say i do that to people
2 months later
Lordyken First off I agree with you in that the current system is anti consumer. First off I find the privalage system is completely overpriced for example the Mech touch literally costs 3250 spirit stones. If compared to the cost of spirit stones it cost 100 dollars for 5000 stones that means for that I am being charged more for this “privileged” that’s not even permanent more than the actual cost of at least 3 or more books, it’s pure ridiculousness. But you know what this would have been fine at a minimum if they still had the monthly subscription, I mean yes they are still over charging the crap out of this but it would have at least been bearable. I don’t understand their logic it’s like they are trying to be come the EA of the novel platform but the difference is that there is no other choice they ruin every other competitor they have and especially pick on independent translation group. I really hate this website sometimes.
