Webnovel.Forum

Hi everyone~ Although I myself am not an author, I've spoken to a contracted author and feel this is important to inform everyone. The author told me that she only earns money when readers use spirit stones readers purchased with real currency to unlock chapters of a contracted novel. Authors don't make any money when you unlock chapters using spirit stones you got for daily logins. In addition, authors only get about a 50% cut of the unlocked chapters with paid spirit stones. As you may know 1 SS per 200 words and 1 SS is like $0.01 USD. Under contract, authors aren't allowed to earn any extra money off their work through platforms like Patreon and the like, so the only way they can earn money is through readers using purchased SS to unlock their novel chapters. If you can spend money and want to, please try to spend purchased SS on contracted authors! Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day~

Tomochinyan that was a wonderful thought:) really appreciate that.

Tomochinyan
As long as the price is ridicules high and webnovel want to have a higher reward I won't spend money here.

I have to pay over 100$ for a simple novel on webnovel.

Sorry but if the authors want to get an better income they should choose a different website or complete the book first and then produce an eBook.

I know it is maybe not fair for many authors here but I read many books in a month. If I would pay everyone I would spend thousands of $ every month.

Webnovel choose a path for illegal reading since they started a subscription with limitless reading and then stopped it and choose the privilege system.
They want the people as cash cows and now I have only one question: Why should I support such a system?

Angko Elite limitless subscription was meant to be for the masses. Privilege is meant for the rich. It's catered to two different segments of readers.

However, Elite harmed the authors, so they took it away. As a platform, Elite actually is more profitable for Webnovel, since they are the ones who gets first dibs in the money in a collective manner, before sharing whatever the Elite subscriptions earn to the authors.

Think an all-you-can eat buffet. The restaurant charges a flat fee overall. It profits on the average, but individually, some customers can eat a lot, some can't eat a lot. And the authors are in some sense, the dishes.

Some contracted authors hav Patreon though like author wiz??? And he also have his books on amazon?? So contracted staff can have patreon?

Many other top authors also use third party funds like ko-fi. And they are contracted authors too.

CKtalon
And I say it again and again. I was a paying customer and this business management got me to spend 0 purchased SS since the cancellation of the subscription and I won't buy any more SS as long as there isn't a fair system.

If enough people pay 25$/month the authors income doesn't drop and the company income will rise. But something like this needs time - it works with other companies. I don't know why webnovel want to kill the app with the almost monthly system change.

And I am not the only one. It is how to fuck off the paying readers from a working plattform because a company is greedy and needs a big piece of the cake.

Angko

Angko If enough people pay 25$/month the authors income doesn't drop

I don't think that's true for all authors, at least for values of "enough" that are less than millions of folks. My guess is the top 10 authors income did and would continue to drop under the pure subscription plan. I'm paying $20/month in SS to keep up-to-date on 4 webnovels. With the subscription plan I was paying $25/month for those 4 webnovels updates, plus also reading another 2000 or more chapters per month. So the income from me to those 4 authors dropped by some 95%. I would think that I'm typical of a large segment of webnovel's paying customers.

The majority of the 2000+ additional chapters I was reading are books I wouldn't read if they weren't free. The rest are books I would pay something for, but not webnovel's very high SS rate. That's going to be a problem for webnovel going forward - as books get completed, people are not going to start reading them knowing that it will cost hundreds of dollars to finish them. I'm not going to start anything new at webnovel under their current scheme; they need to offer some alternative to the subscription.

Elsewhere I suggested a subscription scheme of getting rights to read unlimited chapters in one book of your choice plus get 3000 SS for your $25/month. Another alternative (once more books get finished) is 3000 SS plus unlimited reading of completed books.

CrispyCritter
The bad thing is many customers stop reading new novels from new contracted authors.
You can't read many stories because of the costs as long as there isn't a subscription.

I started many original novels at my subscription time and many comics. I stopped them all because I won't buy SS.
The stories are ok but they are not good enough to make me addicted.

Angko I'm not saying people have to support such a system. I myself don't have money to spend on purchasing stones. I'm just informing readers who are actually willing to purchase stones and want to support original authors on Webnovel. :)

Mystiga I was told that contracted authors are NOT allowed to use third party platforms. O . O Maybe that author is doing it against contract protocols.

ThyUnknownSaint To be honest, I'm not sure. I've spoken to the author regarding how she earns money on Webnovel. This is a good question and now I'm curious as well

Angko I agree it's a problem for newly contracted authors. But if everybody thinks the same as you do, that the stories aren't worth paying for, then honestly, why should they get paid?

In some sense, it would be nice if there were tiers of books at different price levels so that new authors could get just a bit, but I can imagine all the complaints people would have about it! Webnovel needs to find some solution that keeps the income of the top books the same but allows some payment to the others. Their initial subscription approach didn't do that.

CrispyCritter
I'll pay for books on other plattforms but I don't support such a plattform like webnovel anymore. The price of the books is different. If I have to pay 5$ for a medicore complete book I can say ok I understand but 50$ in SS for a book only because of the chapters and I don't know if the author will end the book - hmm I say no. And most of the books have problems with grammatic. They aren't edited or they change all in a similar way because an other book makes good money with it.

The problem is with webnovel and the system.
I read books on MoboReader, Amazon. I used WattPad. I read fanfictions on fanfiction net.
I know many sites but I stay here and wait for a good solution of webnovel. The only thing I stopped for now is the payment of stories since it isn't fair for people who read much. Give me a fair solution you will get a paying customer back.

And the solution about a fair payment would be like the kindle unlimited payment. You get paid for every site the reader reads. Maybe the big authors get less at first but some people will start the stories where a chapter cost 10 or 15 SS. And the people can still send some gifts for the stories or authors.

It needs time and everytime something change there are people who are complaining.

Angko I agree with you that webnovel needs to offer another option that better supports its multiple goals. I think they agree too, that's why they offered the subscription service.

When I pay money to webnovel, I personally am not paying for a finished product, like I get on Kindle; I am paying for a product to be finished. I see something I like and I want to see it continue, both for me and for others. So I reward both the author/translator and the mechanism (webnovel) that allows me to find such work by buying SS, and if I really like it, by buying Privilege.

While it might be nice for the newly contracted authors to get more money via webnovel, for most of them the little money they get is better than any other option for them. Authors on Kindle don't get any money until a book is finished and the reader is paying for a finished product. If the goal of the author is to get readers (and comments/help) and not to get money, then they shouldn't have signed a contract with webnovel and instead published unsigned and for free here or somewhere else. Webnovel contracts at least allow those authors to get supported by those who want to.

Welp. Does giving gifts (balloons and such) to the novel help the authors?

Shaadhin only if they come from paid SS, not the free ones.