Webnovel.Forum

Kandoral In what world does a real book/novel have 200 chapters? Please show me a real book/novel that has 200 chapters.

A normal Japanese light novel that's adapted from a web novel on Syousetsuka ni Narou would have 10 to 20 chapters. That would an equivalent of 80 to 160 coins, which is $1.60, or $3.20 per novel. How the hell did you get $31.96 per volume!? 200 chapters is basically the equivalent of 10 to 20 volumes. Let me give you the benefit of the doubt and say it's 10 volumes - you're basically buying each volume for around $3. Traditional Japanese light novels are sold at $12-15 on retail, if you buy from Kinokuniya.

And my calculations already asssume the high end of having each novel being about 30 chapters each. That's an equivalent of 240 coins, and $4.80 (I calculated $6, based on having each chapter be 10 coins each rather than 8).

Are you guys really, really bad at math? Who the hell calculates an entire series that's hundreds or even thousands of chapters long as one novel? It's obvious that you follow the next closest thing - the Japanese light novel and Syousetsuka ni narou model, and divide a single series into voumes. Do you complain about having to buy 20 volumes of Sword Art Online at $240?! No, right? That's because it's a single series divided into several volumes! What about Tate Yuusha no Nariagari (Rise of the Shield Hero)? Did you pretend that the hundreds of chapters on Syousetsuka ni Narou are the equivalent of one novel, or do you buy the 10+ volumes that have been officially published? Do you complain about having to spend $150 to buy 12 volumes of Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou (which started off as a webnovel series)?

My goodness, how on earth do you guys calculate? Or are you so obsessed with wanting free stuff that you're trying to blatantly pass off several volumes' worth of content as a single novel and demanding to pay much less?

Yeah, the quality of the novels here are pretty bad, but you're already paying a lower price than you would for normal professionally published novels. Not to mention, here you are actually paying for speed and frequency of update as opposed to waiting for months for a paperback volume to come out. And you're already paying like 25% of the prices of standard novels on retail, how much lower do you want the prices to go? Should webnovel writers write for free then?

Your attitudes just tell me you want to worm your way out of paying for content, or wanting to shortchange writers and content providers. I don't care about Webnovel or the company or the website itself, but I'm annoyed by how readers claim everything is unaffordable and expensive when it's not, and demanding that writers and content creators suck it up and sell their works for what amounts to slavery levels of payment.

Tomoyuki Who the hell calculates an entire series that's hundreds or even thousands of chapters long as one novel?

I don't want to argue prices, just an opinion: when people think of a book, they like to think that a story in one book/volume has a clear ending (or an ending with continuation in another book/volume). And they didn't want to buy another book/volume to finish a storyline of a volume.

And what you doing here:

Tomoyuki 200 chapters is basically the equivalent of 10 to 20 volumes.

goes against logic what book is, where you taking random 200 chapters, and just split it to volumes.

Usually, one volume of web novel has 90-130 chapters (differs not just between novels, even the same novel can have differences like that in volumes).

And when I'm buying a book, I'm buying a story as a whole, I don't care will there bee 800 or 750 pages (or equal amount of words/chapters), while you sticking to prices for wordcount.
And I think that every author gets paid for a book by the number of books was bought/printed, not for amount of words in it.
And the job where you got paid for wordcount are copywriter, not the book author.
Pls, correct me if I'm wrong.

Exinaus Uh, yeah, you're wrong. I literally used the Japanese light novel and online Syousetsuka ni Narou model as examples. It's not random 200 chapters that are split into volumes. And obviously a 800-page book will cost double of a 400-page book.

For example, let's take Arifureta Shokuyou de Sekai Saikyou, for example. The original webnovel has almost 400 chapters. Did Kadokawa package all 400 chapters into a single "novel"? No, they didn't. They divided it into volumes, each featuring 10 chapters, and about 250 pages per volume (that's about 75,000 words per volume). If you try to cram all 400 chapters into a single volume, you'll have a book that's 10,000 pages long. That's super impractical.

Tate no Yuusha no nariagari also has 400 webnovel chapters posted online on Syousetsuka. When they package it and publish it as novels, they divided it into volumes of 8 to 10 chapters each. it's highly impractical to bundle all 400 chapters, or even 200 chapters into a single novel.

Okay, you're not fine with the Japanese example? Let's look at Qidian novels then.

Let's look at Coiling Dragon. Each volume has 25 chapters each. And there are 40 volumes of it. Same with Battle through the Heavens. They split up half of the entire story into about 20 volumes (as far as I know), and they are still releasing the rest of the chapters in other volumes, which will probably go up to volume 40 at this rate. Who is going to bundle 1,000 chapters into a single volume that's probably going to be 10,000 to 20,000 pages long and sell it for the price of a single 400-page novel?

Yeah, you are wrong if you think every author gets paid solely by the number of books bought/printed. That's commission alone, but obviously you get paid more the higher your word count. J. K. Rowling's Goblet of Fire was twice the price of her earlier books because it was twice the length, and since she earns based on percentage (or royalties), she naturally earns a higher income for the books where she has a higher number of pages. Same goes for the writers of Black Library. They don't earn the same amount of money for a short story as they do for a full-length novel (yes, and they do sell short stories). Black Library also sells eBooks, and since they are professionally written, edited and published, they are naturally a lot more expensive than the ones here on Qidian or Webnovel. Even without the cost of publishing, printing, distribution and whatever, as you claimed in your other post. They are only a couple of dollars cheaper than the hard copies (so a full-length eBook can cost up to $18). Writers are paid by percentages (or royalties). So they're going to earn more from the $15-18 full-length novel that they wrote than they are from their $3.99 short story or $8 novella.

I don't know how you can cram 90-130 chapters into a single book, not unless each chapter has about only 1,000 words. Otherwise it's super-impractical, and thick books naturally cost a lot more than thin books. You don't see a 600-page novel being sold at the same price as a 250-page novel. R.L.Stine's 120-page Goosebumps novel is only $7 in comparison to Ian Douglas's $15 320-page Star Carrier novel. Not unless you're talking about Harry Potter books, which are being sold at a discounted price after 10 years in distribution.

And you want to carry around a 800-page novel? Be my guest. Most consumers don't want to do that. By the way, that 800-page novel of yours is certainly going to cost you about $30-35, judging from prices I paid for (based on estimates from Royall Tyler's translation of Genji Monogatari or the Tale of Heike, which are over 700 pages long).

Exinaus No, my point is precisely that - Webnovel's rates are cheaper than books of Rowling, Martin and other writers, especially if you compare them word for word.

And if you're talking about Asian series...yeah? They started off as webnovels, you know? They ended up having over a million views and thus got sold? And even then, they are sold at a much higher rate than Qidian webnovels - Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou is sold at around $10-12, if I remember correctly. But like every other webnovelists, these webnovels are written by amateur writers first, and only got popular online before Kadokawa or other publishing companies snapped them up and gave them contracts. Wait, doesn't that sound...familiar? Because it is!

Most stories written here consist of repeated arcs - a cultivation story, for example, will have the home clan arc, the tournament arc, the treasure hunting arc, the training arc, the map change arc, etc. They don't just go 200 chapters without breaking those up into arcs, not unless they are a poor writer - and even if they do, their story will still be forcibly broken down into volumes, because it's highly impractical otherwise. Not unless you're saying people should pay the same amount for 10-20 chapters as they do for 200 chapters. Which makes no sense. I already gave you examples of how thicker books cost more (and no, I'm not literally saying they should cost 10-20 times more, I was giving a rough estimation).

I was counting the average for Coiling Dragon. Yeah, there are exceptions. And no, my logic doesn't mean volume 19 and 44 are sold 3 times the price of other volumes. My logic merely says they should be sold more expensive than other volumes. I was merely giving an estimation and pointing out that longer books are sold more than shorter books. I notice you didn't say anything about my Black Library examples.

Of course I am. Because we writers only earn 2 cents for every 200 words. We earn like 20 cents per every chapter (considering an average of 2,000 words per chapter). TWENTY CENTS! And you're saying we should earn less because we...are amateur?! Why you don't you ask us to write for free then? Oh, you want us to earn like...I don't know, 1 cent for each chapter that we spend a couple of hours writing?! Furthermore, it's not like you pay for every volume. First 100 to 200 chapters are free (depending on the author). If you read through the free chapters, and realize, "hey, this amateur writer sucks, he can't write a story" or "he keeps repeating the same phrases all over again" or "he's just padding his word count" - you have ample time to get an impression before you decide to invest in him. If you don't think his story is worth paying spirit stones/coins for, then fair enough. You already read his 100 chapters for free. Compare that to professional writers, where you don't get a free sample volume of their writing - you actually have to pay for and purchase right from volume 1. By the way, 100 chapters =/= 1 volume. It can be anywhere between 5-10 volumes. Even if we take Coiling Dragon as an example, it's like 2-3 volumes.

You compared us to roofers, miners, oil rig workers, etc. but they at least earn $20-30 an hour, with oil rig workers earning $5,000 to $10,000 a month, depending on what position they have. Now I'm not saying we should earn as much as them. I am aware their jobs are a lot more difficult than ours. But isn't that why they earn over a hundred times that of amateur writers? The difficulty and responsibility of their jobs are already reflected in the difference between our incomes. I'm not saying we should earn as much as famous authors such as Rowling, Martin, etc. (and you can bet those best-selling authors definitely earn way more than 2 cents per 200 words - most professional writers earn between 10 cents to $1 per word - contrast that to amateur writers earning 2 cents per 200 words). We already earn like 10 cents per hour, maybe 5 cents per hour for the slower writers. A pathetic, pitiful wage. And here you are whining about how we are over-earning, or over-charging readers. Here you are, demanding that we earn even less than several cents an hour. Dude, I know you have utterly no respect for the vocation, but this is ridiculous. If there's no incentive for us to write, then why should we bother? Furthermore, it's not as if every amateur writer gets the contract. Only those who manage to build a big fanbase, have consistent updates, are committed to their work (most writers who drop their stories or give up halfway obviously don't get contracts), and have at least some modicum of skill when compared to the rest get a contract. And the contract literally pays us several cents per hour, as opposed to a normal job, where you at least have minimum wage. How much less do you want us to earn from writing? Or will you be satisfied if we earn, I don't know 1 cent for every 1,000 words we write (according to your RMB example)? What kind of ridiculous rate is that? We might as well not bother signing any contract in the first place.

Yeah, of course I'm going to defend the current rate.