Webnovel.Forum

Zhinoy

I get where you're coming from, but it also costs digital platforms like webnovels a lot of money to keep its systems running so it would be available to their customers 24/7.

Forget about the content contributors' fees, but think about the servers costs, and if they're on cloud then they'll have to pay cloud providers, like google or amazon, and it costs a lot of money. Also paying their software engineers, database engineers, UX designers, etc. That also cost a lot of money. So even if a web novel is not materialized in a tangible thing, it still costs money to deliver them to the customers.

PS. Why is this thread still running? SMH...

Cantiara Well i was comparing physical copy vs digital copy, and you took a step further. I was also referring to Sloth saying it’s cheaper to read on WN than buying the actual thing, again number bashing people without thinking of any other reasons why it might cost that much. Of course maintenance on any platform costs money, but i am pretty sure WN is doing just fine. (~looks at all the people getting the xmas badge)

PS. running a server might not cost that much as you think.

MotivatedSloth
Before you accuse someone for spewing lies you should make correct comparisons and with equal statistical value.
First of all, you forget to include the 1000ss for access to premium chapters which kicks up the price, following your calculation, from €13,12 to €34,12.
I read reincarnation of the strongest sword god which costs around 9-10ss which is more than you ‘average’ chapter costs of 7.5ss. Thus the correct price I should pay is 3 x 30 x 9.5 / 1000 x €21 + €21 = ~ €39,- PER MONTH

Furthermore, if you think you are being smart by comparing physical books to webnovels then there are also kindle editions of light novels (digital versions) for only €6,- with the same amount of words.
Thus, using you analogy, I can:
- pay webnovel €1 for ~4400 words
- buy a kindle lighnovel €1 for ~10.600 words

Even IF someone buys gold/ss for ‘50% off’, which is a misleading marketing trick and is even illegal in the EU, nevertheless, webnovel still charges more per word than a kindle light novel. Furthermore, as you said it, the quality of webnovels are (much) lower.

EDIT:
And one more thing people can not buy ~1850SS then must pay 2000ss which equivalents €42,- PER MONTH... and yes, after you spent €504,- for one year for a single webnovel, then the 13th month is for free. Congratulations!

my eyes get blurry whenever there is calculations in these people post.

Heavens_Edge You got it wrong too. $1 is worth 10k words at webnovel. I'm not saying he is right though, because he always goes with the low range numbers. But that is the price for words. (and $1 is worth less than 1 euro). If you want to compare, compare completed books too. On kindle etc you buy completed volumes or books, therefore compare to completed volumes or books of the same quality and fame. The book he mentioned has a manga, anime and lightnovel... it's not some contracted stuff, that a newbie author came up with. They are able to charge more for such things, because the author made a name for himself.

If you compare to TKA for example, that is a completed book. It's popular, and has other medias surrounding it (manga and so on). TKA first volume is free, but let's assume its not. 90 chapters, that is how much it has. TKA I checked and 10 coins is an average (it could even be 11, as usually it was 12, 11 per chapter). if I take the same numbers as you guys did, then one could read this book in 30 days. With coins alone, that would equal to 900 coins, which is around $10 (with the bonus of course). If I were to subtract the fast passes, you'd pay nothing. Literally, nothing. 30 days means 90 fast passes.

Of course, that is under the condition, someone would actually spend 30 days reading 90 chapters... which is bs. In reality, the price would be around the same, as it is for the first volume of that other novel. Sure you get a copy with kindle. You can read it offline, and pretty much anywhere in the world. While others can argue that you get over 2x the amount of words for TKA. My problem is not the well known and popular novels, because webnovel has the right to charge that amount for them, no problems there. The problem is original stories, where they have poor editing, while the price stays the same.

On what basis should TKA cost the same, as some no name novel with mistakes? Price wise, it's not that different, it's the quality wise that differs (Besides, I said that at the beginning, it's basically the same. Only you get copies of the books with kindle, and you can even subscribe to get a lot more books cheaper).

@Cantiara Completed novels can be compared, so long they compare apples to apples. Completed novels here, would get rid of privilege, and under that pretence, they can be compared. (A completed volume of a book at amazon, and a completed volume at webnovel). That is comparable, so long they promote the same quality and fame. If you compare a well known book like I don't know Game of Thrones, to some new contracted work at webnovel, you don't have a comparison. A well know author against some guy or gal the webnovel community barely heard about... not a correct comparison. I never had a problem with people paying either. I mean what people do with their money, is not my concern. The equilibrium so far is only thanks to those bonus coins... for now. But yea, the best method is to wait and see.

Heavens_Edge

If you want to speak about privilege, you need to learn what it is in the first place.

Take an imaginative scenario.
An author gets 100 chapters free and goes premium. His release schedule is 2 chapters/day and he diligently sticks to it. But he realises that not only is his book pirated, the amount of loyal readers he has isn't enough for him to make even this 200$ per month (if you earned less in said month, you need to wait for the payment till the time when your combined income will cross this mark, in short - WN is not making transfers for less than 200$ which is rational considering various transfer fees that banks slap on top of it).

So he decided to work REALLY hard for some time and creates a privilege for 10/20 chapters.

That means he will STILL release 2 chapters a day without a hiccup (at least, that's the idea) but if someone can't wait to read next part of the story, they can UNLOCK THE PRIVILEGE to buy the stockpiled chapters. Meaning, you can pay additionally to read in advance.

What's more, if authors want to be kind to his readers, he can slap a discount to the chapters locked behind privilege. For example my idea for setting up the correct privilege:

The author writes 1k long chapters, always costing 6 coins.
He writes 2 chapters a day, so that means his monthly output of published chapters is worth 30x2x6 = 360ss/coins
So he sets the price for 10 chapters at 80 coins and adds 25% discount to the chapters, or 160 coins for 20 chapters privilege and 50% discount for the chapters.

That means that the amount paid by the user isn't changing at all, but the author can ensure that at least this 10-20 chapters have less chance to be pirated.

For the free user, he will still be able to unlock all the chapters with free passes, but if he wants to read the advanced ones, he would need to fork out some money and support the author (because both the privilege and privileged chapters can only be bought with coins or so I heard.)

Of course, most of the authors want to actually make money out of the privilege, so they can, for example, make the price of 10 chapters from the previous example to be 200 coins without any discount, and 20 chapters privilege would cost 500 coins, with 10% discount to encourage people to buy this more expensive package.

But you need to remember, that privilege isn't compulsory to read the book! If a book is FINISHED but still has privileged chapters, just ask the staff to remove it, I saw the situations when it happened. It's a translator/author's fault for not changing the status of the novel to the finished.

But all in all, if there is priviledge or not, you don't need to bother yourself with it. Without the priviledge, you wouldn't be able to read those chaptes in advance at all, with priviledge you can BUY access to those chapters in advance. That's all there is to it.

PS; Just noticed your last post. It's not WN setting up the prices for the privilege. It's all in the hands of author/translator.

For example, I can (and will soon) set up privilege for my chapters.... to 1 coin. Because that will probably lock the pirates from botting my story on their site, while readers won't be influenced by it at all.