MotivatedSloth Nope. Double those numbers mate. 1 coin = 0.02 not 0.01. Therefore double everything. You would have a case, if you mentioned bonus coins (if they actually give them? I don't know). Say you buy 1000 coins, they are supposedly giving you a bonus of 1000 as well. This would make sense in that case. if we talk about the rate alone, it's $0.02 per coin. 10 coins means $0.2. 100 coins means $2
A 1500 chapters novel, will not cost you $30 or $60, it will be a lot more. From my estimates and what I saw, 10 coins is kind of an average for those. (around 2k words per chapter). If we assume that 80% of that is locked under the pay wall, you get 1200 chapters. Multiply that by 10 coins and you get 12000. Now if they give you those bonuses, you'd pay (no fast passes, only pay) around $120. That is if they give you those bonuses, otherwise this number is double. But there is a catch with that. The bonus coins expire after 30 days. So you would've to use up those coins rather quickly. I.e. 2500 bonus coins in a month, that is 250 chapters on average.
In other words, a casual reader (the E in your equation) wouldn't be able to do that. That is why this is complicated, and you can't calculate it very easily. It depends on the user. If they read slowly, they will be able to use those fast passes more.
That is an advantage. But that is not the majority. I've seen people read 50 chapters a day no problem. One guy read 300 something chapters in 3 days, of my novel. That is crazy. At that kind of pace, those fast passes are really useless. if you can binge the whole book in about 15 days, you only unlock 45 chapters for free. That means, you are still left with 1155 chapters paid. that equates to almost the same amount I wrote previously. Almost $120 (if you use those bonuses, which would be logical).
If I were to calculate it using the rate of $0.02 per coin... that's $230, which is beyond anything reasonable. If we assume someone is less superhuman, and does it in double time. It's still $220. Do you know why? It's because 3 fast passes a day means 90 fast passes in 30 days. that's 90 chapters, in other words 900 coins on average. We can extend that time to two months. 60 days, you know the results? $204. Yep, it would cost that much if we looked at the rate alone (1 coin = 0.02). Obviously, that is incorrect as long as those bonuses exist. But, it will be halved only. Which means over $100 anyway. If the bonuses are gone... whohoho Merry Christmas :D
Interestingly, you could get around 25 books on amazon for over $100. I checked those books, and they usually had 300-400 pages. (you know the ones for 4 dollars). I'm taking this a bit further, so hear me out. Since we assumed an average of 2000 words per chapter, we can calculate the number of words. which would equate to: 2,400,000 words (that's a lot). Now we need to make e-book pages out of it. If we divide this number, by the typical amount of words on each page of e-book, we get: 9600 pages (wow.. I used an average number of 250 words per page on reading device)... I have a fucking deja vu right now. Anyway, if we convert those 25 e-books to pages, we get around the same number.
BUT! That doesn't mean they are equal. Remember that those 25 books are fully edited and completed stories. Usually without fillers as well. You can also pick any 25 stories, whereas you only have 1 at webnovel. Sure they are shorter, but just because something is long, doesn't mean it's better. That is also under the pretence, that those bonus coins are distributed. Otherwise, you pay double.
One last thing before I go.
MotivatedSloth n other words, you are demanding authors to accept the fact that you are robbing them 4h worth of their worth daily, instead of coughing up fcking 0.16$ for reading damn 5 chaps daily? (in this scenario, your precious 0.16$ would amount to 0.08$ income for writer for 20h of his work. How do you feel about it now?)
Nope, it actually wouldn't amount to $0.08. It would be something like $0.06. Let me tell you why (I already explained elsewhere). The authors get 50% of their share from NET income. What you just showed here, is Gross Income. Net income is calculated like this: Gross income - webnovel's fees for the platform and whatnot = net income. The fees are basically operation and whatever. The number they take away, is not specified (it could be actually less than 0.06 or it could be a bit more like 0.07, but not 0.08). There are bank transfer fees too, if applicable but I think they are everywhere (maybe except if you live in china). So in overall, if a reader pays let's say $10, the author gets something like $4 out of it. Not so 50-50 anymore aye? Again, I don't know how much they deduce, but they do. That's it I guess, you are welcomed :D