Webnovel.Forum

KoraL Fast passes and points do not generate revenue, so I have no idea where you pulled that $500 figure from. Are you talking about ads? Let's say you watch an ad every 2 minutes, which gives you 5 points or so. To get a fast pass for 1,000 points, you'll need to watch 200 ads. According to CKTalon, Webnovel gets only 0.02 cents per ad view. So that's 4 cents for a single fast pass. Even if you somehow get 1,000 fast passes, that's $40, nowhere near the $500 you're claiming. Let's multiply that by 80 as you suggested - so you have $3,200 that isn't being distributed to authors. Given that you have close to a few hundred contracted authors on this site, you have to divide the $3,200 among a few hundred (let's say 300). So, what, they avoid paying us $10 (if it's 500, it's basically $6)? And how do you distribute this "avoided royalties" among the writers, given that we are paid per view?

In fact, given the minimum guaranteed sum, it's fair to say that this extra revenue being generated by ads goes to paying the $200 (or $400 for older writers) that's guaranteed for new contracted writers, regardless of how much they earn (for example, I only get paid $1 in my first month because I'm such a pathetic writer and nobody wants to read my stories - Webnovel is paying me $399 out of their own pocket - where do you think they get this money from? Most likely from other revenues, such as those generated by ads). So what exactly is there for us to complain about? That we are denied $6-$10 a month?

Tomoyuki The math was done in a prior post assuming ads gave 2 points a piece and 500 was per annum per thousand fast passes per week. I don't actually know the contract details, and since it's all hush hush, of course I wouldn't know about the guarantee portion as I don't know if the royalty bit was accurate either. I do know though that if your royalty payout ever exceeds the guarantee amount, Webnovel has at least broken even on your writing guarantee based on a 50% quota share.
Also, you may not mind losing out on 100 USD a year, but others may not.

KoraL Given that you're given $800 for the first 4 months in return, minimum, I don't think you can complain about that.

Furthermore, you have not addressed any of the points I have made. How do you divide that among writers? It's not an equal distribution because obviously some readers get more views (the ads are on their stories) than others, so it's not fair to just give each person $10. Not to mention, those non-contracted writers or fanfiction writers also contribute to the ad pool (sort of) or earning points from reading for a certain amount of time. Should they get paid from the pool of ad revenue too? How does that even make sense? What do we do about these guys who post stories for free, and people generate points for free on their stories? Have you taken those points accumulated this way into account? Additionally, $10 is just an estimation, and it's probably even less than that because you get 5 points for reading a story for 2 minutes WITHOUT any ads. Let's assume that only half the points are earned from ads, and the other half from reading alone. So it's probably about $3-5, rather than $6-10. Are you seriously going to revolt just because you miss out on $60 a year despite receiving $800-1,600 for the first four months?

That just sounds like greed to me, a case of biting the hand that feeds you just because they don't give you the pocket change they earn over ads. I can tell you that in real life, you just get the salary that is owed to you, even if it's commission based. If your company generates extra income from other sources of avenue (ads, sponsors, whatever), they can give you bonuses, but they are not legally obligated to do so. Thinking that they are is just naivety. I assume you have a job and are employed by a company? Read up the clauses on your contract regarding bonuses.

Also, if you don't know the contract details, and aren't sure of anything, why are you coming up with all these assumptions and asking us to revolt, or assuming that we aren't "okay" with it? If we signed it, we're probably okay with it, otherwise we wouldn't have signed it in the first place.

Tomoyuki I wouldn't suggest equal distribution. I would actually suggest that the earned fast passes be counted as a new valued currency that is probably disproportionately spent on higher ranking novels. In this case, the top 10 or so contacted authors would likely see the greatest imputed loss, possibly ammounting to several times what the average writer would see. You speak as if salary, bonus, commission, and royalties are all the same, but they're not. The work I produce for my employer is exclusively theirs; they are nice to provide a non-zero bonus to incentivise me to continue to produce work for them. If I were paid a commission, it would be an amount I get based on a single sale of a product I do not own that they provided. If I were paid a royalty, it should be a share of the revenue/profit they earned from selling a product I produced that I still have rights to.

In the contracts, are you getting royalties, commissions, or bonuses? I'm sorry if I misunderstood the payment structure and you are a contractor getting paid for piecework with the occasional bonus.

I am arguing that they are selling the product by means of a ticket that they provided in exchange for some form of compensation. It would be like saying that if comrade pays Webnovel $5000 on behalf of their community, and Webnovel gives the entire community (excluding our generous comrade) your book for free in exchange, you should be happy to get none of it and it would be greedy to ask for any of it as part of a royalty.

Currently the scale is rather small, so I suppose it doesn't matter, but it's easier to negotiate when the operation is not overly profitable and still in its infancy. And to put things into perspective, there are a slew of class action lawsuits settled over "losses" that amount to less than $20 per person.

KoraL

It doesn't really matter. It's like the two for the price of one (buy one get one free) marketing tactic to get the zero price effect. All the "free" stuff given by WN (free coins, fast passes, points from reading) is just something that they do to keep readers on the platform until they're converted to paying readers. And most authors on this site understand this. Hence they volunteered their novels, out of their own will, to participate in the farming program, knowing they won't get anything from the ads revenue. They know they need to sacrifice something in order to get something better in return.

YulongYuXianTaiyin

1) Fan fiction is illegal. Period.
2) Most sane authors won't complain about non-profit fan fiction since they draw attention to the original work.
3) Making money from fan fiction is a big no-no. That's cashing in on someone else's IP.
4) The Webnovel contract makes it absolutely clear that 'cashing in on someone else's IP' is exactly the business model they're after in the first place. You sign off every copyright to adaptions and even give away the right to create more stories based on your own work.

Chryiss Gifts only provide a few cents to most fanfic authors as a monthly income, if they are lucky.

Your reply was crude and actually out of context.He in no way was rude he was just pointing out the price cost since new changes has almost doubled no one asked for free books but at the current rate of reading a book with 2k plus chapters and i use the word chapters loosely because 7 pages is hardly one the cost to finish each book is roughly 300 to 500 us dollars now if like me your reading 10 plus books your looking at 3000 to 6000 for a handful of books.

nofeariheal I never accused anyone of being rude?

And uh, diegosilang did technically ask to read for free because he claims that earning SS took most of his precious time and therefore "it cannot be considered free reading." But since when is earning SS worth any money?

I don't go to a bookstore and demand that I am entitled a free book just because I have to pass through the ads and posters pinned up in the bookshop. That's just not logical. That's all I'm pointing out. Certainly never accused anyone of being rude, nor am I taking his quote out of context.

Also, your math doesn't make sense. What book has 2,000 chapters? If you're paying $300-500 for a single series, you're paying for 100 volumes of a single series, and that means each book costs $3-5. Look at a Japanese webnovel for example. When they get adapted as a light novel, does Dengeki Bunko publish hundreds of chapters into a single volume? No. They divide it to about 10-20 chapters per volume, and then sell each volume at a full price. If you want to collect the entire series of Arifureta, for example, you buy 15 volumes, and that's going to cost you about $150. Why do people keep making up this "single book costs $500" when you're actually purchasing multiple volumes of the same series?

Perhaps you can make a case for these series needing to be cheaper because the quality is not there or whatever, but it's utter BS and completely dishonest to claim that you're paying $500 for a single book when you're actually purchasing approximately 100 volumes worth of content for that price.

Tomoyuki You can't really compare webnovel.com books to japanese light novels, those are professionally edited, and translated, as well as come with artwork. On top of that, many light novels are based on webnovels that were and are currently still free to read. Such as Mushoku Tensei, Shield Hero, Arifureta, etc.

That being said, webnovel, and translators are free to charge whatever they feel comfortable with.