Webnovel.Forum

MissZalasy i sympathize with you

Tomoyuki

KoraL

And ateveryoneelse

First thing first, thanks Tomo for great answer. I couldn't be bothered to write something as precise and on the point, because halfway through writing such a wall of text, I would get sidetracked and lost the main idea of the post.

And to everyone else - You know why I'm so against free readers?

Not because they are free at all. But let me paraprashe one saying here:

Not all free readers are pirates, but all pirates are free readers.

And seeing your book who doesn't do so good on the original site, being on the damned TOP 1 on one of the biggest pirate sites (yes, authors keeps a tabs on them way better than readers to) only makes me feel like all the
effort I input into writing so far, over 400k words, all I give to write a proper outline to guide me, all the events I planned for the comming chapters... Are all meaningless. Not only because people simply don't care about me - I have some readers that have enough brains to do EVERYTHING legally, just by exploiting WN system. Even if it means less money for me, it has its other benefits - but because they support the people that took a point to earn money from stealing hard work of others.

KoraL

And here, I will be directing myself to you in particual.

A few days ago, I actually went into a deep though about the possible changes if not complete overhaul of the payment system, that could prove to be beneficial for all sides.

BUT:

1st - as long as the exact informations are hidden, the system HAS TO remain simple. Right now, you as an author, can still somewhat guess your earnings, from the amount of subscribtions you are getting, the number of words in your chapter on average and all. BUT! If we want to expand the system to make it in a way that sucks way more money from everyone's pocket in much more pleasant and commonly accepted way... Then there needs to be a change in the company policy regarding the information. No author will agree to implement changes that would overall cloud their view on the situation.

2nd - Variety. Everyone comes to the WebNovel with diffrent mindset. Some wants to read loads of diffrent kinds of books, some just want to check the site out, some followed their beloved book being transferred here and can't care less about any other novel, some just want to read all sorts of isekaied RPG system harem smut novels. But that means, having one, unified currency and moneygrubbing system (yep, a pun from one of the more popular novels out here) means that there is only a small part of customers in the golden spot (where their needs and the WN offer align perfectly with the prices they are okay to offer).

Lets say for the argument sake, that we have 3 people. One needs to read one chapter a day, one needs to read 15 diffrent chapters from diffrent novels while one needs to read 10 chapters from a single story. That means, that in current situation, only one of the people will be able to be happy, because he can carter to his needs with just free pass alone. But what about this guys that reads oine chapter, but from fifteen books at one time? Should there be an offer that allows him to PAY for reading a bit of huge variety of books? Okay, that won't be a problem to implement! But what about the guy that wants to read ten chapters of a single story then? Yes, we can keep going and offer him diffrent promotion or service, but there are much much more types of readers out there. If we were to create an offer for each of them specifically... The system would become a clusterfck of diffrent offers, some most likely less expensive than others, giving way for various exploits and authors ranting about how everything was now unclear and hidden. In the end, unless everything is starkly outlined at present in the author's profile (even if its visible only for him), you can't implement changes that would turn the entire monetization system into a mess.

3rd - You know, I had the idea to introduce three types and three kinds and three sizes(?) of membership. Namely:
Types:
- Translation only - applies only to translated novel
- Oryginals only - same as above but to originals
- Comics? (THats something I didn't bother thinking at all about)
- All inclusive - applies to all novels outside of fanfics which are free anyway

Kinds:
Silver, gold and diamond membership, needs some explaining to do.

All novels on the site (with the separation beteween originals and translations) would be divided into three tiers, so that all tiers would bring overall the same amount of money. Just going with random numbers, 23 novels from the top would be in diamond belt, 241 novels below top 23 would be in the gold belt, while every other book would be in silver belt.
By buying silver membership, ytou get access to the silver book novels only. By buying gold, your membership only applies to gold belt books only, the same with diamond. For additional LOWER price, you could get bonus pass, that would allow you to buy the lower tier membership, for a fraction of its price.

Sizes:
Actually, the most important part.

There would be three types of sizes - standard one, where you just get 2 or 3 unlock all tokens, that allows you to read for free all the chapters from said one or two novels, and unlock all their future chapters for the time of your membership (with the exclusion of privledged chapters).

Advanced one, would allow you to read all the books from a single belt, (unless you expanded the size of membership)

and the premium one, allowing you to read both translations and originals at once.

THe main idea was to fight with the worse problem of the prevoius subscribtion service, where top authors suffered hit to the income, while authors at the bottom didn't really get anything out of it. So to fight it off, divice all the novels into three belts, so that each of the belst would earn equally as much, and one could better divide the income with the rule, the books on top are better so you pay more for less of them, books in the middle are a bit worse for reasons unknown (since well, they earn less, so there are less popular) but you have a greater choice, and the books at the bottom, are those from which you can try to find great pearls, for the cheapest price.

BUT

This idea has just as many flaws as it has pros. This post is way too long already, so there is no point in listing them out, but I want you to know, that I see more than two dozens of them, mosty of which are critical to the point, where without solving it, the entire system would be a bust. BUT ONCE AGAIN BUT:

The system above, could somehow lead to applicization of the wn app, with additions of bonus games.

You bought premium, ultra superduper membership? So you can spin our gatcha 777 times now! WOAH!

You b ought the most basic, standard, minimal, bronze membership? Dont worry, try spinning our gatcha 7 times!

Oh! You didn't get the price you were aiming for? You still want those free 50 chapters from any given book? Look! You can buy next 10 gatcha spins for only a single $!

There are so many great examples at monetisation of the stuff out there, why not make us of it?

And yeah. Points are trash. Dont even bother.

AutoChaos YOu either bring some important point, or bring your rant somewhere else.

KoraL

I was going with my diea towards the model of most of the apps, where you can introduce all sorts of stuff of lotery like inventions, that are great at sucking the money. Everyone loves it, so its an easy way to increase the revenue.

As for your proposal - it would never go through. Why someone should pay 2$ to read novel with 100 chapters locked while he could use it to read novel with 2000 chapters?

And well, that would give everyone access to something WAY MORE EXPENSIVE than this 2$ or even 10$. What I though about when reading your post is below:

Catch Up pass - unlock specifically for a single novel alone, allows you to buy all its current premium chapters (outside of priveledge and let's say, most recent daily release) for 50% of price, but it can only be used if you never got this tokenon said novel.
Daily Update pass - unlocks all daily chapters for a month, for 75% of estimated total cost of the chapters (something like privledge, if novel has 2chaps/day, it will unlock 2 chaps per day for you, but if author does mass release, you would've to catch up with those bonus chappies by yourself.

Overall, I think this is better proposal, because 1 - the price depeneds on the amount of work someone had to put in order to get his current amount of locked chapters, 2 - limited time reading will never work, because varoius people have varoius reading speed and lets be serious - you can't properly calculate the average cost of the entire premium novel on the site, with how some have 1k chapters while some have 50.

I do also want to point out, that at one point, Webnovel thought that <$1 per day was a fair price. They had to have considered the existing epic length sagas in this. I think it would have been fine had they restricted the number of novels people could read with it each month. Like add up to 5/10 novels to the subscription and you can change them each month when the subscription renewed instead of free range everything goes, read 50 ongoing novels and skim 10 epic length completed novels. Allow authors to opt out of subscription if that's more palatable.

Demonic_Mori_Jin how about 250 points per coin? I think that would be pretty fair for Webnovel.
I am just glad they haven't changed the free fast passes you get from check in, PS, and ES into points that need to be converted into a piddlier number of fast passes.

KoraL Yes, I think something along the lines you suggest would work. WebNovel needs to do something for the already completed novels or ongoing novels with a thousand or more premium chapters. People just aren't going to commit the hundreds of dollars necessary for reading them.

I think the current WebNovel scheme works well for keeping up with ongoing chapters. With the current membership plus $5-$10 top-ups/month I can keep up with 4 active novels (2-3 chapters per day each). I'm willing to pay that premium for works in progress.

KoraL, have you looked at wuxiaworld's VIP program? They are one of the few other non-pirate sites out there. I subscribed to their Gold-level VIP program last week, which enables me to read chapters from 3 completed novels of my choice (I can choose novels the first of every month, either continue on with the current ones or switch) for $10/month. (Silver level is read chapters from one completed novel per month). They have separate mechanisms for funding their ongoing and completed novels. I think something similar would work here as well.

MotivatedSloth I’m not a free reader, I purchase privlaged chapters and never read on pirate sites. I wish authors would link to outside sources for payment more often. I doubt they’re even seeing a fraction of the money I spend on their stuff. I would rather support them directly.

CrispyCritter I wouldn't know, since I don't read on WxW. I had always thought they operated on a combination of ad revenue and patreon/privilege

Bliinx We get 50%, actually, so yes, it helps a lot. Plus it raises our chances of getting a webcomic (and eventually animation) adaptation if we succeed on here.

Yoki_144 I second it.Too many points for fast pass.Now one can only read 3 to 4 chapters a day.So annoying.Something must be done ASAP

Akosua_Larbi There is one thing you can do - BUY FCKING COINS. If you like the story and want the author to continue writing it/translator group to continue to translate it, you need to make it worth their time. Simple as that.

Tomoyuki Does that include the purchase of privilege (like the 2000 or so coins to access the advance chapters)? I’ve seen that authors don’t get paid that much, but always see a lot of comments on some advance chapters. 50% seems too low tbh.

Bliinx

Yes, however you're spending your paid coins (to unlock chapter, to purchase privilege service, or to send them gifts), WN authors get a royalty cut from it, on net revenues, which means they get 50% of percentage cut after costs and taxes.

You may have heard stories about WN authors not getting paid that much before. Well, of course, it has a lot to do with the attractiveness and marketability of their novels to the general WN's audience. But, there were still many authors that used to earn so little despite the many valid views their novels had been getting. This is because only around 30% of WN's users were paying users. The rest used to rely solely on free coins, and unlike paid coins, authors don't get anything from free coins. Now that free coins have been abolished (for the most of it), I've been told that authors have started to see an increase in their income.

50% royalty is an average rate for digital publishers. Traditional publishing companies offer even a lower cut because there are typical costs of bound books; printing, binding, warehousing, shipping, etc. There are exceptions but the standard hardback royalty is 10%, often rising after specified sales thresholds to 12.5% and 15%. Similarly, 7.5% is the standard paperback royalty, generally rising to 10%.

You can read more about the business of publishing here.