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  • Too many points required for only buying a single Fast Pass

MotivatedSloth wow, I got through about half the tier stuff before my head started spinning. I just always thought the obvious answer was monetization of the limited free reading passes (bulk reading) and discount vouchers for a SINGLE novel. Like $2 for 24 hour access to a single novel and $1 for a 30% discount for a single novel for a month or similar. None of the site wide stuff diluting income among authors. Or instead of the discount, introduce a $2 per month to unlock a single chapter a day on a single novel for a month (this will reduce earnings, but may decrease fast pass usage on authors novels).
The cost above should be around what Webnovel originally intended their subscription to cover assuming 4.5 weekends a month for binge reading 2-3 binging days per weekend and 10-15 following novels per reader. Of course, don't take this as a final proposal or anything.

Or heck, bring the "subscription" program back at the same price and load it with 10 of the 7 day limited free reading passes to distribute ~$1 to each novel and 5 single chapter unlocks for a month to distribute ~$2. Or something.

      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.

          MotivatedSloth the point being that many people would balk at the thought of shelling out $200 at once for the 2k long novel. I also specifically used the 24 hour passes because the average person reads 250 words per minute. Maybe 500 for Webnovel skimming. For the 5 SS chapters, that's 2 minutes per chapter, 30 chapters an hour and up to 600 chapters at skimming speed with 4 hours to sleep/eat/etc. So that's minimum $7 to rent the novel. If we scale to more normal reading speeds, that's $28. Maybe $2 is too little for that kind of reading, but the reader was unlikely to start the novel otherwise. And $3 is definitely still in the range of what someone would probably be comfortable paying. Shorten it to 8 hours per pass if you think that helps, but I don't know if it would be as appealing for the price as 24 hours sounds. One time use per novel can also be added to make people not overly dependent upon them, but it might create unwanted levels of antiselection.

          And daily update pass scaling to author production is a good idea, it just might be a bit onerous to implement.

              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.

                MissZalasy I also think we should start atleast getting coins from daily challenges because if we're not getting more free passes atleast we would be gaining more coins so that we'll have a chance to purchase more chapters from comics and novels that have paid chapters.

                    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.

                                                        KoraL I don't think they are allowed to set-up a Ko-fi or other such monetization system once they are under a contract.

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