First thing they need to do. Is place watch ad to view chapter every ten chapters or so. Irregardless of how new they are. This creates a snowballing effect where the content they have already produced generates a steady income without causing much stress to readers. This means as time goes on and they get new readers and have a greater library of finished novels their income will naturally increase without further input. This alone will put them in the black after a time.

The second thing they need to do is modify this premium system. It's obviously an attempt to bring patron future chapters into the revenue model and keep it under the same platform. Overall I don't mind this. BUT. It should follow the model and the unlock should express that its for a future chapter rather than a regular. And regular should continue to release at an unaffected rate just as it works on paetron.

Next they need to crowd source editing of chapters. First they need to have three professional editor's who regularly publish English fiction edit a few translated chapters of an unpopular novel that will never get on the English webnovel site. They need to agree on the areas of the mistakes. Then Qi needs to recruit between 100 to 500 special level account positions. These positions must be earned by successfully finding a majority of the key errors in the above edited test chapters. Those who score perfectly will be eligible to rise to an even more limited say 10 person group who will then be responsible for evaluating the other 100 to 500 initially and then as vacancy occurs and also do a set of spot checking a small number of edits done by those lower levels on a monthly basis. The 100 to 500 will have two tasks. Review and edit a small number of chapters of previously released content a month. And secondly review normal user submitted corrections. Users should be able to at the end of each chapter click a button to submit a correction to be reviewed by the above. A successful correction can earn experience or a small amount of spirit stones. Too many rejected corrections can block said user from that system.

Finally. Once a novel has been sufficiently edited thusly it can be released in 'books' both on ebook platforms such as Amazon Kindle as well as audiobooks on audible. Thus not only will readers love the better edited chapters but it will add yet another snowballing revenue stream by giving people what they want.

These are my thoughts.

I can agree on the ad idea and premium adjustment, but the issue is that they need somewhere to make money from. If they claim to be working at a loss when they had ads for latest chapters, they won't be that much better of by adding ads every 10 chapters and most certainly will not agree with that idea. As many others have said before, adding a subscription based charge (like Netflix and Crunchyroll) for ALL locked chapter for ALL novels would be better than buying spirit stones. After all, they need an income source. They can still keep their spirit stone system in parallel with that if they want.

Your third point is hard to agree on though since you're basically asking the company to invest more money for more editors. While it's good for readers like us, Qidian needs profit and they'll never agree to spending more than what they have been. Crowd source is also a difficult idea since there's too much to moderate and not very cost effective at the beginning especially with 100-500 people. Furthermore, that would also make the chapters more open to attacks from trolls and it's a whole mess to work with. Ebooks and Kindle is also another risk and they won't have returns on that for a long while.

While it's good that you're thinking about these things and coming up with ideas, I don't really think Qidian will agree with stuff that's not making money almost immediately. As much as I don't like Qidian's business practices, it's not just about them being greedy, rather, a company can't function for long without at least some profit.

    TheNobleLion When did I say the editors would be paid? They would get a nice shiny badge by their name. Free access to all chapters. And the pride of having their work published. This is easily more than enough for the work in question. Eg this is a fan community path.

    Secondly what you are missing in your initial reply is this. Yes they are operating at a loss now. However. As long as they control the number of novels being simultaneously translated as they seem to be doing. By adding the ads throughout completed work they continue to gain profit from works that no longer have any expenses. Hence for now it may be a loss. But at the point that readers expand to a particular extent and the work done outstrips the work being paid for they will have an endlessly profitable program.

    As to the Netflix style paywall. It would be suicide to long term profitability. The category is too niche at the moment you would have to spent too much on advertisements. By keeping it open freely while monitizing perks and having long term ad revenue in mind. You actually vastly increase income as you capture readers you would never have touched otherwise. Harnessing the community to expand vs trying to sell to a saturated market. Fiction press, fanfic.net, royalroadr, wattpad are just a few of the local competitors. All of which have just as good stories that don't have to first go through a translation process. The translation community in general has grown purely because of its free access mindset. Without reading a story you aren't going to be hooked enough to pay for it no matter how you hype it when there is so much competition. Netflix works because it's content that everyone wants, nobody has to say I wonder if Netflix has anything good. It has the movies and shows that are already well on the market and are known. Hence there isn't much of a need to market and explain why you would want the service.

        I disagree with you. Premium and Patreon should not be bundled together. Many translators have had Patreon EVEN before coming to QI. QI and Patreon are best seperate I already support Qi enough for buying some spirit stones. Patreon well that's supporting the actual translator doing the work.

          Naito So they'd be working for free. Not sure how many good editors would be willing to do that, but I can see that working though the process of finding these editors would cost some amount of money because at least one employee would have to moderate that. Not a huge amount though.

          Yes, but they don't have any completed work. Furthermore, a lot of people don't read the same novel more than two or three times so it can't be said to be endless profit. There's a limit to new readers as well. Still, although it wouldn't be endless profit, it would be a good way to make money. I'm honestly assuming that they're going to do that anyway. Still, that only comes after they start getting a couple of completed works which won't happen for a few months at least.

          Actually, it would be not so good for short-term profitability but great for long-term profitability. The readers of this category are growing quickly in size. I reckon it'll hit pretty high in a few years. However, I see how that might be a risk. Still, the difference between subscription and SS isn't much. There are people (like myself) who would refuse to pay for micro-transaction but would gladly pay for subscription so their profits shouldn't be that different from the current SS scheme. Besides, it's not as if there's no one reading. About 25,000 have installed the Qidian app from the Google store. Assuming similar population for Apple users, there at least 50,000 readers. Let's say 20% are willing to pay for subscription. That's 10,000 people paying (let's say) $10. That's $100,000 a month. This is the minimum income because I'm most likely understating the population of readers and also not taking into account ad revenue from free users. Also, that's only the starting amount.

          It would still be open freely though, I'm only saying subscription for locked chapters and keep the free release rate as well. That would solve the problem you've mentioned about not getting hooked. The sites you mentioned can't be called competitors. One market is original works while another is translations from well known Chinese writers. There's a bit of a difference between Western writers (who usually post on RRL, fiction press etc) and Chinese writers in terms of their style and stories. Qidian also has to pay their translators as opposed to freelance writers (they might have patreon or donations though) like on those other sites. Sites like RRL have a premium subscription as well, though it's for ad removal rather than more access to chapters.

          That being said, I'm not saying your ideas have no merit, only that the details involved would need to be planned out carefully and the statistics need to be calculated properly. Need to have information that we, as readers, are not able to access.

              I think a way of paying a lump sum for releases would be useful.

                A subscription/month would be for the best, seeing as once every novel is a premium novel you could end up paying hundreds of dollars a month to keep up with all of your favorites if you're like me. Something which is just silly

                  TheNobleLion Are they even paying editors? Chapters are riddled with grammatical errors that even I can spot and English is my 2nd language.... Looking at the quality of translation I doubt that any professionals are involved in the translation and editing process. Feels more like they've found some students for the job and not good ones either...

                      Vladimir Are they even paying editors?

                      The share for premium novels is 35% translator 35% editor 15% author 15% Qidian.
                      Don't know for normal novels, but I would guess almost the same, beside the fan translations on this site who don't earn any money.

                          Ebu8b I was asking if there are actually editors working for them because the number of grammatical errors and misspelled words is quite big and can be found in almost all translated chapters. When I compare the translations to for example Deathblade, who can be considered professional translator now, than they are clearly 1-2 or more levels below his quality. It feels like the translators and editors are students at most and the translation quality is not better and can be said to be worse than in novels that are being translated on fan sites.

                              Vladimir My opinion: The only translator who is on even terms with Deathblade is Cktalon. Other competitors in for high quality translation are non-existent.

                              Vladimir because the number of grammatical errors and misspelled words

                              Can't argue that. It's irritating and they should get better people.

                              Vladimir translators and editors are students

                              Just look at the translator notes and you will see that a few of them are students.
                              E.g.

                              Vladimir worse than in novels that are being translated on fan sites.

                              I wasn't joking when I said that Qidian has fan translations, I really meant fan translations. They don't need to apply the standards of the contract.

                                        English is like my 3rd spoken language and even I can tell that some of the translations were riddled with mistakes.

                                          NormalRanked that's why i strongly feel a moderated crowd sourced editing system as i described would be of great benefit.

                                              Web Novel Novel Ask