I usually find it fishy too, but this is a Chinese company. They won't throw up an Instagram with pictures of the authors signing on for English publishing.
So without that pride being shown, and no comments by said authors on their profiles on the Chinese websites, I do have worries.
That said. I mainly just read fanfics and the occasional trial read so it's not really my fight..
Hatake_Shirou yeah I do that too, but because some of the fan fic have an unstable release, the trial read become my place to vent my boredom and considering I found that some of them actually really it was a shame that they suddenly disappeared and the one that got chosen was actually some crappy novel, that was full of copy paste from other novel just with different concept.
@CKtalon @WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL what you guys take on this? Please give an answer.
Star rating is not an important factor regarding books to be chosen, especially given the fact that reviews can be deleted and are often times posted for the sake of exp.
Reviews are not indicative of a novel’s performance, at least not on this site. Example: “A Bite of Hogwarts” is by no means a bad novel in and of itself, but reviews for it were bombed because 1) it was posted under male lead with a female lead and 2) it is an unlicensed Harry Potter fan fiction.
Novels are picked up and pass trial read based off of how much money can be made by hiring translators and editors to translate content from the source. If there is not sufficient interest, Webnovel will rotate out trial read novels and not bother continuing translation.
There has also been a recent wave of novels dropped by translator on this site due to lack of popularity, mentioned on another thread.
Tbh, I think the free pass gained from voting with energy is to blame as well.
If I look at my personal habits, I read only fanfics and the occasional trial on here. That means that I have no use for any of the paid services and only the occasional free pass.
The result of that is that when a trial is sufficiently interesting to make me use free passes while they're up, I will often just vote randomly in the energy selection.
Usually that's the top female options but occasionally I take the effort to select the male lead books and select the topmost one there.
In this case I recall voting for a book about a bank in the title without a care.
I think I'm not the only one who vote randomly without being interested, just for the free pass.
After all, you don't need to have read or finished a trial you vote on just to vote on it. Which means the system mostly just encourages farming it for passes, as few people would otherwise vote on something.
Hense, most votes means very little as the moment the trial is gone, the book is removed from people's minds for being gone too long even if it does get translated and people will have lost their desire to read it again.
I think the whole gradual release system is inheritantly flawed anyway as it effects the quality of the authors publishing directly on here due to the way it works, but that's a topic for a different thread..
A thing to keep in mind is that they are two separate systems.
The Trial Reads are a pool of books that are options to get into the Voting Pool.
Trial reads have nothing to do with energy stones or fast passes as neither is used on Trial Read books. Energy stones are used on the Voting Pool options and is completely immaterial. They just determine which of the books gets worked on first.
Where as the Trial Read books are on the chopping block to see if they get translated AT ALL. And are chosen based on coins spent, the more people who buy all sixty chapters the better the chance that book gets picked.
What alot seem to have failed to realize is that Ratings, Reviews and Views are all completely useless for the Trial Read selection process. The sole contributing factor is coins spent.
As for the books that vanish... it's a large pool. When a book is chosen the rest are discarded. It's why you get your coins back for them. A new pool is generated. Prior unselected books may reappear but not until the rest of the pool likely has a chance first. Like this:
Week 1
Book A
Book B
Book C
Winner is book B
Week 2
Book D
Book E
Book F
Notice A and C aren't in the next pool? Cause there's possibly X number of other books waiting their turn, it's unfair to them for those first pool books to reoccur before the rest of the pool has its turn.
In short they didnt mysteriously disappear, the pool rotates. When the backlog has all been voted on we'll likely see repeats.
Darth_Xiane okay I understand that but why must the voting be based on the editor choice? I mean all the choice that have been made was... Um... How should I put it... Bland or just plain copy paste of other work, sometime even the mc of the story was just plain ididot or don't jave any personality.
Because the editor is the one in charge? Funny how a job works like that.
Darth_Xiane okay, but still if they want to make money they should at least make it enjoyable, I mean just with the privilege chaoter alone already made many people angry, and after gaining the privilege we still need to open it using coin. So the least they could do was make it enjoyable.
vannire So editor's choice is just the indicator of which novel was most profitable. It's a misnomer or so I've been told.
People who read on Webnovel love cliches. They are willing to offload massive amounts of money on cliches. I think readers who enjoy less cookie cutter works also tend to have more fast passes lying around, and are probably unlocking trial reads with fast passes. That ensures that the novels they enjoy are doomed to be less profitable, and thus not chosen.
And since all new translations that are chosen are nearly identical, Webnovel essentially pigeon holes itself into that type of dime novel and will only be able to attract more of the same type of reader perpetuating this as an endless cycle.
At least there are some interesting originals around. And I suppose if that won't cut it, you could always find a different translation community.
vannire So editor's choice is just the indicator of which novel was most profitable. It's a misnomer or so I've been told.
People who read on Webnovel love cliches. They are willing to offload massive amounts of money on cliches. I think readers who enjoy less cookie cutter works also tend to have more fast passes lying around, and are probably unlocking trial reads with fast passes. That ensures that the novels they enjoy are doomed to be less profitable, and thus not chosen.
And since all new translations that are chosen are nearly identical, Webnovel essentially pigeon holes itself into that type of dime novel and will only be able to attract more of the same type of reader perpetuating this as an endless cycle.
At least there are some interesting originals around. And I suppose if that won't cut it, you could always find a different translation community.
If only the "editor's choice" was more like the top 5 voted for novels by the viewers monthly. Including censored novels by the way because they are actually quite good and censored novels have entered trial read before somehow despite being censored/removed from qidian itself.
So the idea is to have a pool of raw novels. Lets say, 100 because machine translations are the easiest thing to get. You don't even have to translate the whole thing, just like 300 chapters. Don't tell me it's impossible, there are so many mtl sites out there. Readers interested in certain novels will read a mtl of it. If the reader finds it interesting even through "ROUGH" english, then they vote for it. And the top 5 each month is entered into trial where it undergoes another vote to see which ones are profitable.
Just an idea that isn't exactly expensive to implement. Hell Webnovel is already posting mtls of novels, just not promoting them or implementing a vote for official translation on it.
