Webnovel.Forum

WebNovel's parent company owns the distribution rights to hundreds of thousands Chinese webnovels (look at Qidian.com). They are the main Chinese webnovel publisher. The original Chinese authors are getting whatever payment was specified by their original contract with Qidian. In the case where that was a flat fee, that may indeed be nothing.

There's lots of discussions of whether the contracts of Qidian or WebNovel are fair to authors. But there is almost no reputable discussion (eg, from authors) about either publisher pirating works. WebNovel at least thinks it has the explicit legal right to publish all the novels on their site and the authors and translators are getting whatever their contracts say. It's one of very few non-pirate sites around.

Tofu So, are you a translator?

If so, would it be possible to translate at least 3 chapters of Plague Doctor/Week or hell, even 2 a week? A lot of people like that novel, but apparently it didn't make enough money.

Tofu So trial read is essentially for the translators to see if it's worth the effort to translate a certain novel? Or do you mean now that translator won't get paid atall?

Mute

As explained elsewhere qidian holds the rights to HUNDREDS of books. There's no way their translators can work on them all at the same time. Books get dropped due to low income freeing up the translator to work on more profitable ones.

Think of Trial Read as the users being polled on exactly which is more profitable to work on. The translators still get paid even if a book isn't picked but by the same token if a book isn't picked those sixty chapters is as far as the translation goes since translating beyond those sixty chapters is no longer for their job and becomes a passion project like TrueGodofExp is asking... of course qidian rather frowns on people translating their ips on their own since that is also how they make money so a cease and desist order is in the future of any 'generous' soul actually heeding the above users stupid request.

Just false hope only novel u spend could coins get selected

Although it's a passion project, it still fks up with the way trial read novels are inserted into the voting pool, it should've been added into the voting pool along with the next trial read novel "Astral Pet Store" instead of replacing astral pet store in the voting pool.

I wrote reasons why this was bad as a review on the book, I'm fine with removing it but the problem is that it messes up the future trial novels. Suppose there's trial books that people want to read. There is 4 each month and trial novels don't stay for more than a month. So out of 16 possible trial novels, only 4 is chosen each month before they are all replaced with other books.

Not to mention some trial novel books are rotated out after only 15 days, of course you might say that they just aren't popular but how are they going to compare with the trial novels that were released for more than 15 days. After all the coins from trial novels that don't get picked take a month to come back, and membership users probably don't have enough coins to vote for more than 2 trial novels.

Not every book is popular, I get that. If you currently look at the trial novels, almost every trial novel has about 100 to 200 fans and like 3 with less than 50 fans. And then you look at "Astral Pet Store" with over 700 fans. This literally shows that everyone has spent most of their coins on Astral Pet Store and they don't have enough for other trial novels. So now out of the 15 books remaining, 8 might get replaced with new novels next week. And since they are all relatively equal with the number of fans supporting the novels, someone's highly anticipated novel is going to get dropped.

Therefore, if one of those slots is replaced by a passion project, the readers are obviously not going to passionate about it.

TrueGodOfExp Translators spend a lot of time translating novels and many have this as their part time or even full time
Job. A novel that earns next to zero isn’t plausible because there’s no way anyone is able to live that way

Mute novels on trial reading are paid for by Webnovel and a way for them to assess the popularity of each book. Novels that pass trial reading are also paid by webnovel. Novels that got dropped but picked up as a passion project by a translator are not paid by webnovel but more of webnovel sharing an equity of the total revenue with the translator

Rocketduh Astral Pet wasn’t put into Voting Pool was because of other reasons that I don’t know of

Tofu do you mind sharing which translation groups are working with Webnovel under this revenue share framework for passion projects?

Rocketduh Astral Pet Store is in the Voting Pool already. The time it takes to enter a pool also depends on the translations. All trial books stop at 60. We only wait for a signal to continue before we continue translating. You can't expect them to build up a stockpile at a snap of the finger. A group needs to say okay, we can continue the book (they have the manpower to do it, e.g. the previously engaged translator is still around, available to work on it). This can take a few working days.

KoraL The decision to pick up dropped novels are made by respective translation groups. Picking up discontinued novels generally means you are taking a huge gamble on whether you can potentially make any money whatsoever. Some people do it in hope to earn extra, others do it because it's what they want to do.

As of right now, Exodus Tales only has Almighty Video Game Designer and Phoenix Destiny as part of this "passion" project.

CKtalon

That might look the same but really isn't. Movies acquire much more work and effort than translation/editing and can cost in the millions while taking years to produce. I'm not saying translating or editing isn't hard, but there's a big difference between making a movie and translating a novel.

I understand the point you're making, but it isn't exactly a good reason. All this really does is make people go to third parties and have it illegally translated if Webnovel won't do it.

I guess it doesn't matter though, I doubt anything will change.

TrueGodOfExp If they want to illegally translate, they might as well try to work with Webnovel.