But of everybody shifts to piracy, the novels may go instinct. Even if they don't we may not have much choice. So there should be support to authors. At least if you can afford it.
Is Qidian or web novel is still worth it?
Shadowdracul And thats one of the major reasons why translations are dropping. People shift to pirate sites, novels doesn't earn enough to warrant the effort of translating/writing them, and ultimately, everyone losses. Pristine example of short-term thinking
If you go to pirate sites and the novel translation got stopped because it doesn't earn enough money. Did you really think those pirate sites will continue to translate it for you? Where do you think those pirate sites copy-paste their novels from? lol All we can do is trying to support it so the novel don't get dropped.
MotivatedSloth well the wn had previously a function that you could watch ads instead of paying spirit stones when they were still around. But it got scraped. And I think this was a decent system.
But then they had to do this weird new update.
consort I completely agree, My bad about that. But Please do understand that not all novels are dropped because lack of people spending coins on them. You can see by the thousands of sponsors a lot of dropped novels have. Its a cycle. A lot of novels are dropped after we invest in them and thus we go for pirate ones and thus other novels are affected. But again the biggest reason is the extreme lack of management from Qidian. I support almost all of the Wuxiaworld books, Hell I even bought the completed ones I had read years ago, Because they know responsibility, They completely the shit they take up. You know that if you start investing they will definitely deliver. Here there is no guarantee. Forget guarantees other than 2-5 translators others don’t even pay you any hid. No official responses. Nothing at all. They feel like dropping so they dropped, they don’t even let us know that they have dropped it. We have to wait for week to confirm by the lack of updates that yes this has been dropped. And they keep pumping new novels and trial reads to find out ways to earn. They don’t inspire confidence at all. This is also a reason for people going to pirate sites.
Also one main point here is that the translations here are not longer like the past where translators are doing it just for the hobby and for free, Even at that time they were more responsible than this. This novels are not commercial products, They sell it by chapter. Just dropping it half way because they are not earning enough is the biggest BS reason. Because they have already earned money and they didn’t set the expectations that we are just paying for whatever no of chapters they will release. We paid for the chapter with the expectations that book will be completed in return of our investment.
Then you never paid any attention to the explanation of why that system failed. Each ad paid the authors so little you would have had to be subjected to SCORES of ads per chapter just to make it worthwhile for the author.
Think about YouTube, a skippable thirty second ad at the start seems fine... but look at the ones that have three to four ads every ten minutes. In terms of webnovel it was calculated to make a standard chapter worth it... you'd have to be subjected to about thirty to forty ads. PER CHAPTER.
No reader would subject themselves to that but that's the volume of ads webnovel would force down your throat to make it viable for the author.
Still think it's a good system? For literally anyone?
We could say that commercialize translation of novel in the broader degree does hurt the industry, shifting in the spectrum from totally free to ad-based still tolerable. However, to extent to the side of pay for chapter is too fast for the market to accumulate enough potential payer.
If there is anyone to blame, it would be the webnovel management that have questionable management. For this scale of investment and parent company, Tencent, the management quality is not correlated. Arguably that even university fresh graduate may be better than them.
TheLordOfOrcs It was scrapped because the profits were laughtable, others already explained this part before me.
Shadowdracul But Please do understand that not all novels are dropped because lack of people spending coins on them.
That's the sole reason why translations are dropped. You need to understand one thing:
- There is already a market price for translators and editors. They need to earn at least the market average to stay in WN. That means, the projects they take on themselves has to be profitable enough for their own respective shares to reach that level of at least, the average.
And another one:
- Having thousands of fans doesn't mean anything. I have about 1.5k fans on my first novel, and while for me it's earn decently, it never reached the point where despite living in a relatively cheap country, I could live off writing it alone. I had to start another project (and now, a third one) to get myself closer to reaching this minimum amount required for me to go full time. But that's for originals, translators have even harder job with that, as every single chapter they produce, is an effect of work of the entire team rather than just a person.
Not gonna waste my time to reply to further replies. Not because they are bad or something, but because I'm lazy and tired.
Honestly I think this way of doing things is dying. The amount of money one would have to spend on a single book in the web novel library is LAUGHABLE! We are talking, sometimes, over a hundred dollars for the equivalent of a harry potter book in length... and you still have not finished the book yet. There is not enough rich people in the world to afford books at that price, especially if I want to read more than 3 books on this site. I started reading webnovels in earnest years ago when we they still had ads to play to unlock chapters in certain books. Since then, it has only gotten more expensive per chapter, with it being harder and harder to unlock chapters from a variety of books at the same time. I went from reading around 6ish novels officially here to 2 because I do not have enough passes or whatever the new thing is. The rest I find other ways, which yes leads to what we have going on now, but WTF am I supposed to do? I am no millionaire and even if I was I WOULD NEVER BUY A BOOK THIS WAY, TRANSLATED OR NOT!!!!
So no, my personal opinion is that this site has chosen a terrible model to place themselves in, and it will ultimately fail.
- Edited
Webnoveling is a tool for writer wannabes to get free editing/feedback until they improve to go pro.
Webnovels aren't meant to be a money making machine. The periodic publishing format only allows for "light" novels.
Authors who think they are good enough should just properly publish on @mazon or something and stop whining about not making enough money here.
p.s I've heard some people have major patreon support and don't really give a damn about WN coins or other crap
- Edited
My opinion as a contracted author and reader is that Webnovel is not flexible enough.
Every contracted author/novel has the same treatment. It is also true for translated novels. The thing is that there's sometimes a huge gap between these novels whether it is because of the awful grammar of some, the bad translation, or the easy going cliche stories full of minor/big plot holes.
The fact that these contracted/premium works have the same treatment/prices give the message that it is the same quality.
Webnovel should first set some tiers/prices according to the objective qualities (edited work, standard of grammar ect..). But also include the option of buying finished/edited volumes at a set price under an epub format. (because if webnovel app/website is shut down you can't access what you paid for anymore)
Last, as everything in other markets, webnovels should depreciate. The price per word right now is the price of a new printed edited book. Normally, old webnovels over 5 years old should have a lower price (1/2 to 1/5 of their current price depending of their years of existence). It's not possible to catch up reading an active webnovel over 1000-2000 chapters for most readers. It's just too expensive.
In the end, I would still try a real membership system with full access to the library, but apparently it was not viable for the authors even if I think once again that Webnovel was not flexible enough. There could have been different prices for different types of readers and on the long run it would have brought more readers.
If you say this to justify the fact you read on illegal websites, there's nothing to be proud of. Free reading on wattpad ect.. has always existed, but even after years of existence you can't find many stories as long as the ones on Webnovel(and personally I hardly find anything of my tastes there. Only bitlit seems to be successful and overflowing.) It's obvious that writing by passion alone is not enough to feed an author. Sooner or later, without support authors have to work to make a living, that's a fact. By passion, most authors write slowly and more sporadically when they feel like it or when they feel inspired. After all, writing seriously at anytime is not relaxing, it needs true efforts.
That's cute Arkinslize .Not bothering to find WN novels on aggregator sites since i'm only reading a single novel here....the vast majority of webnovels here are not worth anyone's time.
It's tragic there are people that put "effort" to produce such work.
If your novel is good then just publish it properly.