- Edited
TargetPractice1 I doubt you know how much traffic has been lost by us, right? But I do know how much traffic we receive and lose everyday. There is a platform called App Annie which can be used to track the traffic. :)
Spirit Stone cost to read an entire Novel?
- Edited
WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL I'm having a hard time describing it, but the idea is that a user could purchase a premium chapter (only one, two or more; up to the user) and still get the weeks free releases for that novel without reducing the number by those that they purchased. I could write the code for the implementation easier then I can explain it... but instead of purchasing a single chapter, they are purchasing an advance chapter which pushes them ahead of the free release by one without overlapping.
If a user purchases 2 chapters from a Premium novel then combined with the free release they would receive a total of 9 chapters that could be read that week, (2+7). This would also remove the forced purchase of just a few novel's premium chapters since we could skip around and purchase from different novels without subtracting from the free releases that could be read. It would reduce the number of premium chapters that would be purchased per novel but would probably increase overall purchases.
Currently, purchasers of advance chapters don't receive any free chapters from a novel that they "subscribe" to unless the number of chapters purchased is lower than the number of free releases (I hope that makes sense). If we compare it to the earlier example of someone who bought 2 advance chapters then they currently get a total of 7 chapters for that week, which includes the purchased ones, as the free chapters have to "catch up" to the user.
If someone else can help me describe this better, than please do so. I'm horrible at communication!
- Edited
Hmm, I think I just realized a problem with my suggestion... provided that the number of Premium and free releases are equal then that severely limits the number of purchasable chapters... to the total number of chapters released in a week. That would have to be accounted for somehow... Anyway, the theory was to remove some of the negative limitations of purchasing only one or two chapters. So the readers could do more picking and choosing of what to support per week without feeling that they wasted their time. Anything that fulfills that purpose is fine, my original plan probably won't work with some of the novels due to the current numbers being released weekly.
I don't really want to suggest reducing the number of free chapters to make my original plan work...
- Edited
WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL you are just encouraging the authors writing fillers since the premium base on words count while a refined story need to reduce unnecessary words.if the market really works there shouldn't have been so many repetive stories.Why do you just want to do business rather than think about providing better service and a better user experience?stop encouraging this trend please really annoying.You should punish those trash authors severely and never recommend their works.
WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL Thank you for responding and clarifying your stance.
Why is direct email preferable to suggestions on the forum? When readers are able to debate the pros and cons of something, we're collaborating to improve the suggestions.
Have you looked into Tapas' business model? On some of their offerings, they have locked chapters which are unlocked using novel/comic specific keys. These keys can be bought using the app currency which can be bought for real money. They can also be obtained by starting a timer for that novel/comic.
KoraL From your description, I can't tell how it is different from the current system, can you expand on that?
- Edited
APassingMe The key difference is the timer for keys. It means that those who purchase premium chapters can get a free chapters by using free keys instead of the current communal free chapter.
Actually, the current Tapas system is much more brutal than Qi's since they don't have communal free chapters on series with locks.
The current system is much more similar to how Radish operates.
- Edited
WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL well, you cannot compare the chinese market with the international market, those are worlds apart, but I can understand that you wanna begin with a model you are used to.
And honestly, Amazon's interest in your premium model doesn't mean anything at all. Big companies invest money and time in everything that could turn into profit. Just have a look at all those promising open source frameworks & technologies, each supported/in cooperation or sponsored by dozens or even hundreds of companies. If you got the money and manpower, it's just plausible to invest in something that could turn out profitable...
But about the repetitions and how the market will teach those authors: you realize that your chapterwise release model is the cause of it, so why not think of a solution there instead of hoping for one in something as uncertain as the market? The international community is probably not big enough yet for such a task. Just have a look at the current novels, the ones that are already finished get no attention at all, everyone just focuses on the newly translated ones. The update rate is also different for every novel, which can heavily influence the popularity of novels. And I don't know whether the chinese reader community dislikes repetitions and fillers as much as western readers when I look at all those asian grinder games 
I don't know how much money you are making off this, but I do know you have an opportunity cost. You lost about 3-4 ad views a day from me alone, as I dropped every novel I read that went premium.
The current system punishes avid fans (sells "freshness") and rewards casual readers that can postpone reading to wait for free chapters.
What does Qi want? They want the "whales", that just like in video games in-app-purchases, consist of most of the revenue.
WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL
I'd like you to check out some magic chapters.
https://m.qidian.com/book/3258971/375942083
This chapter flips over and over again and again and again, and it seems that a chapter is all about copying and pasting itself. The market may give some authors a lesson to cut back on their income, but the chapter is still out, because the author knows that the benefits outweigh the risks.
https://m.qidian.com/book/1004608738/396552786
Look at this another chapter, this is your top novel in the rank list, in order to complete the number of words , he writes so bad just like a kid student in a primary school.you also recommend him to the top of your rank list, this is not bad atmosphere is what?
The market is not omnipotent, the market has blindness, what you need to do as a content provider is not try to improve the quality of content?
Some interesting traffic data here https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/webnovel.com and here https://www.similarweb.com/website/webnovel.com#overview . Similarweb is supposed to be more accurate. Interesting that the vast majority of viewers are male.
Confucious If the market determines it's good, what can the publisher do? Censor the author for selling well?
Tonufan123 It's a little inaccurate since a huge number of readers use the apps. If you check on Google's Playstore, it has more than a million downloads already. Even if many of the installs are by the same user on multiple devices, that is still a sizable number of users that aren't captured by such web metrics.
- Edited
CKtalon There is a separate section for the Playstore App.
Edit: It's on Similarweb near the bottom, a link to the app data although it's pretty limited without paying for full access.
- Edited
I wish I had thought of this 15 years ago. Then I would be like Tan Jia and be earning $3M USD per year...
Still - as CKtalon says above - its all about market demand.
We demand and they supply (at their cost - it is a supplier's market after all).
We can only stop reading this stuff period or support local US webnovels - some of which are pretty good in WWX.
However, this is like smoking - it is difficult to stop. An addiction you may say.
I wish I was rich enough to pay for the novels as most people who can read this. However, I am not so will drag on my addiction day by day...until I die and resurrect in another universe...
- Edited
CKtalon And why not? isn't it because of their standards of payment that the trend has led to the popularity of word patchwork? If they want to solve this problem, they can either change the standard or control the quality. As to what kind of method is cheap and effective,the details need to be considered by them. If they want everything regulated by a free market, So what's the use of employees?
Confucious There's no way to enforce quality standards when the number of books is in the millions. It's not scalable. If you remove the pay per word system, it also penalizes honest authors who aren't abusing the system. So the best judges on this matter is the consumer. If they do not like it, they can vote with their wallets.
The free market is really one of the best ways to moderate it. If there's a better way, you might have to be the one coming up with the detailed studies because apparently no one has come up with anything better to date (even in other markets). It will probably be some groundbreaking Economics Nobel Prize worthy research.
The employees are there for separate job functions.
- Edited
zen7 That means the majority does not hate this system too much, at least in the Chinese market. Based on what I know, the audience's taste changes slightly over time, but they pick up novels flexibly. Sometimes translators pick a new series but others might pick an old title. It might confuse people and experience some of the weirder (outdated) ways of story building.
- Edited
KoraL Yes, Tapas Team is a close friend of ours. We talk to each other over the phone all the time to communicate business models and cooperation all the time. To be honest, I think people will be pissed off if we use their model... They don't give any free chapters daily unless through a key. Also the key is not given on each Premium title. Aside from that, in Tapas's model, 95% or even more of the content is paywalled.
BTW, we will host some Tapas comics in May once the comics system is hopefully implemented. Some of our novels will be hosted onto their platform too.