Webnovel.Forum

Klepar We will develop a discount system that would apply even for the purchasing of a single chapter.

KoraL Typing by phone and I can't even remember all your longer questions. Anyway, let me try explaining. For the premium system, it sells FRESHNESS rather than chapters. If you wish to compare it with a completed novels, our novels will be ultimately be free after a certain period but kindle ebooks will still cost you whatever they charge you for (maybe lesser but they aren't free).

Another question you asked is why is the price higher than a perfectly translated and professionally edited ebook. Firstly, I have answered the price question above - our novels will ultimately be free but those DECENT novels won't. (Maybe free 50 years later when they become public domain)

Secondly, I believe stories provide you with entertainment than random bullshit, right? You like the story and you want to know what's going to happen next, so you end up paying for the entertainment. If our novels provide more entertainment than other books, then people are going to buy them. If other books are more attractive, then please let me know and I will buy them ASAP. Pricing is all about basic economics - demand and supply. Greater demand brings greater price, vice-versa. I could reorganize the question again in another direction - Why does a popcorn movie make greater revenue than a classic drama? Why are Naruto comic books not sold for free?
A Tale of Two Cities ebook costs nothing on Amazon! Well, the world doesn't work like that.

Oh, you also talked about business model issues. To be honest, we appreciate if you guys can give your business model suggestions but I believe email is a better way to leaving your 2 cents; at least, it is better than arguing on the forum...

In addition, I'm not sure if you would be surprised to hear that Amazon is really interested in our Premium model. I guess many of you don't know that we are a strategic partner of Amazon. We share suggestions all the time but it's really tough to just directly change your business model which has been proven to succeed in the past. That's why we prefer to test our Premium model, and Amazon keeps their business model. But yes, both of us are interested in any potential business models and wish to try fresh things in some cases.

Many of you suggested a subscription model which we have tried in the Chinese market. It was doing okay but not that good, at least worse than our current model, based on our domestic market experiences. It could be wrong in the global context but we need to run something we are more familiar with and have confidence in. We have never said that we won't try other methods in the future. That's a normal strategy which our business will practice moving forward.

All in all, thanks for your support and I hope you guys have a nice weekend. Last word, stop arguing and go read the new series - at least those are free reads!

Sailorman08 I won't say we will refuse to implement the subscription model forever. We have actually tried it in China, but honestly, it only worked so-so. We are still in the early stages in terms of the business model development. It's possible we implement the subscription option one day but it might not work like Amazon Kindle's model.

N0xiety I'm not saying that you are wrong. Actually it's a problem. However, we do believe that the market will teach authors who write up repetitive stories a lesson. In the long run, lazy or unqualified authors will be less popular than the real geniuses. If they realize that fewer people follow their works, then they will lose revenues if they don't improve soon. The quality is really a matter of skill rather than how the system designs in the long term.

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. :)

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!

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...

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.

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.

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 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...

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?

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.

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.

CKtalon I totally agree with you about the role of the market, but obviously qidian doesn't work enough on the market rules, except for the active deletion of sensitive content, as to improving the quality of recommendation content and combating abusing the system,as well as reducing typo errors in novels and so on, it should have done a better job.

I always get angry when read a chapter like these i listed previously.qidian has the duty to do something to control it, I think.

WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL That might work over in China, but here we get relatively few stories, so we don't really have a choice. There's no competition, so no market pressure to improve.

I love the stories and the service, but I think it's time for me to take a break from this website. It has become prohibitively expensive to the point of craziness. I think I've spent 3 dollars a day for the last 3 days, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've spent more than 50 dollars on here.

In terms of entertainment, I think I could have spent the money much better somewhere else. Hey, maybe if amazon does implement something like this, they will do it right.

In any case, I wish you all the best of luck, but I guess it's time to catch up on everything in my novelupdates library.