• Diss

  • Trial read wastes our time aswell as the translators.

Trial Reads is actually more profitable for both Webnovel and translators.
The well-liked books are continued, and that benefits Webnovel, the author, and translators monetarily.

Continuing a book that doesn't make money is just bad for the ecosystem. Webnovel runs out of money translating non-profitable books, and ends up shutting down the translation business, leaving all the translators out of job. The books that are dropped have very pathetic (paying) readership. Compare that to the successful Trial Read books which can earn from 2x to 10x more. But they aren't necessarily dropped. They are just on hiatus. You will be seeing some of the books continued in a few weeks to months.

Those books you are talking about (with less than 60 chapters) cost more for Webnovel actually. They are tailored-made books for the international market. And they are actually doing pretty well on Trial Reads at the ~24 hour mark, compared to Cuttlefish's new book.

"Good" is subjective, no matter what you say.

    CKtalon Seriously? Those books are doing well? I only read Your Talent Is Good; It's Now Mine, Forging The Path To Godliness and I Became A Mighty Lion, and the first 2 novels are rushed, i mean really rushed, with barely any meaningful dialogue, now you say they were tailor-made for international market i feel that the rushed crap writing style is actually done on purpose :S i worry about the future novels brought across if these are the ones that were "tailor made" for us.

    The lion novel synopsis really interested me but 40 chapters of nothing really progressing in the way of spirit qi returning kinda killed my interest, i would still follow it if it got selected though as the premise is new, spirit qi returning to the world but from the perspective of an animal.

    If Trial read makes money then i can't complain too much,, i was worried that translating 60 chapters of so many unselected novels were sapping too much time from translators.

    Offtopic: currently holding out hope that Magic Returns: Evolving As A Willow Tree is selected for trial read, i love novels like this.

        Offtopic: I really wish webnovel would stop trying to break into the korean translation scene, literally every korean translation on this site is trash, which is a shame because Korean novels are a lot more reasonable in length and are quite different in style to CN novels, i think the translation that hurt me the most was My Range is One Million, the concept really interested me but it's by far the worst translation i've come across.

        CKtalon

        From my cursory look something like over half of the previous trial read novels (male lead) have been dropped... This system is utterly worthless, webnovel pumps new novels into the library, but there are barely any new readers.

        So the current readers stop spending coins on other works (only the whales will buy more coins to read everything). There are barely any coin sales or flash deals to encourage current userbase to spend more... So the vicious cycle of barely any translation being finished continues.

          Mute If Trial read makes money then i can't complain too much,, i was worried that translating 60 chapters of so many unselected novels were sapping too much time from translators.

          I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but this statement is really enlightening as the previous trial read system was extremely profitable for Webnovel (regardless of whether or not the novel would become profitable in the future). I know many of these editor's choice trial read selections that were "so profitable" that they're on the ever growing list of dropped novels.

          Hey @CKtalon, do you think you could suggest to Webnovel to have an event to pick up dropped novels again? Put 10 or so titles on the list, and let people gift coins to their favorite one(s) and translate the winner or those that hit the fixed cost necessary for full translation? They don't listen to us, but you seem to get your inquiries answered. If the event isn't profitable, then it's a one off loss, and people can at least have some false hope that the novels they're reading will eventually get their translations finished unlike now where trying a new novel means a relatively high chance of it getting permanently dropped in the future.

              KoraL The amount needed is on the order of 5 digit US dollars. It's unlikely any whale will be willing to pay that much to get it continued. Running the event without any book getting continued is pointless and only more disappointing.

              Mute Korean novels actually aren't very profitable... Only the occasional few are doing well, just like how only a few Chinese novels do well.

                    WebNovel should finish the existing novels ASAP before picking new ones without caring about readers or reputation. After they dropped a novel for which I bought privilege this month, I will no longer pay them a cent. So they can go fuk themselves with their trial reads

                      Palladian

                      Thing is you're missing cktalons point, books get dropped because alot of the fan base are freebie ing them. All these nimrods with multiple accounts to farm fast passes should be the ones to have your ire not the site.

                      Its due to them sucking the life blood of the site that those 'good' books suddenly get dropped.

                      As for a book with privledge getting dropped... thats rather odd as privledge gives direct unquestionable profit since fast passes can't be used. Thats not to say certain translators shouldn't be hung from a light post by their short n curlies for their privledge abuse stares at the translator for Only I am a Necromancer but in such cases where the translator is failing to produce chapters and privledge chapters you DO have the ability to request a refund.

                          CKtalon Will it really cost on the order of 5 digits for each novel? If the novels are selected judiciously for those with less than 500 chapters remaining (are they actually paying more than $20 per chapter?) then even if it flops, all the novels get some publicity, and the total collected for the entire event can go to supporting that single winning novel, and the event would never need to be run again. The way things are going, Webnovel is losing customers for dropping translations.

                          I would also suggest adding to the list titles like Trafford's Trading Club which was unprofitable due to not having premium chapters until months after it was dropped despite being very popular.

                              CKtalon I mean, they're not going to be profitable when literally every translation is trash:S (Talking Korean novels on this site) the only readable ones were the ones who were already being translated before Webnovel swooped in and got the rights.

                                KoraL The total costs are actually higher as WN needs to pay google and apple as well, which increases the costs. So the 5K $ is resonable.

                                    Grand_Void_Daoist on the order of 5 digits means 10k+, but to say that it's the case for most dropped novels should mean an average of 20k. I highly suspect that Webnovel underpays translators, so I'm really thinking that the cost of translation is <$10 per chapter for the average 9 coin chapter. With Apple and Google taking 30% and 30% as royalties to the author (and this is suspect since some newer Qidian contracts seem to not include derative works as eligible for royalty payments) that means the remaining 40% should cover the translation cost. If they really expect that no coins will be spent on the individual chapters themselves after the translation resumes, then that means that they should choose novels with less than 400 chapters to put into the pool if they think that the event will pull in $10k total. Now since pure gifting has a low chance of working, they can also add in "pay 500 coins for a 10% discount voucher for the novel you want to support" so that people unfamillar with the novels on the dropped list will have some incentive to try the novels, and it means that in order to use the voucher, they would need to spend coins on the novel, which means future earnings too. Since these dropped novels were so unprofitable anyways, the extra publicity should also help the profit margins by potentially bringing in new readers. With such an incentive, they would only need 1000 users to support the event to prevent the simplest calculated losses. Of course this math is done with uninformed numbers, and there are a lot of "free coins" in circulation, so maybe that number is 2500 users. If 10 dropped novels are put into the pool at once, then that's 250 supporters per novel. Is that such an unreasonable number especially when we consider that some of these novels never had the opportunity to be monetized before they were dropped for being unprofitable?

                                        KoraL Those books have chapters in the hundreds to thousands. Just paying for example, $30 a chapter for say 700 chapters is $21k, you do the math for those with even more chapters. And $30 is already at 10% of the standard professional market rate. If you want perfect, Three Body Problem quality, each book will be about six-figures. No publisher can afford these rates, nor would they see it as a worthwhile investment (very poor ROI, if any).

                                        Trial Reads doesn't earn Webnovel much money, since the Coins are mostly refunded. It's also not meant to. Trial Read is an investment to find commercially viable books. Commercially viable means that people are willing to pay for them with actual cash. Statistics have shown that readers seldom even read past 3 chapters to decide whether to continue the book, so it doesn't matter if it's 40 or 60 chapters. Lowering the number of chapters lowers cost, speeds up the translation time, allowing them to offer more varieties to the paying readers. 1000 paying readers in Trial Reads is a super-hot book. Generally, you will see 100-200 supporters for books in Trial Reads. Anything above 400+ is considered a break-even. Generally, that number will rise dramatically once the book is out of Trial Reads; hence, the investment payoff.

                                        If your favorite book isn't picked, it's simply because not enough people supported it with Coins.

                                            Reinesse AFAIK, translators from outside are allowed to join Qidian International (aka Webnovel) and pick up any dropped novel. They'll even get a 1/3 of the money earned by the novel

                                                CKtalon I wasn't just talking about the dropped trail reads, but w/e. It's good to know that Webnovel isn't paying below 3rd world slave wages for skilled labor... at least if your quoted number is accurate as their median payment per chapter.

                                                    Dwarkin the thing is, people who would want to pick those novel up are highly likely mostly (possibly newbie) fan translators. they won't take translating as a job but rather as a hobby. i ask you, how many novels in this platform have you seen with less than seven chapters a week, translated by a fan? (first point, applying itself is intimidating QAQ) what motivates these fan translators are the readers that enjoy the novel the same way they do (mostly on comments) but if the novels get locked, who would be willing to read using this platform?

                                                    as for the other category of translators that translates as a side job with little extra pay, i honestly think they would rather set up their own site and make a patreon account. it's not like they can make premium chapters as privilege or set up goals like $100 for +1 extra chapters a week.

                                                        CKtalon So what's the deal with the cut to only 40 chapters, if the system was working why are the chapters cut? Honestly 40 chapters isn't enough to get a good enough idea of a novel that will have 1k+ chapters.

                                                        Do you know if 40 is the new normal?

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