People seem to forget that if you buy premium chapters and run out, you're gonna have to wait a LONG time to let the free chapters catch up to the shit you bought. So unless you're patient, you're gonna have to buy more SS to be up to date lol
1000 Chapters at 12 spirit Stones is 280$
Gamblejay Qidian collects some of the data, but opportunity cost is next to impossible to measure.
How many people would have joined if it weren't for this scenario? Can you tell? Maybe you could guess, but who knows if some Youtuber will run across Qidian in the next year and boost its publicity tenfold.
If opportunity cost were that easy to measure, the stock market would be solved, and speculation would be worthless.
Bump
indeed
KoraL Agree to disagree, I run numbers off bi-weekly and monthly data for my company and have done so since I started it nearly 8 years ago.
It was Qidian and the TL themselves who said the money was in an Escrow Account. So believe it or don't but that was what we were provided with. And it was Qidian themselves who stated they have been paying out of pocket.
I'll agree they have most definitely taken a portion out but I don't imagine it's as big as you believe. Most likely to cover overhead costs because it's the beginning of the year, long as projection numbers show good there's no reason to rush.
By the way, TL just announced more premium releases for April 4th. That will now be 3 months of no change.
Bodhi i’ve experienced this myself
I basically dropped the novel because of this. I’ll be sticking to my one premium novel from now on.
Thats a lot of money
Haha yeh the spells they cast would be an entire paragraph of endless chanting instead of two words.....
Anyway some good discussion but as others mentioned it’s clearly a positive change on the $$ income for the company side therwise more and more novels wouldn’t be switching over with little to no announcements.
I still will hang on to hope for Netflix pricing, or reasonable novel pricing.
In any event I’m just using spirit stones on monster paradise, reading castle of black iron and a few others
Gamblejay nope. Because HP books has less fillers than novels where they tend to repeat what they say again and again
i am waiting for the pirate version.
for now i droped reading premium novel
Gamblejay I actually said the same thing about a week ago when i was running the a comparison on Harry Potter and the 25$ value spirit stones which is about 1250 spirit stones for that price and honestly although my math was way off in terms of word count and i discounted Harry Potter 1st book word count to about 35-40k considering i was simply doing guess work with the word count numbers, but the fact still remains 1250 ss is about 100-130 chapters depending on the story you're reading and the word count for that particular chapter or even spreading across multiple books still spreads out to 125k words per $25 (mind u that's CAD) if in US that's about $20 so either way that's 100% more words compared to HP book 1 as you have more factual numbers. Now people might argue "you can't compare these novels to Harry Potter'..... if that's the case then why are you reading? I certainly think some of these novels are on par with and even more superior to Harry Potter, and this is coming from someone who bought all 7 1st Edition books with the Hard Cover version twice and still have a complete set even now (only reason I don't have 2 sets is cuz my mom back in the day got pissed and destroyed them in rage :( she compensated me though, how I bought second set).
TLDR: Expensive? yes. Worth it? also yes. Story writing is a business. Always has been, will always be. We simply got used to the "free stuff" and completely forgot the nature of the industry, AKA we got spoiled. Not our fault, but you have to move on; either by continue reading or find another means of entertainment.
- Edited
JcnPeng Writing is a business, now whether something is worth it? That's subjective to each person, for me few stories have been really worth it. Spoilt? Possibly but I would argue against it, I was watching anime when it was in a similar state as the translations of stories and I never had an issue with the jump from free to pay. I would probably have a lot less issue if I was buying a sub or specific books of a series so it really comes down to just how they are trying to monetize on it.
I really think a per chapter buying basis is just ugly, they already know how many chapter's per book since this is based on a translation. They can just pre-sell a whole book, so people just purchase the book and the chapters can unlock as it's been translated. People don't like to be nickled and dimed and I think more than anything that's how this feels like when you're paying by chapter but the cost of the chapter is based on word count?
I can tell that they're trying to sell this per chapter instead of books because they're trying to sell it more as a translation service type of deal. However the reason why the translations could go higher before is because it's more of people that wanted to donate and help a project. Now that it's being monetized it's not really a project but more of a product. Example: $5 per person for a translated episode of Naruto and people will pay for it, an episode of Naruto after it's licensed and released will not command a payment of $5 even when you buy the DVDs.
TLDR: It's probably more of an issue on how you monetize? Pay per chapter based on word count is not really normally how prices are gauged on the most part so most people won't like it cause it feels like being nickled and dimed.
Millman97 At least on Patreon it encouraged the translators to translate more chapters and interact with their fans more, premium is just a paywall with no incentives and the same release rate as previous.
ManOrSuperman Exactly. Donations carry with them an obligation, and as with all obligations, there comes a cost if not fulfilled; namely, you won't get them any more, and as such, won't get paid.
Whereas here, they raised the cost threefold, cut the free chapters in half, increased the pay only chapters infinitefold, and added 3ish bonus chapters per week that translators aren't even all keeping up on.
If Qidian wants to price this like a novel, they've got to treat it like a translation company, not a rabble of internet translators under an umbrella. You've got to get professional translators and editors working full time pumping out like 20 chapters a week, fully edited, with backup people to take over whenever a translator isn't keeping up.
I'll happily pay a subscription of 10 to 15 a month for all chapters or watch ads to unlock stuff. I won't pay easily 50 dollars a week or more to read as much as I want. This will just drive pirating or for people to just stop reading these specific novels and find others with more palatable requirements. Let's be honest there are some really good translated novels but there is also a lot of filler and word count padding even in the best ones. I'm hoping they change their minds on this.