YaoJian Well technically they do, there are no full premium books here to my knowledge, all of them have certain amount of free chapters. If they created a system where for the first 30 days you can read everything for free, people would just create a new account every 30 days. I'm afraid the limit of where making new accounts wouldn't be worth the effort anymore would also be the point where the free trial would loose it's point.
You are way to wrong....
The groups of Qidian are split into 5 groups, 3 main groups and 2 sub-groups.
1st group: Those who don't shell out money cause most are of average income, college students or teens that don't work, but are willing to watch ads to help support TL's and Qidian. They might occasionally sub to a Patreon
2nd group; Are the ones that have a stable income and don't worry about the cost of spirit stones as long as they manage it well enough. This group is the group that most likely supported Patreon and put money towards releases of chapters when websites were still doing that.
3rd group: The group that has to much money to spend and doesn't care about the little incremental amounts of money they'd have to pay per week to read something they enjoy.
1st sub-group: The occasional reader, a group of readers that reads at a steady rate doesn't read enough to catchup to the new releases and doesn't have to worry about paywalls as the supplied spirit stones will likely be enough to let them read the chapters they want. Even if they met one they'd just set the novel aside or switch to a more lengthy one. This group can fall under any of the 3 main groups as they might watch ads, occasionally buy spirit stones and or buy in lump sums while subbing to Patreon.
2nd sub- group: The hardcore readers, this group is prone to binging one novel till they are caught up to latest releases and do the same to multiple novels at the same time. This group is likely to run out of supplied spirit stones the fastest. The intake will outclass the 1st groups ability to get around paywalls especially with Premium novels. The 2nd group would even take a hit on the budget trying to sustain this for a lengthy period. Only the 3rd group and most likely the smallest group would be able to do this no problem.
Your 2 groups are over simplifying the issue to an extreme. An hour to read a chapter?! Who are you talking about a grade schooler? The average reading speed may be 20 to 15 min and above average (dedicated readers) is about 10. A speed reader will basically be a nonentity as a chapter wouldn't take more than 2 to 3 minutes so of course they'd have problems!
Reading $1k worth of hard cover novels (which are expensive as hell compared to e-books) in a week? Only if you no life it at your reading speed bro! Not to mention the varying price, chapter length and number of chapters in each book.
The average amount of chapters in a US hard cover novel is about 18 to 30. The number of pages in a chapter is about 10 to 16. In a Chinese novel the average amount of chapters in a novel series is roughly about 1k to 2k. The average amount of pages in a chapter? 18 to 25 depending on your font size. i have mine on small so mine tend to be shorter when viewing the app.
SirLobo93 Totally agree with your grouping system, let alone I'm highly dubious of the OP's "average" read speed, one hour for a chapter in this content would be surprising considering the amount of characters in a chapter, even Firefox's "reader" only assumes 13min on the average chapter length and I have to assume it's going off an average that's far more correct then the OP's estimates.
SirLobo93 Average reading speed 20-15mins, yea that's on planet Snailzonia, where Snails move their eyeballs at 0.000000005 nano mili-meter per hour.
Above average is about 10? and a speed reader is 2-3mins?
Just because you're slow, doesn't mean everyone is, reading 1 page in 20mins and calling that average, yea average for someone with brain issues, like an actual brain issue, because that's a fantasy novel, so i guess you'll die before getting past kindergarden, if that's the "Average reading speed"..
IF you're going to come up with statistics, at-least be reasonable..
ButterLover So much rage lol, at the very least 15-20min sounds alot more reasonable than the average of 1+ hours that he comparing with.
Dont just nick pick about the reading speed.
The argument is still the same.
For me personally.
I read a lot faster than ~15min.
I follow about 10 novels on QI and other other translation sites. I am a working person and for me, I already spend a lot of time on novels. Too mich time on some days.
I cant fathom how ppl can read so many more novels without impacting their work or study.
I bought 2x 1500 stone, because I can spend the money and ignore ads.
People has to realize that there is no solution that satisfies everyone.
You cant expect QI to be a charity.
I really wonder which books chapters take 15 min to 1 hour to read
CantSeeMountTai Never heard of a method that can detects one's anger through comments....
The bad thing in my opinion is that chapters are expensive or stone w/e...if a full book will have about 2K chapters...at 12 stone per chapter you will pay a ton of money just for that 1 Book. Even if you buy the 3250(66$ for me) stones which is supposdely the best deal. If my math is right you would pay about 500$. I don’t mind paying but not that much.
raziel Do the calculation from a different angle, and average novel is between 75000 and 120000 words long, and costs around 20-30eur as e-book on release, lets go with 15$ for these calculations as I'm way too lazy to do conversions and the quality isn't always bestseller level. Library of heavens bath chapter length goes from ~2100 words to ~3200 words in the first 100 chapters, coming to an average of about 2,5k per chapter (there are more shorter chapters this is not an average between min and max). So if there are 2000 chapters in this book it will come to ~5 000 000 words in this book, coming to about 50 books at 15$ per book it's 750$. so you got this at a bargain with 500$ on qidian.
And most people seem to ignore the fact that premium chapters are basically like how the translators used patreon before this (admittedly a little expensive). They are "bonus" chapters for a price, if you don't want to pay or can't afford to pay for them, you can easily go read another of the many novels for a bit and comeback when you have a stock of free chapters again. Was what I did just recently when AGM went premium...
Vanja I'm a :moneybag: silk pants beau, who spends his money on fine wines and even finer women. As much as I toss money at whatever I want, and get it too, I do have a bottom line. Paying the high cost of SS to read only the parts where the young master steps on those MC plebs can take a bit of a toll on father's pocket change.
I got tht the fact if you have no money u have to be patient.. but i really like if qidian will make the premium like the spotify. In my country currency i have the spend atleast 30$ to buy the spitit stone. I cannot support patreon tht usually min 5$ a chptr. I have to save my food money to buy chptrs
I'm a fast reader. I currently read 2 premimum and 2 free novels. Besides this I also have some finished books that I read or I'm currently reading but those are free so they don't count. 2 months ago I payed 10€ for 1500 and only today I managed to use all the bonus stones and a bit of the extra. I now have around 400 stones left. I use stones for both premium and free novels. And I also check-in each day(almost) and vote and so on to get the extra stones. I found this sistem really fare, even if I will double the number of premium books in the future and I spend 10€ worth of stones in a single month I still believe that it's fine. I also read many physical books and only few months ago I started to read webnovels so I found this really really cheap compared with the physical(/kindle) version. I really don't get why so many people are complaining. A subscription would also be fine for those that read a really big number of premium books but for all the others it would just make the entire process much more expensive so that's why this a really good way to monetize this books. I agree that this is more expensive for those that start reading later, as they already have a certain number of premium chapters and no way to get free stones faster. In this case some kind of discount for a batch of chapters would be nice, but for those that read the new chapters really fast, there are no problems.
Are you okay with me sending your comment 2 someone annoying me with that rn?
Olivia Sure? Not that my opinion is more important than any other though, so doubt it will make a difference lol.
Vanja
Well! If you read the novels to the point where you have to wait for a new chapter to be posted. And a normal post has about 1-3 chapters a day(depends on translator). Then Yea we can read 20+ novels. Even if some people start a new novel that has about 200ch posted then the fast reader and enthusiast can catch up to the translator in about 1.5-3.
The time comes from standing in lines or just reading while we wait. I take like 3-15 min per chapter(depending on length) which I would read in between classes or even while I'm waiting for a match in video games. Sometimes there is just nothing to do. People don't question, "Where do you find the time to play video Games?". They just play them.
Parent used to say and some still say, "If you have nothing to do 'READ A BOOK!'" (BAM!!) novels/manga are born.
I would have been willing to do the subscription for Premium if I could read as many as 100 chapters on the get go EVERY MONTH. Unfortunately, going premium means STILL HAVING TO WAIT for every chapter to be released. It is not a satisfactory exchange and not the "typical" subscription consumption you would usually have. And yes, I am one of those that can read a chapter under 3-5 minutes.
I am in the same boat as you. The majority of the novels I have read on Qidian I have already caught up to the latest chapters and 5 of the novels are currently premium novels where chapter releases are around 2-3/day. Now the problem becomes as more and more novels turn to premium, the number of novels which I will have to use SS for increases. Currently, 3 novels I am reading which are free atm becomes premium on the 4th of April, so this will make it a total of 8 books which I thoroughly enjoy reading and I will most likely have to pick and choose which one to keep or drop. Call me privileged and as much as I appreciate the "free 1 chapter" Qidian offers, I can't wait for that long and expect it to finish years from now.
Qidian needs to figure out a business model that will thrive long term especially if they expect loyal readers to continue patronising their website for years to come because a typical novel will probably take 3-4 years to finish if releases are consistent.
The only reason why I haven't yet turned to aggregate sites or reddit threads that has the current "premium" chapters is that I want to support them and actually want to see a thriving community, however, there needs to be a proper "fix" in regards how premium will work going forward in the future.
