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$. I don’t mind paying but not that much.
WHY the Premium system is unreasonable (for half of customers)
raziel Do the calculation from a different angle, and average novel is between 75000 and 120000 words long, and costs around 20-30eur as e-book on release, lets go with 15$ 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.
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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.
There are too groups of people:the rich and the poor. And Qidian doesnt give a flying fu*k avout your satisfaction as long as it makes more money than before. Welcome to life
They also have no professional standards for editors or translators in a lot of novels yet they expect us to pay far more than an average FULL paperback series of a published novel
StarKin I completely agree. I'm one of the fast readers and let me tell you, my pocket is feeling it lol
The biggest problem is that if we set an example that you spend 500-800 SS in a novel high consumption of SS (mmorpg rebirth of the legendary guardian or librery of haven's path) where you advanced about 20 chapters. Once the SS is over, you have to wait for the free chapters to catch up with you as long as Qidian does not continue to give you a free chapter from where you stay if not from where they go.
And the bad part about this is novels like library of the heavens part and immortal mortal cost an average of 13-14 spirit stones per chapter so just to read for a week 190+ spirit stones per week and 580+ stones per month just too expensive for half ass translation quality
