Hi fellow readers, im wondering a few things about premium
- how do novels become premium, how does it impact standard "free" realeases
-how do they determine the price of spirit stones per chapter. (There are huge fluctuations in prices between chapters and novels).
Qidian premium and how it works?
FERAFOX Novels under premium will be put under the Premium for Free release, which will give readers 7 free chapters a week. They are chosen for a myriad of reasons, nothing definite.
The price of a chapter is roughly related to word count. The longer a chapter, the more work a translator (and the author) has to put in to produce it; therefore, it costs more. It's approximately 1 SS/200 words.
Thank you. I appreciate the feedback, so roughly premium novels will release 1 chapter per day and anything else released will be under premium (Paid via SS stones).
- Edited
CKtalon Novels under premium will be put under the Premium for Free release, which will give readers 7 free chapters a week.
I don't really expect Premium for Free to last for longer than another 3-6 months for most novels.
A. Qidian's primary concern is profit. Why would they continue giving it away? Premium for Free is just a temporary measure to get existing readers used to premium, as well as to allow QI to punt the dreaded 'Pay Wall' outcry from the translation scene, especially for novels with slow to intermediate release rates.
It will only last until the majority of bonus stones that users have accrued over the last 90 days completely expire. Once those pools are gone, poof no more Premium for Free chapters for most novels. After that, QI will be able to ensure most SS spent are actually paid for.
B. Another thing about Premium for Free. Novels with fast release rates, like Immortal Mortal for example. Let's say you as a reader just found the novel and read up to the Premium chapters. You get your 7 Premium for free chapters, and then decide to continue reading. You read 100 premium chapters (at a cost of about 1200 SS($20 currently). You then decide to wait for the next free chapter. How long will you have to wait? Answer: Over 14 weeks for Immortal Mortal to reach your current reading point. The point being, if you are a daily reader of novels, Premium for Free is just an illusion, it doesn't benefit you much at all.
Where this changes is for a new reader a year or two down the road. Why would Qidian continue giving away 365 chapters a year for premium novels? That just doesn't make sense for a company so focused on monetary gain.
C. Premium for Free also doesn't make sense long term if QI really expects translators to switch from a paid flat rate per chapter to a share of the premium spirit stone revenue.
D. The end goal for QI is to have an exact duplicate to how Qidian.com works. New novels will get a shorter and shorter amount of free chapters before they are put behind a pay-wall. And there is no doubt that a pay-wall is forthcoming.
Think of it as early access reading instead of premium and it makes sense.
ChupChup It only make sense as early access if there are more chapters released weekly than what was released before it went premium.
This logic works for the initial 10 Premium chapters that are released when a novel goes premium, but after that all the other chapters are behind a pay-wall.
Immortal Mortal for example, had 21 chapters/week when free. It then went premium with 7 free and 14 premium chapters per week. It's not advanced chapters unless your logic is that the translator cut back releasing 14 chapters a week just to artificially drive up demand.
checkm8 you have disregard the previous release rate. 21 free chapters was good while it lasted but with no ads and no patreon, it was bound to end.
In my opinion they should have lowered the release rate a month before going premium to lessen to perception that premium took away free chapters. They didn't so everyone saw premium as a negative instead of a positive.
11 days later
if you're getting payed by SS% used way are you going to lower your release rate. Add to that if the release rate is lowered you'll have readers that will bug out from the drop in rate. In the end novels like Immortal Mortal show how messed up premium is if translator lowers rate of release it's a lost in money if not you get huge pay-walls.
LUL at the SS cost depending on the amount of words in a chapter. Chinese authors just write a lot of pointless and repeated paragraphs to increase the word count.
Even then, I am not so much bothered at the cost of the chapters, but by how many chapters are premium. There should be a limit to how many premium chapters a novel can have. Immortal Mortal has 190..... completely ridiculous.
2 months later
Any idea how many premium chapters Superstars of Tomorrow has? So far it's 42
4 months later
It's very inconvenient to read via power stone.