MotivatedSloth
Hi. I have poor english vocabulary so bare with me ok? I write from mobile so not auto correction either.
I get all your points so far however i think you missed some things. So i will sum them up as neet as possible. Feel free to state your opinions on them later on. :)
1. You can not deny that people get upset when people need to pay for sth they did not have to pay up. It is human nature. No matter how right it is and reasonable the prize is.

2. Payment in web novels is done by word account. That leads to huge variation in quality, ruplication (in the same novel both plot and paragraphs, exactly the same words etc), unnesserary lenghtning of plot, anything to add to the word count. All that matters is word count so you can have a really poor quality novel that has the same prize as one with better quality. This again causes dissatisfaction and confusion. There is no helping it.
3. There is variation in traslation quality as well. Even here in webnovel. There sre plenty of decent, bad and ok translations. Yet they are all under the same prize point. In fact there are mtl novels in webnovel that again you have to pay as if it was done by a translator. And please do not tell me that an author agreed to have their novel poorly machine tranlated on this platform.
4. About the release frequency.. Most of the books that i loved stopped being translated after being brought here. Some in the first months, some in the coming years. And i can not contact anyone about this. My complains remain unanswered. And there are plenty like me. I am happy that the novel you followed was successfuly translated though. It happened clearnly because it is bussiness now not entertainment or a hobby. I get it. That doesn't mean i have to be fine with it, since every novel they drop in this site can never be legally translated from anyone else. Oh yeah, and don't tell me that the novels chosen to be brought here were random! They chose popular novels, established themselves and then forgot all about them. Because this is bussness, there are plenty of novels promoted over others regardless of quality and originality. As a reader i feel like i am walked over. It is unplesant to say the least. I was debating changing to paperbooks.
5. Now conserning how much the authors/translators are getting paid. I heard that they get minimal of any pay from fast passes and generally more from coins or gifts. So the patreon system worked better in some cases and it was easier for the reader as well. Now i pay membership but am i supporting anyone? Probably not. And the prise rarely equals the quality and content.
6. Lastly, there are plenty of original creators here that got their content stolen. They had to change platform to protect thier rights. Webnovel, based on their words, did nothing to protect them. I know this is irrelevant but it is weird coming from webnovel.

Ok. I think that's about it. Forgive me for the vocabulary mistakes. It is more of rant at some places. Sorry. I just feel that webnovel system as it is, it is far from perfect. Better at some points bad at others.
Have a nice day.

      NightGale35 And please do not tell me that an author agreed to have their novel machine tranlated on this platform. So even here you have problems IP

      I’m just going to correct you on this point real quick. Authors do not hold any copyright over their work, the publisher does via the contract they hold with the author. The publisher chooses how to use the copyright which is legally signed over to them, and hold no notary obligation toward the author.

          NightGale35 I heard that they get minimal of any pay from fast passes and generally more from coins or gifts. So the patreon system worked better in some cases and it was easier for the reader as well

          This one too. Nobody gets paid a cent from fast passes, only paid coins and gift. Patreon system isn’t good from business side. Ngl, income earned through patreon is chump change compared to sales.

              NightGale35 And lastly, there are plenty of original creators here that got their content stolen. They had to change platform to protect thier rights. Webnovel, based on their words, did nothing to protect their rights.

              Heck, let’s finish this off... You are talking about aggregator sites. Nobody can stop them. You kill one, five more clones rise in its place. Nobody can do anything about this and it isn’t QI’s fault. Again, if the author was contracted, QI holds the rights and were also harmed.

              In fact, the Chinese aggregator sites are infinitely more numerous, and they still exist in droves.

                NightGale35 4. About the release frequency.. Most of the books that i loved stopped being translated after being brought here. Some in the first months, some in the coming years. And i can not contact anyone about this. My complains remain unanswered. And there are plenty like me. I am happy that the novel you followed was successfuly translated though. It happened clearnly because it is bussiness now not entertainment or a hobby. I get it. That doesn't mean i have to be fine with it, since every novel they drop in this site can never be legally translated from anyone else. Oh yeah, and don't tell me that the novels chosen to be brought here were random! They chose popular novels, established themselves and then forgot all about them. Because this is bussness, there are plenty of novels promoted over others regardless of quality and originality. As a reader i feel like i am walked over. It is unplesant to say the least. I was debating changing to paperbooks.

                This is indeed a concern, but it does come down to business over friends. If people aren’t paying for a book, continued translation is costing money and otherwise valuable time. It’s sad, but that is how it is

                QI, I can wholeheartedly say we do need better PR and company growth where it can be done.🥺

                  To be honest, I didn't even know there are some stories which you have to pay for, and this seems weird for me because the work I do is for free and the quality it ain't that good like others, but at least I do some diversity because not everyone enjoys an isekai world or any other overrated genre. But, if I ever go somewhere big, Id rather put the fillers chapters on money instead of the cannon ones

                    Lizabelle88

                    Good book (a paper copy) written by great authors costs 10-30 euro (7-36 US dollars) so I can understand the frustration. I went back to buy paper copies which you can still sell on amazon after reading it.

                        Google pays 85$ per hour. My last paycheck was $8500 operating a hundred hours per week online. My younger brother's friend has been averaging 12k for months currently and he's employed for twenty-two hours per week. I can’t believe however simple it had been once I attempted it out. This is often what I do to check further details by opening the link and clicking on (HOME TECH OR MEDIA.) Click Here For More Information...........https://t.ly/CDMx

                          MotivatedSloth Did you ever take into account that a novel for which you would have to pay 100$ (excluding promotions, free reads, discounts, fast passes and any events that frequently happen despite the tears of blood of the authors/editors) you would get 100 /0.02 = 5000 coins = 1 000 000 words. Normal novels are around 80-100-120k words, so by taking the average of 100k words/novel, what you just called a single book, is actually a series of 10 consecutive tomes. I know its counterintuitive for those ignorant (not trying to insult you, just a fancy word to signify the lack of knowledge) about this matter, but what you take for a single novel here is often longer than entire series written by traditional authors.

                          MotivatedSloth: I agree with 99% of what you say in these posts and I thank you for writing them (so completely and often!), but I feel you are hurting your overall arguments because your point that WebNovel is not expensive in bulk is simply not true.

                          WebNovel's prices are very reasonable (IMO) for on-going translations and daily chapter updates. But for bulk reading (completed novels), they are quite expensive compared to the alternatives.

                          There are getting to be enough translated webnovels out there on Amazon and Wuxiaworld (the other two major legitimate sources that I know of) to compare.

                          Amazon:
                          Way of Choices 4 books, avg 500 pages, cost/book $4. So cost per page is .8 cents
                          Coiling Dragon 8 books, avg 900 pages, cost/book $3.88 So cost per page is .44 cents
                          Godsfall Chronicles 8 books, avg 880 pages, cost/book 3.88. So cost per page is .44 cents
                          City of Sin 6 books, 6 books, avg 250 pages, cost/book $3. So cost per page is 1.2 cents
                          I Shall Seal the Heavens, 9 books, avg 1200 pages, cost/book $5. So cost/page .42 cents
                          Doomed to be Cannon Fodder, 6 books, avg 275 pages, cost/book $3, So cost/page is 1.09 cents

                          Amazon print page equivalents are about 300 words/page (I've seen 350 quoted as what Amazon uses, but most actual measurement surveys are in the 280-310 range for fiction.)

                          WebNovel costs 2 cents/coin base. Figure 15% bonus for normal top up purchases and another 5% for other promotions including fast passes (for bulk reading, you are not typically using many fast passes). Costs are 200 words per coin. So cost per Amazon page is 2.5 cents.

                          Thus WebNovel charges 2 to 6 times as much as Amazon. As a confirming check of the math, I Shall Seal the Heavens is available on WebNovel. It is 1571 paid (+40 free) chapters, at an average 11 coins/chapter (I looked at 50 chapters starting at 1000). Roughly 17300 coins to read it all, or a cost of $288. Total Amazon cost is $45. Again, a factor of 6 times more expensive than Amazon.

                          Wuxiaworld offers most of its completed translations for sale as ebooks. I can't find a public link to the ebooks, but if you have an account, click on your avatar and then "My ebooks". They offer 32 books for sale with prices ranging from $15 to $80 (Sovereign of the Three Realms, 2376 chapters, is the only $80 book). They have I Shall Seal the Heavens, at $55. More than Amazon, but still one fifth the cost of reading it on WebNovel.

                          I value and support WebNovels ongoing translations. But they need to find some way of monetize their bulk reading for much less than they do; they are way more expensive than they should be (as I think they know).

                              CrispyCritter Oh man, I already have a backlog of the messages to reply to, you are digging my grave to be even deeper.

                              But yeah, on the point of bulkreading, we do agree. The thing is, how to actually make it work? Force the authors to split their novels into volumes and only once they are properly edited, sell them for like 70% of their original price? Maybe it would be possible to get an exclusive pass for a specific novel that lets you read all its chapters for just a monthly subscription fee? Not like when you buy pass for webnovel as a whole, but for a specific novel? It already works with priv though, where authors can put a huge, basically monthly price of like 50 chap priv with 99% discount?

                              It's hard to come up with a model that wouldn't be abused or simply hurting the authors way too much. After all, most of the income for the non-top authors comes from the bingereaders. How about a seasonal pass, that lets you read the entire volume of the story in the month that you buy it? So that if you want to read more than a single volume, you have to use normal, not-discounted means, but with the new month, you could get a pass for another volume?

                              There are many ideas, but the problem is, we don't really know all the factors that WN management team takes into account when thinking about new ideas. Maybe we are lacking some crucial information that would allow us to make a good project, but for some varying reasons, WN either can't or is unwilling to share it?

                              Ok, here I was initially going to suggest a good idea, but I will do it myself soon. Stay tooned and may this initiative of mine bring forth some good changes that will benefit both readers and authors.

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