Webnovel.Forum

This is a rip-off. Sucks for the decent writers because this app is going to give your name a bad rep due to their taking advantage of their clients and charging more than even the most popular book sites... Webnovel you suck. I don't even want to finish the story I was reading after already paying over $30-40 for one story. You are crooks

Toni_Russ How about WuXia world or NovelUpdates? Have you tried other novel reading sites?

Agree. I’ve spent over 100 reading two books

Lizabelle88 Well, its really simple. How much does a book cost outside of webnovel, like max 20$? And then how much does the same amount of work cost here? Maybe 100$ or more? Just slow down and think about that. The books will only give the same amount of enjoyment, not a whole 4 books worth more just cause you had to pay that much.

Also, you do not even own the book here! If Webnovel gets rid of the book or stops translating, that's it. You are S.O.L. and you are out however much you spend. That alone feels slimy as hell and is, in fact, ripping people off of their hard earned money.

That's why.

MotivatedSloth We’ve fought this battle for years. I’ve done full breakdowns of the costs under the older pay models. Some names have changed, but it’s basically the same thing.

People now appear to be seeing it as 1 book, rather than the size of said work. Once you do point that out, the argument becomes the quality of said work. Then there’s even more that comes down to size/price, as the price tapers for book sales.

This has been going on ever since the pay model was introduced for translated works, as before that, everyone was able to enjoy free reading and translators relied on ads and donations.

Btw, for reference of size, 1m words is almost the size of the entire Harry Potter series.

Tl;dr bunker down, you’re in for a long battle heh

Wolfick Nah, I'm not. There is no point discussing the qualitative differences (and their influence on price) as the webnovel and traditional models are completely different. Its like discussing whether the way to monetise music is better than the way of monetizing movies.

What I wanted to bring up, was the common misconception that the guy above used. One novel on webnovel isn't equal to one novel of traditional release. Depending on the amount of chapters, it often closes to the length of the respected and famed series, rather than just a single, standalone release.

As for the pay system, you are perfectly right, it's exactly the same as it was (with some minor additions). That's why I omitted all the possible way to decrease the price and just went with the standard ration of 1 coin = 200 words = 0.02$. Add fastpassess, discounts, free chapters and all and the price goes down even more. It just irked me to compare the price of a single novel to what's close to entire series if not a series of series.

Wolfick This has been going on ever since the pay model was introduced for translated works, as before that, everyone was able to enjoy free reading and translators relied on ads and donations.

Those works relied on three factors:
- IP being stolen and illegally translated (ommiting the cost of royalties to the author)
- Enthusiasts translating novels in their free time (and mostly treating it as hobby with few glorious exemptions)
- People unwilling to pay in normal way for something of a hobbyist quality. You can't translate on a grade-school level and expect to be paid like professional translators and editors.

This meant that people bothering with translation, only had to think about the costs of keeping the site up and hoping that revenue from adds/donations would be greater than the cost of maintaining the site. Whatever was left after deducing those costs was theirs to be taken.

Look at this from another viewpoint. Imagine that in some faraway, obscure country, there was a small nation speaking a really weird language. To further the example, let's say that the Avengers endgame came out, but because there were no available translators (or their cost was greater than the estimated earnings from their work), that secluded nation had no version of the movie in their own language. And then someone came, opened a pseudo-cinema, where he put the movie up with his fansubs. You can even say that he didn't take money for the tickets, but just placed some ads bought by the locals and gave a box for donation.

In this way, people could watch the movie in the language they want just for the price of those adds and donations. But would that be fair? Would that be legal? Once Marvel would hit them up, they would have to abandon the old scheme and if they wanted to keep watching marvel movies, they would have to include:
- Marvel fee (used to pay for the damned creation of the movie)
- Middleman fee (organising the theatres and all)
- translation fee (to pay for the proper translation, approved by marvel)

Just like with videos, past translations avoided all those costs, profitering off stolen intellectual property. It wasn't a sustainable business model, but parasitic model for hobbyists, hoping the legal owner of the rights wouldn't notice.

Comparing the cost of the two is like claiming that buying smuggled goods is good because they are cheaper. But guess what? Its a crime in any of the civilised nations

MotivatedSloth Ehh... there’s several things here... first of all, I’m wasn’t defending free translations. At least, that isn’t what I was pointing out. What I said, is that that was how things used to be and then the pay model was introduced. The fact that people used to get it for free and no longer did made a lot disgruntled or upset, which was the initial fuel of the tension and when people started arguing over prices.

As for the copyright holders charging for their material, I don’t think that even needs to be called into question. So as to avoid any misunderstanding. Yes, they have every right to do so.

MotivatedSloth Those works relied on three factors:
- IP being stolen and illegally translated (ommiting the cost of royalties to the author)
- Enthusiasts translating novels in their free time (and mostly treating it as hobby with few glorious exemptions)
- People unwilling to pay in normal way for something of a hobbyist quality. You can't translate on a grade-school level and expect to be paid like professional translators and editors.

As for this and the following. First of all, by IP I’m going to assume you mean initial product or something.

I am fully aware of how everything works, and many translators actually paid for the material, this was their way of showing support to the authors.

As for the rest, don’t try claim damages on a product you never put in the marketplace. It was not their material to translate for others, but they did not sell the material itself. Product and service are two different things, this is internationally recognised.

Second, it is these free translators which built up the entire community of Chinese webnovel readers and marketplace for the product, which then allowed Qidian, alt Yuewen, to use as a foundation for an international debut. Without it, QI still would not exist, and there would be no international royalties. So don’t preach to me that free translators are thieves and evil.

Wolfick Okay, so first thing first, don't be scared by the format of my response. I usually qutoe bit by bit of the person's I'm replying to post when I'm bashing them, but here it's not the case. It will just be easier for me to keep my message cohesive by doing so.

Sate sate sate....

First part we agree on so there is completely no point to bring it up. But the problem (that I unknowingly caused) starts right after:

Wolfick by IP I’m going to assume you mean initial product or something.

IP stands for intellectual property. Its basically your copyright that you earn the moment you create something (that is, as long as you can prove you were the one to create it etc, this is not the main topic here)

Wolfick many translators actually paid for the material, this was their way of showing support to the authors.

I do believe that this difference in our understanding of what that unfortunate IP was. So to make it a bit more clear, let me bring up the stuff that I learned from Brandon Sanderson's lectures on writing. This particular lesson wasn't about writing in particular, but agents, contracts and the technical stuff of traditional publishing. And to make sure there is no misunderstanding here, I'm referring to standard publishing model here because its not the point of the discussion at all and its an already established formality that has generally the same rules wherever you go, with only prices and percentages changing.

Once you write a novel, your agent will try to auction it out to the publishers. But if you have a good agent, then instead of selling the packet of "Copyrigbht to XXX novel" he will find a domestic publisher to take the domestic market, while either taking a huge premium for any additional feature outside of the right to publish and sell the novel in the original language. That includes rights to serialisation (in TV), comics, foreign markets etc. While I'm not sure whether the right to translate and distribute the translated version of the work works as a general packet or license for each applied language, but it doesn't matter here, as it shows an important point.

Within your copyright, you can be said to have several ways of selling it. From the domestic market (license to publish and sell for set price paid upfront and set amount of royalties from each sale), through the ecranisation fee (once again, flat fee and percents) all the way to translation for a given language (flat + % again) and to any other way of possibly monetising the work like merch, ads, paid interviews and all.

That means, your copyright (intellectual property over a work) is a product that you can sell. You do not obtain the license to translate something by buying a piece of the work in your local language. There is an entire license required to do that. That's why, translating without permission is allowed only as long as you are the only one ever reading the translation. From all the possible forms of monetizing such illegal translation to the point of sharing it for free, without any adds or donations, its still a copyright infringement. Just like nowadays authors on webnovel are biting their lips to the blood whenever a pirate comes and just steals their entire novel to earn some pennies on their site from ads, that's basically how the business of translation worked in the past, outside of the fact that the translators actually had to put an effort.

So no, buying a physical copy of the novel in its original language to translate it doesn't change the fact that you are infringing on copyright of the novel's author. And going with the legal definition, intentional infringement of the DMCA leading to any profit is equal to stealing. That's just how law works.

Wolfick As for the rest, don’t try claim damages on a product you never put in the marketplace.

I'm a translator of a XXX novel and I'm a racist. MY racist comments can be found everywhere on the internet as I'm quite active. Then someone comes, sees the novel, sees my comments and sees my name on the cover. What will they assume with all that information? Some will be smart and notice its just a translator acting like an idiot. But what about all those people (and voting in any country proves that majority is usually stupid in my honest opinion) who won't bother to do the background check? They might just assume that racist approach of the translator is approved by the author, meaning he is a racist as well.

The example above means to showcase that even without a tangible, math-able loss suffered by the holder of a copyright, one can still be damaged by someone infringing on copyright. Also, a translator illegally translating a popular novel can get both money from doing so and popularity. Both of those are considered to be forms of benefit, and since one has no license to operate on it, it still considered a damage. There is a reason why copyright infringement is taken as the asset damage as soon as its public.

So no, on this point here, you are wrong.

Wolfick It was not their material to translate for others, but they did not sell the material itself.

It doesn't matter. Let's say there is someone bilingual who wanted to read the novel, wanted to buy it in his original language, but found its English translation. Simple example why your way of thinking won't legally work. As soon as an activity opens a way for random people to obtain something otherwise paylocked for free, its already a copyright infringement. Once again, in order to translate stuff, you need a license for that.

Another example that's less personal to the case, let's say an author was super unpopular, but suddenly hit a niche. In just two months, his obscure novel grew for some reason from trash to godlike product in terms of popularity. And now, the author wants to sell the rights to translate it to get more money from his hard work... But there is already a perfectly made translation made by his fans. And as with everything on the internet, once something is saved there once, it never disappears, making the license to translate the novel almost worthless.

Wolfick Product and service are two different things, this is internationally recognised.

All parts and forms of copyright should be considered a product then, geniuienly not sure what that point was supposed to bring, but I assume it seems from the unfortunate misunderstanding of what IP was, partially my bad here.

Wolfick Second, it is these free translators which built up the entire community of Chinese webnovel readers and marketplace for the product, which then allowed Qidian, alt Yuewen, to use as a foundation for an international debut. Without it, QI still would not exist, and there would be no international royalties

This part here, I will explain in a pretty roundabout way. Because from what I can see, the situation of eastern translated novels is insanely similar to the situation of the anime/anime fansubs back before it exploded in popularity in the english-speaking part of the world.

Back in the past, fansubs were the only way to watch anime and understand what was going on without learning the japenesse in the first place. Then a huge community grew around the topic, just like with the novels. With time, more and more groups started to translate, more and more animes started to become popular in the western market, more and more people started to watch anime... All the way to the point where it became a huge market. And that meant, said market was ripe for commercialisation, something that happened or will happen to literally every part of our life.

Do I deny the fact that fan translators started the trend? By any means, no. Do I deny their contribution to the community? Once again, never in hell. Do I deny that they created the market for webnovel to claim for their own? Not at all. But ultimately, those fan subs/fan translations could only exist in the niche before it grew to the point where it could be properly monetised before once they attracted the attention of the actual copyright holder, its over. Because no matter what benefits it brought to the owner, they still infringed on the copyright. They still caused internationally recognised loss (the only way to use someone's work without infringing on the copyright is the so-called "fair use". Just look at several YT dramas where companies can sue people for using 2s too much of a given clip within their blog/vlog/vid. In other words, fair use means that you are allowed to display copyrighted stuff as long as it doesn't make it any easier for someone to experience the product itself in any way or form that could be called wholesome. (My personal rambling here, don't take it for the law speech)

Wolfick So don’t preach to me that free translators are thieves and evil.

I do not do such thing. What I'm claiming in general, is that the time when they could operate, when the model they were operating on, are now gone. With the official player that holds the IP to the stuff they were translating now appearing on the market, they have no more right to exist. The former model of their earning (making them paid translators, just not in the way it currently works) was based on copyright infringement, allowing them to bypass a lot of normal costs (author's fee, company fee, middle-man fee, all the stuff I mentioned in the previous post).

I do not say that they are devil if they used to be a part of the translators that made the trend. It was grey-area of the market before WN appeared. They gave everyone the chance to enjoy the eastern writings. For that, I'm grateful to them. But as it is now, the time of this kind of translation is fully and completely over, making them thieves and evils if they attempt to stick to the times that are now gone. (unless they go through the official route to get the Author's permission to translate stuff, be it for free, for money or just for popularity sake, then they are free to go with my blessing)

Now, two more points I want to bring up that does not directly relate to your last answer, but do to the topic.

1st the simple thing. Speaking from personal experience of someone whose novel is illegally translated to Russian... I fucking hate it. Someone takes the fruits of my work, publicised it under his own name (as the translator), all the while I'm not even able to see how much his translation butchers the original material. In other words, just like I would love to torture to death every single thief who dares to pirate my novels, I do consider that illegal translator as the part of the pirating community as well. For me as an author, its no different. It pissess me off.

2nd, the more complicated stuff, but something that I"m quite sure a lot of people miss in the discussions like that. But its not like I blame them for it. It's humanity's innate flaw to take good things for granted while bitching about the stuff we don't like. But let me start with personal example.

For me, the journey with translated novels (and later on with writing) all started with a single novel. Release that Witch. It made me crazy over it. I binged all 200 something translated chapters in one sitting, before learning the pains of waiting for a new releases. At that time, it was translated by Volare translations (as far as I can remember). While I might be wrong here, I think they were an official translation group that actually bought the license to translate stuff, but as I said, I might be wrong here.

They used to release 1 chapter every 2/3 days. Sometimes, there were delays. But as some point, they just stopped. Dissapointed and desperate to read the continuation, I followed every thread and link possible, looking for someone who would pick that up. Then the first fan translator did so, translating like 20-30 chapters before dissapearing. Then someone else picked it up, releasing like 1 chapter per 3-4 days. And then webnovel came knocking, stirring up everyone to another hateful reaction of how they monopolise the market, steal the works from their (illegal) translators, paywall stuff... In general, it was my first experience of the public reaction to the fac that something was about to get legally monetised.

At first, I didn't really realise this, but by the time WN official translation caught up to the fantranslations, I was already used to it. Used to something that was rarely if ever seen before.

STABLE, DAILY FUCKING RELEASES.

Yes, we all take it for granted now, given how its a baseline for any translated/OG novel out here. But when you think about it, how many fan translators did update on a regular, daily basis? How many of them keep their efforts consistent through years and years required to finish a single project?

And now, that's why the cost of the webnovels is slightly steep (once you take all the freebies and promotions in the account). BEcause in order to provide daily releases, translators (or of authors for the matter) needs to sit up every day and work on the novel. For official translations, that means several people doing their work within a single chapter, from the main translator, through the proofreader, editor, spellchecker, second editor, second translator... From my understanding, they form groups not because of some tribal customs, but because its just how one needs to organise the work to make its result a proper product. But all of those people are not doing it for fun. They are doing that for living.

And here we reach the conclusion of this point of mine. Daily releases is something that doesn't exist anywhere else (outside of OG sites, since Webnovel forced this format on the entire market while saying with a smug smile "don't want to release daily? Then see your readers flock to my novels where we can provide them with entertainment on a daily basis!") It's a standard maybe not created, but definitely popularised by WN. Its something that people take for granted, without even a shred of knowledge how insane amounts of hard work, efforts, tears, coffee and time it actually takes for a single daily chapter to be released.

In the end, I only have small request - if you are going to respond, ignore the fact that there are many grammar mistakes here. I already wasted a lot of my time to write this response instead of writing another chapter for my novels, so I just can't be bothered to go through the entire list that Grammarly shows me. For that, I apologise in advance.

MotivatedSloth I’m going to keep this succinct because I’m tired as hell and going to sleep.

MotivatedSloth I do believe that this difference in our understanding of what that unfortunate IP was

I called it something else, but we both meant the same thing so this is moot.

MotivatedSloth So no, buying a physical copy of the novel in its original language to translate it doesn't change the fact that you are infringing on copyright of the novel's author. And going with the legal definition, intentional infringement of the DMCA leading to any profit is equal to stealing. That's just how law works.

Everything up to this point: (and I will cover several points)
I am not saying it isn’t copyright infringement by law, nor disputing that. You said they stole the IP, while I said most paid for it (then obviously misappropriated it). Nobody has ever claimed the novel as their own, and always claimed them as translations. At least, I have never heard of such a case.

Whelp, there was even one “translator” who google translated his own story into Chinese, posted it to Qidian, then posted it in English again as a “translation”. Unrelated to the case, but funny as hell nonetheless.

As someone who’s been around for a while.

The publishing you are talking about, these are the AAA books and all the legal work publishing companies/agents navigate through on behalf of authors they are representing.

For relating with webnovels and smaller authors, we rely on self publishing. All, or at least most, major book companies offer this option. Amazon, iBooks store, Barnes & Noble, and others. You use their services to distribute your book for sale electronically, in which you option to sell non exclusively or exclusively through them, each paying 40% or 70%.

If you have lots of money to invest and you are confident in your work, you can also sell them in bookstores yourself. That model works on you need to print off all the books and have somewhere to store them. Stores then place sell your books for you, and you get paid on what sells, the remainder are yours to keep, so I strongly do not recommend this for self publishing authors. Some sites and book printers also offer a print per sale model, but that is generally more expensive and drives the cost of books up.

All of these are actually quite straight forward.

MotivatedSloth Just like nowadays authors on webnovel are biting their lips to the blood whenever a pirate comes and just steals their entire novel to earn some pennies on their site from ads

This has always happened, and will always happen. It is especially the case when they can use bots and multiple accounts to do it automatically. Even if you take down one, five clones will pop up in its place.

MotivatedSloth I'm a translator of a XXX novel and I'm a racist. MY racist comments can be found everywhere on the internet as I'm quite active. Then someone comes, sees the novel, sees my comments and sees my name on the cover. What will they assume with all that information? Some will be smart and notice its just a translator acting like an idiot. But what about all those people (and voting in any country proves that majority is usually stupid in my honest opinion) who won't bother to do the background check? They might just assume that racist approach of the translator is approved by the author, meaning he is a racist as well.

MotivatedSloth It doesn't matter. Let's say there is someone bilingual who wanted to read the novel, wanted to buy it in his original language, but found its English translation. Simple example why your way of thinking won't legally work. As soon as an activity opens a way for random people to obtain something otherwise paylocked for free, its already a copyright infringement. Once again, in order to translate stuff, you need a license for that.

Both of these, you are using extreme outlier possibilities as defense, which is essentially cherry picking. The first one so extreme it is probably less likely than one in a million (authors).

MotivatedSloth All parts and forms of copyright should be considered a product then, geniuienly not sure what that point was supposed to bring, but I assume it seems from the unfortunate misunderstanding of what IP was, partially my bad here.

You were unfairly comparing smuggled goods and smuggling as a single entity against translated material and translations, which is why I brought it up. The materials can be hold in comparison but the services (smuggling and translation) are very different, the former being illegal.

MotivatedSloth fair use means that you are allowed to display copyrighted stuff as long as it doesn't make it any easier for someone to experience the product itself in any way or form that could be called wholesome

I’ve seen many of the dramas. You are a little off point with that one. Fair use is very grey area, and it’s purpose is the allowance of copyrighted material to be used without licence under certain given situations to prevent such copyrights harming on education and freedom of market, or something or other, which is why you don’t need a copyright to display critique on something, as it allows for companies to strangle anyone who critiques them. Well, I believe LegalEagle and his friends did pretty good explanations on it.

Btw, free translations obviously don’t come under fair use.

MotivatedSloth Speaking from personal experience of someone whose novel is illegally translated to Russian... I fucking hate it

As someone who has sat on the other side of the board, I can only sympathise for you. I had one of my works translated into Philippines, or whatever the language was. However they sought permission from me first, which I happily gave as long as they were not directly selling the product. If they wished to self fund themselves through site traffic and donations, I held no problem with that.

There were also people who made their own audiobook readings, someone even made some music backing track based on themes he was inspired by from my work. As long as they weren’t selling the product themselves, I always allowed them to use my work. It never harmed my revenue, and it was my free distribution of a lot of content which increased the fan base and inadvertently my sales far more than they otherwise would have been.

MotivatedSloth For me, the journey with translated novels (and later on with writing) all started with a single novel. Release that Witch

MotivatedSloth They used to release 1 chapter every 2/3 days. Sometimes, there were delays. But as some point, they just stopped

MotivatedSloth STABLE, DAILY FUCKING RELEASES

I’m going to be the old man here and go into translation history. Before stellar transformations was translated and inspired RWX, which I will come back to, Japanese webnovels and lightnovels were the norm. Bakatsuki and countless other Wordpress/blogspot sites doing free translation.

Just for reference, Japanese webnovels have always been free, in both original language and translation. Light novels there was never any issues with until a licensed translator published that novel, in which the original was generally taken down and directed readers to support the author by purchasing the book. These free translations which were “illegal” were in fact heavily beneficial to the community and authors.

At this point in time, a translation speed of one chapter, one a section of one part of a LN, was the norm, sometimes two chapters a week. People accepted donations, but did it because they enjoyed the novels and wanted to share it with other who otherwise would never be able to read it. If they didn’t share it and grow the market, this would indeed hold true.

At some point of time, Stellar Transformations began being translated on a some obscure community forum, which then inspired someone else.

Inspired, RWX and his site which shall remain forever censored here begun translating Coiling Dragon. This was the novel which caused the explosion of interest in Chinese webnovels, and where I entered the Chinese translations scene. He also released at a standard 1 chapter/day + bonus chapter in donation queue. This speed of translation blew everyone away, and is the original bar raiser for the current standardised translation speed.

The novel grew so popular, the F5 sect at the time would form man-made DDOS attacks by just refreshing the page around the set chapter release times, crashing his servers. It is also the most heavily donated to novel translation of all time. I watched the donation amount jump to over $2000 in one night at the peak.

Anyway, with the trend set, then deathblade joined in translating I Shall Seal the Heavens, and (I think it was flowerbridgetoo) in translating Martial God Asura. The second blew people away with a shocking translation speed of around 3-5 chaps/day minimum.

Site who shall remain censored here’s overwhelming popularity and success lead to clone sites, the two most prominent ones were gravitytales and ???. Gravitytales was always rubbish except for a few novels and was eventually bought out by QI(Qidian International, aka Webnovel) in their debut, many translators opting to join QI as they ported their work over and continued. Other translators from there did sloppy jobs which were essentially very poor quality.

The other site was the one which did the translations for Terror Infinity, Swallowed Star and a few other highly popular ones at the time. I simply can’t remember the sites name atm. Volaire also sprouted up around that time and popularised more female oriented webnovels along with a bunch of other novels which were highly popular and remain as fuzzy memories to me.

THEN, QI came along as growth was at an all time high and eased in the current pay model, which they had every right to. This did however upset the community which was very stable at the time, and ngl, had (still has ) very poor PR. Oh how the these forums were up in flames... Anyway, that is this old driver’s walk through the journey of internet translations summed up to the main points.

MotivatedSloth that's why the cost of the webnovels is slightly steep

It’s actually not, it’s just the content amount and people overeating. Like I said, I’ve done the full breakdown before. A Webnovel costs about the same as a self published ebook of the same size, even lower than many. Once freebies/discounts are accounted for, it is even cheaper.

MotivatedSloth For official translations, that means several people doing their work within a single chapter, from the main translator, through the proofreader, editor, spellchecker, second editor, second translator

You are going to have to trust me on this one; never argue on the side of official translations in terms of quality. Both Japanese and chinese works. I believe jcafe are good from heresay, but Yen Press are notorious for exceedingly slow translation speeds and translations that can raise a brow at times.

QI itself is notorious in the translation community for quantity over quality and having some low quality translations. Good business model; bad PR. Ive often spotted things which I can tell are wrong or poorly translated. The most recent book I’ve been reading, I’m Actually a Cultivation Big Shot, has a bunch of things wrong which I’ve noticed as I go along, and I don’t even have to compare it with the source material to tell. The manhuas (Chinese manga) have an even worse reputation, for both official and fan translations.

There was also... either boxnovel, tapread, or both. Which are international companies of other Chinese publishers, they are the worst of the bunch and simply mtl their novels and sell as is. I believe it’s gotten better, but initially the quality was so bad it was actually funny to try and read it.

What you are quoting... does not happen for official translations. Minus the second translator and this was the format for translation groups which did fan translations of Japanese light novels and fan subs.

It is actually fan translators which as a whole in general, have provided far better translations than the official ones. This is also because they translated via their passion and were more heavily invested in their novels. Of course, this isn’t unanimous, there are bad fam translators too.

MotivatedSloth since Webnovel forced this format on the entire market while saying with a smug smile "don't want to release daily? Then see your readers flock to my novels where we can provide them with entertainment on a daily basis!") It's a standard maybe not created, but definitely popularised by WN

Well, I already covered this one before. And it is incorrect. Daily releases were the minimum expectation before hand.

MotivatedSloth Its something that people take for granted, without even a shred of knowledge how insane amounts of hard work, efforts, tears, coffee and time it actually takes for a single daily chapter to be released

I am aware of how long it can take for a good translator... Well, they do take things for granted, but that pedestal you are imagining them on is a bit too high. If they are translating something more sophisticated, with poems and flowery phrases, it takes longer, but template rinse repeat novels are quite quick for the translator. How do you think they release up to 21chaps/week? There may be a bit of sweat, but there’s no blood there.

Authoring original ideas on the other hand is a much longer process.

MotivatedSloth ignore the fact that there are many grammar mistakes here

cracks knuckles
Time for a beating~

Whelp, I’m awake now too, I may as well do some more writing myself.

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.

I really read all of that, at four in the morning. My brain is like damn these guys are so much more knowledgeable than you.