Invocation

Hear thy, heart thy for his Slothfulness has cometh to pry open the gates of the unknown. May the wisdom be everpresent during this gathering, blessing upon all its participants.

Act I : Disclaimers, initial thoughts, and foundation of analytics

Okay guys, first off, I would like to signify one, insanely important thing. I'M NOT WN REPRESENTATIVE, NOR DO I POSSESS ANY INSIDE INFO. This topic is brought by the suggestion in another thread (which was kinda drama-sque, so I will avoid bringing its link up here), and its a product solely of my own imagination, ideas and thoughts.

• To a huge degree, this thread is aimed to summarise the common problems/suggestions regarding the potential bulk-reading feature, costs of the chapters and the likes.

• I meant for it to be a place where everyone can maturely discuss the topics mentioned above, without any spam, self-inputted links or dramas. As strange as it might be coming from the Drama Lord like me.

The initial thoughts.

For a long time, I could observe that a topic of the cost of the chapters comes up pretty often. You can do the math on your own, but so far, it can be summed up in just a few points.

• WN is a tad more expensive when compared to other options of daily reading.
• WN is the only legal source of the novels translated and contracted here
• Once it comes to reading in bulk (binge-reading, binging), the cost raises steeply due to the lack of dedicated discounts when compared to other sites.

Additionally, there are factors that one needs to consider while thinking about the points I brought above.

• WN is not a library or book-store. It's a platform where people are all about being caught up to a novel and watching it as it grows.
• WN readers do not pay for the finished product but support its creators as they build the story
• WN authors usually produce WAAAAAY more content that traditional publishers. Even though nowadays this trend changes, it's still a thing. In a more serious publishing world, writing and publishing on a daily base is unheard of.

But there are also problems regarding WN that we need to account for.

• We don't know what are the true paradigms that Webnovel operates on. It could be forced by its owners to be a sister-site to Qidian, forcing some of its policies.
• Generally, we know pretty little about the decision-making process of the staff of the company. Most of what we know is the little information that is shared and the rest relies on our guesses and logical analysis.
• Even though it's only my own opinion, I think WN adopts the old saying in their way of operations - why risk changing something that already works?

And lastly, there are things that I personally believe might be a factor regarding any decision taken by the WN as a whole. I will use "action X" as a placeholder for any new feature, change, contest, bug or literally anything else that could happen. I think that whenever WN considers something, they take into account:

• How would that change influence the potential income of both the authors/translators and the site?
• How would it change the situation for the readers?
• How sustainable it would be?
• What are the potential ways to abuse new feature for some reasons
• How hard it would be to properly project it on a corporate level scheme
• How hard and how costly it would be to actually implement it
• What are the projected benefits of doing so?
• How would that affect the PR of the site

Act II : Ideas and analytics

First off, the idea. While I will start with my own, I would like to encourage everyone to actually post their own, as long they are not along the lines of "free chapters and family-sized pineapple pizza for everyone". If you want to share some ideas of your own, please try to think about the mundane realism of the situation first.

As for the idea itself, what I would like to introduce, is a "seasonal" pass accessible in two forms for the readers.

Assumptions for the first kind of pass as its something that already exist and some people use it:
- Readers that are caught up, can buy a monthly subscription to a SPECIFIC NOVEL, where for the price set by an author/translator (or calculated from the average cost of all the monthly chapters that an author wrote in the past)
- By obtaining monthly membership on a novel, one could read all its new chapters FREE OF ANY ADDITIONAL COST.
- Once the pass would be over, the chapters that were released during its period would be relocked for the user
- User could buy the chapters for a greatly discounted chapter (the one he obtained while using a subscription)

This is the mundane part of my proposition, for the readers that are caught up. But now, for the cream of today's discussion, a seasonal pass for binge-reading:

• Lasts for a month, just like a privilege.
• Restricted to participating novels only, not compulsory (unless proven to be a great success on a small scale)
• Forces the participating novels to be either manually split into volumes of any number of chapters (preferably, around 70-130 I think). If the author would not be interested in doing it himself, he could allow for his novel to be partitioned into volumes automatically, like every 100 chapters make a package.
• Readers can obtain only ONE pass for a given novel during the duration of the month.
• One seasonal pass empowers one to unlock all the premium non-priv chapters of any of the finished volumes. It would be done at a great discount, set either manually or automatically.
• Once a reader would finish reading through the bought volume, he could only use coins to read further in the currently existing way.
• When the month ends, the chapters remain unlocked
• When the month ends, one can buy a new seasonal pass to get another volume at a huge discount
• optional setting the renewal of the seasonal pass leads to another discount (applicable only on a given novel). For example, for each month without a break when a reader would get the pass for a specific novel, the price of the said pass would decrease by like 10% up to a total of 30% after 3 months.
• Optional This system allows making a new counter on the novel's page, displaying the number of "seasonal passes" bought in a given month for a novel. It would count both types, and appears similar to collections right now or top fans.

Now for the analytics and reasoning behind it.

• The system is overly complicated
  Yeah, I'm perfectly aware of that. That's why I'm putting it under a public discourse. What's more, all the problematic parts are there because of the idea to be considerate of everyone's interest with this system instead of creating something that would clearly favour one of the sides.

• Why get a system like that?
  For two reasons. To encourage readers to be loyal both to the book and the site, all the while making it cheaper and more accessible for them to actually read the stories here.

• Why is this system so restricted? Wouldn't it be better to just suggest making it a simple membership system for each novel and replacing the coins with it?
  I attempted to come up with an idea that would be pretty modular and easily testable. Given how I"m an original author with a fair few achievements to my name, I would be willing to test it out, even though it could potentially lead to the decrease of my potential income... because I hope it would ultimately be beneficial both to me and the readers.

• Why make two types of membership?
  Because if we only cater to the binge-readers, we would encourage the change of habits of the readers, something that they would not be comfortable with. I could already see people dropping novels for several months, only to binge read when the new volume would be released. By introducing a system both for binge and caught-up readers, I wanted to make not that it would be impossible to exploit the system, but to make it simply unprofitable in the first place.

• Why is it so limited? Only participating novels? Only one volume per month? Why all those barriers?
  Because I believe that's something we need to start with. In order to turn the risk for the entire site down, I hoped to figure out a way for a few brave authors that would be willing to test it, to prove that this system would be either a failure or a great success, encouraging a proper reaction from webnovel later on. Just like with a priv system, it could become another major feature for WN.

• Why restrict the membership to only one per month?
  Just like above, its a safety feature. With this in place, authors could make sure that if the entire idea would prove to be extremely harmful to them, they would only lose the earnings from a single volume rather than from their entire stories.

• Do you believe there are any chances for this system to be implemented?
  In its current, rough shape written by a drunk author? No way. But I hope that by polishing it out or adding more from the other ideas, we could create something that WN might be potentially interested in.

Act III : Rant

Okay, now that the hard and actually brain-draining part is done, I can finally explain the reason behind this entire, super-lengthy thread.

First off, I'm slightly annoyed by a certain attitude of the people on this forum. I know WN has a lot of problems. I know there is a lot of things that everyone thinks that are easy to implement and great ideas for the business. But no one bothers to think about how would their ideas influence the inner-workings on the site. Just like someone abusing the Fast-passes and bot accounts to read for free doesn't think about how he's hurting the author whose work he or she does enjoy. That's why I wanted to come up with a system that would actually bring together the interests of the readers, the authors and hopefully, webnovel as well.

And why do I care about those constant rants that only take one side of the triangle into consideration? Because with how harsh they usually are, they bring abso-fucking-lutely nothing. They will never change the way the WN thinks. Any of the insulting, senseless and biased rants only prove (or so I think) to the staff and their own superiors that there is no point in even listening to the childish banter like that.

Afterall, what's the point of catering to the needs of your haters?

That's why I want this place to remain clean of the dramas, insults, whining and outcries. If you have anything constructive to say about my proposition, then I welcome you to the discussion. If you want to bring some things that would be problematic in your opinion with my model, I'm more than happy to hear it. Or maybe you want to tell about your own ideas to solve the problem and make WN a better place and site for everyone? I can't wait to read about it!

Since years upon years of stupid rants, dramas and whining didn't work at all to make WN change its ways, how about we actually try to be productive ourselves and work towards the common goal of coming up with a system that will make WN shareholders piss themselves from how profitable it will be, WN readers to enjoy cheap ways of reading their beloved novels, authors and translators motivated with a human pay for their efforts and hard work required to put those stories on the site.

Doesn't it sound better than getting in another pointless argument only to prove who has a longer... list of arguments against the chastity of their discussion opponent's mother?

this post has been prettified by your one and only bot


ALL HAIL THE ALLMIGHTY PENGU-BOT - Sloth

The monthly pass seems like a good idea. I don't know how it would change the existing system, whether the income of authors will increase or not (I neither have the data nor the knowledge to calculate that) but I think this is a good change. Seems sloth put some serious thought into it

I think it (monthly pass), I mean, signing for a single novel, only would be attractive for lengthy novels with hundreds of chapters already published.
I think they could also make promotional prices for completed novels. They know already how many chapters the novels have, so it's easier to calculate a discounted price. I mean, I'm talking about my own interests here. My novel is finishing and probably will gather less interest since it's what happens with novels here. No spotlight or buzz around completed novels anymore.
But stores do that, if a book s is not trending anymore, they do a sale. I rather wish to get a bit less but earn more on the total of sales, than sink slowly into oblivion. For the reader, they will have a slight advantage in reading completed books for a cheaper price.
Or even like, a collection of similar novels (like, a curated selection of VR books, or werewolf romance books, whatever. Since people are inclined to read the same type of stuff). So they sign a bundle of, say, 4 books, and can read freely all of them for a month.
Perhaps the reader can pick all of them, or can pick one and the others are suggested by the system, I don't know.
I'm just tossing ideas.

MotivatedSloth ah I forgot one thing I would say to your monthly passes for like a volume and only the next pass after a month. Your idea in general (the subscription for one novel) is great but the monthly pass limited to a certain amount of chapters and not being able to get another one won't work for reader like me. I read more than 100 chapters a month catching up with a novel. For example in the novel I've started rereading 2 to 3 weeks ago I am already chapter 600-something again...
But the start is not bad
Maybe it could be a subscription to a book for a month that you pay for and then get the chapters at a very reduced price. The subscription fee should be low enough so it's still worth it to pay for it and the reduced chapter costs instead of the chapters at full price. This would also be good for binding readers to a book (increasing loyalty) as you paid for it so you should read it. But as for the people who caught up and are waiting to read the new chapters everyday... Maybe something like you buy a subscription for a reduction of chapter costs for a certain amount of chapters (like packages 5 reductions per day or 60 a month - you need to have a column in your profile to keep track of those counts) and the chapters aren't limited to one novel but free for every novel (so theoretically you could also use them instead of the monthly subscription for a book when you are a slower reader or don't have that much time to binge read that much).

I guess the biggest problem with all our suggestions is that webnovel would have to greatly improve the amount of their sortiment and that leads to more work and maintenance not to speak of all the errors and trials in the beginning. There are just countless types of people and readers. It's hard to find a solution fitting for everyone so they have to become flexible and versatile in their Sortiment. But I think in the end after the initial work it should be worth it (at least for us readers )

Does anybody know a official webnovel account we could tag here to get their attention? I would love to at least hear a statement from WN like "we saw your suggestions" (wishful thinking I know)

KoraL

KoraL You can read over 450k words in 12 hours? Maybe I'm underestimating most readers?

You are underestimating readers too much there. :sweat_smile:

I'll give a small example. Mine is a Sci-fi book, averaging around 1.8k words per chapter. It is a full-blown sci-fi with complicated mechanisms, tough storytelling, and a complex plot. Even that, I had precedents where readers finished it in 4 days (330 chapter worth)

Now, a standard fantasy or romance is easy to digest and can be read quickly. So, reading 200+ chapters in 10 hours is pretty easy. Heck, for binging readers, they would be even faster.

As an author, I take around 15-20 minutes to read a normal 2k word chapter (for stories other than my own). As a fellow author, you might not be as slow as me, but you might be taking longer to read per chapter too. When I was an ardent reader, I read the same in under 2 minutes. So, like sloth said, your suggestion is pretty generous.