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 I think you have some great ideas there 👌 and you've already done enough with analysing how practical and implemental it it. The rest should be for WN to figure out in hopes they read this post.

    I also have a suggestion for improvement but I don't know exactly how profitable it would be or better how much WN would lose when compared to how they do it right now. The thing is I hate all those novels getting literally spammed and forced onto the market by webnovel. I like how you can trial read now before the novel is up vor vote. BUT an output of two novels a week? Most of them aren't even that good or interesting (my opinion) and for the FL ones the trend is that the plots are carbon copies of each other. Also the differentiation between FL and ml... But okay
    - I guess the separation is so that ml novels also get a chance to get released as there are more people interested in FL/romance stories here (what I feel) so it's okay

    But could we make the voting so that a novel gets published only after reaching a certain count of energy stones? Like a million or so? Because usually the older one in the vote gets published then a next one joins the vote and the previous younger one is now the older one that gets published next etc (hopefully you know what I mean). They get around 300,000 votes each week before publishing.
    To make it fair put more novels into the voting pot at the same time (I don't know like once a month) and open the pot for voting. After the time is up the ones that reached a certain amount get published and the pot gets restocked with new novels and the count starts from zero. Like this only the "best" gets out.
    But as I said previously I don't know how lucrative it's for WN to do so because I guess they earn from every published novel. Maybe (really just maybe) they could implement that people with membership get one more energy stone to vote or let people purchase energy stones with money for hardcore fans to get their novel out. It should be noted that only a certain amount like maybe 5 to 10 (?) could be maximally purchased in said time frame till the voting pot resets and that spending money there doesn't guarantee your novel to reach the trees hold to get published.

    This was it for now from me 😅 but still really glad you opened up this post. Thank you 💜

        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)

          HinataPerolada No spotlight or buzz around completed novels anymore

          I guess I personally can vouch this. There never really was any extra buzz around completed works for starters. I'm saying this as a small ant and cannon fodder author.

            I think everyone has expressed really good insights here.

            For me, I've come to an understanding of this place. WN leads, we follow. That is all.

              HinataPerolada yeah completed novels should get more attention at least every now end then. Some really good story's are sinking in the dust and for me some of them count as classics (maybe just because I was new to Webnovels then and they were my firsts but still) it's sad that the "younger ones" most probably won't stumble upon them anymore. Especially when they aren't even in the rankings anymore

                  Also we need information if a books on hiatus and how long or if it was dropped etc

                  And now I'm finally going to bed because it's way too late

                  And for the forum something like a search thing to search up certain words or topics you want to see posts about (if there's already something like this I am to blind to find it)

                    I still think that they could sell limited free reading vouchers. They already have the infrastructure in place. They have historically been able to place restrictions on what novels they could be used on too, so it wouldn't be as onerous to implement as the suggested chunking method. The only downside is that the chapters read would not remain unlocked. To avoid additional overuse, they could sell them only as a part of a subscription. For example (Eight 12-hour limited free reading vouchers for participating novels per month for $20 that expire after 30 days).

                    As for the "caught up subscription" they could sell a type of subscription that drops one (or release rate number of) pre-specified single-work fast pass into your inbox daily. Then they wouldn't need to implement an auto-unlock system.

                      KoraL Your system of free reading is in my opinion way too generous. Right now, taking 7 coins worth per chapter and only 30 chapters a month, that gives us the value of 210 coins/month (to read just the already released chapters) + let's say we take an average novel of 400 chapters (only). First 100 is free. Then for the price of 1.25$ you can get 330*7=2310 coins worth of reading (way more for longer novels) that equals to 46.2$. What you are proposing is making WN lower the income of their side, authors and translators by 36.96 times. Not ~37%.

                      37 times. And that only taking into account people would read average novels and use those passes on novels with 10 premium chapters to get this super low 400 chap average.

                          MotivatedSloth You can read over 450k words in 12 hours? Maybe I'm underestimating most readers? Also, it was an example of how they could price it, and the intention would be to limit it to novels that weren't generating (much) income to begin with. Heck, they can make it a rotating list of 30 or so novels and reduce the number of vouchers to 5 per month of the 4 hour vouchers. (You also divided 20 by 8 wrong.) And at a higher tier, like bronze/silver/gold vouchers, they could have 100 or so novels on the list for $50. Eventually people will forget to use some and WN income will increase, although participating authors may be disadvantaged, but they would get readers they otherwise would not have gotten.

                              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.

                                  I agree that Koral's proposal probably won't work for ongoing novels for the same reason that the $25/month unlimited that WebNovel tried didn't work - it interferes too much with the profitable (for both top authors and WebNovel) new daily chapters.

                                  MotivatedSloth's factor of 18 is prohibitive when talking about ongoing daily chapters. It is not out of the question when talking about completed books. Getting paid $2.50 for 400 chapters instead of $46.20 is something that would be beneficial for most authors, given that pretty much nobody would ever pay $46.20 for a 400 chapter book. Getting some money is better than none.

                                  Koral's proposal may be reasonable if it applied only to completed books and was easy to regulate/police. But making sure the money gets to the right authors is surprisingly difficult; I know Amazon has all sorts of contortions it goes through for Kindle Unlimited. Getting a bot to read novels for an author is not difficult, and can really impact an author's share of the money coming in.

                                  There's many different proposals that might work. Here's 3:
                                  1. Monthly subscription of $10 to read a single novel (The first of month, you choose your novel for the month.)
                                  2. WebNovel expands the limited fast passes by selling them (for specific novels) at a reduced rate.
                                  3. WebNovel strongly reduces the cost of buying batch chapters. 20% discount for 50 chapters, 30% for 100 chapters, up to an 80% discount for 500 chapters.

                                  All have pros and cons. My favorite is 3. The base mechanism already exists; there's no selecting and keeping track of novels, it's applicable to both completed and ongoing novels, allocation of money to authors/translators is straight-forward, making long novels one fifth the cost (the 80% discount) is about right to match what others are doing.

                                    MotivatedSloth I really admire your work and ideas! Well thought of and neatly presented.
                                    In fact - despite agreeing to all of your suggestions - I came here to write about a total different approach.

                                    The current system no matter how you tried to amend will still seem super pricey for some, or many, regardless of how you tried to support them.
                                    And the reason of this might return to the difference in seeing the books here than seeing books at other places. Here we have novels with hundreds of chapters, even thousands.

                                    So here is my thing: Why not deal with a novel as it being a series? a volume as it being a book? a couple of volumes as being a part?

                                    Readers won't understand difficult math, and adding more to the mix will make it more complicated despite intending to be the opposite.

                                    So for me, it's best to be straight forwards like this;
                                    Series: The King's Avatar.
                                    Buy Book one: the real number of coins needed without the need of any discount.
                                    Buy book two... buy book three...
                                    Buy Part 1: the number of coins dedicated to open a predetermined number of volumes to be a separate part by the writer\ editors\wn itself.
                                    Buy part 2... buy part 3...
                                    and finally buy the entire released series to far.

                                    Like this no one is going to lose anything, the readers will get it the way they really used to - going to any store either real or virtual and buy a book of a series - and no one will complain about a book being so expensive and long. After all they are going to buy dozens of books in one series and have many options and varieties to do so.

                                    Well, this is just a thought I had for long, and hopefully I explained it well despite having covid right now and feeling tired.
                                    Thanks again for the effort.
                                    ranmaro. "Sorry for any mistake in writing, I really about to fall asleep over the keyboard right now."

                                      MotivatedSloth I really admire your work and ideas! Well thought of and neatly presented.
                                      In fact - despite agreeing to all of your suggestions - I came here to write about a total different approach.

                                      The current system no matter how you tried to amend will still seem super pricey for some, or many, regardless of how you tried to support them.
                                      And the reason of this might return to the difference in seeing the books here than seeing books at other places. Here we have novels with hundreds of chapters, even thousands.

                                      So here is my thing: Why not deal with a novel as it being a series? a volume as it being a book? a couple of volumes as being a part?

                                      Readers won't understand difficult math, and adding more to the mix will make it more complicated despite intending to be the opposite.

                                      So for me, it's best to be straight forwards like this;
                                      Series: The King's Avatar.
                                      Buy Book one: the real number of coins needed without the need of any discount.
                                      Buy book two... buy book three...
                                      Buy Part 1: the number of coins dedicated to open a predetermined number of volumes to be a separate part by the writer\ editors\wn itself.
                                      Buy part 2... buy part 3...
                                      and finally buy the entire released series to far.

                                      Like this no one is going to lose anything, the readers will get it the way they really used to - going to any store either real or virtual and buy a book of a series - and no one will complain about a book being so expensive and long. After all they are going to buy dozens of books in one series and have many options and varieties to do so.

                                      Well, this is just a thought I had for long, and hopefully I explained it well despite having covid right now and feeling tired.
                                      Thanks again for the effort.
                                      ranmaro. "Sorry for any mistake in writing, I really about to fall asleep over the keyboard right now."

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