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.
Sloth's unusual rant, discusion, and bulk reading debate in three acts
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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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ranmaro It's a good idea, too. Also... take care! Get well soon!
ranmaro I agree that breaking novels up into parts would help the perception of some readers. But it doesn't change the fact that the prices WebNovel charges for completed novels are absurd!
WebNovel's pricing strategy is aimed at producing and supporting original work and new translations. I think they charge a very reasonable amount for that goal - their pricing for ongoing daily chapters is fine and I spend $30/month between membership and top ups. The problem is that they apply the same pricing models to bulk reading, for example of already completed novels.
I did more thorough comparison of WebNovel prices to other sources in another thread:
https://forum.webnovel.com/d/50508-rip-off/25
I'll just give one example here (see the other thread for details):
I Shall Seal the Heavens will cost $288 here to read the 1611 chapters.
If you buy it as an ebook from Wuxiaworld (if it is still available there), it will cost $55.
If you buy it from Amazon, you will pay $5 per volume for 9 volumes, or $45 total.
If you read it on Amazon Kindle Unlimited and can read it in a month, it will cost you $10 to read.
No matter how you break up I Shall Seal the Heavens into parts, it is still going to be enormously more expensive here than elsewhere, until WebNovel starts offering a different way to read bulk or completed novels.
CrispyCritter well let's say to make the thread more useful and productive we have here two models to discuss: the ongoing novels and the completed novels.
For me, I think breaking the ongoing model into smaller books and parts and sell it on bulk would be more beneficial. Especially when you consider other marketing aspect, like pumping up an already dying novel - original or translated - by using discount on certain books or parts. Such solutions might help novels that are about to be dropped or dropped already to inject some life into it, and gain more in the future by writing or translating more chapters in it.
As for the fees for them, the ongoing novels share one simple disadvantage which is the low number of purchases once the readers reached the end chapter published. So to maintain the equilibrium it's better to keep it divided in the current prices, without changes unless discussed by the writers, translators, editors, and wn staff.
As for completed novels, for me I see them as a bonus books. These books either original or translated have their ongoing expenditure ended the moment they were completed - especially the translated ones.
So cutting the price in lower values - like the examples you mentioned - might be an attracting factor to make these novels still bring sales, provided that they didn't bring enough after period of closure.
Which is the main case in most novels I think, original and translated.
Having a completed novel that few reads due to lack of propaganda when the author or the translator fees were cut off and there is no more expenditure to it might be solved by having this discount. Many readers will be aware that the prices of completed novels are much cheaper than the ongoing ones, and that will help to drive more motion to them.
But the question here will this affect the ongoing novels?
Still this has to be properly calculated and thoroughly tested, as even using logic can't be applied to many real life scenarios. Many tests are needed and a few examples - even from Amazon - aren't enough to judge precisely on the validity of such alterations.
Many published authors when you buy their old works you'll get great prices for them compared to the time of hype they had the year of these works' release and couple of years after. still some famous works still carry their value and have their prices stable after many years, and I don't know if these would be applicable too here in wn or it will fail.
After giving it another thought, the matter is much complicated than I initially thought. Many parameters are laid on the table, for example is the work ongoing or completed? Does it bring money even whether it's ongoing or completed? Is it popular or it's already buried under the dirt? Does it have a sequel or it's a stand alone book?
Considering these elements you'll reach the conclusion that some books differ than others, and then we'll have to tweak this to separate books according to many parameters.
Which is hard to plan, try out, and execute to be honest. A full parameter with scores is needed, many will be asked out of authors, translators and editors to do for such a system to operate and function properly. More importantly closer monitoring for testing, preservation, and maintenance is asked from the higher ups of the company to make sure the system won't suddenly crash and everything they worked for years won't be smashed into pieces.
The more the system became complicated, the harder it is to do and succeed. Frankly speaking, If I was one of the higher ups in the company, I would toss my idea away and not consider it, harsh yet true.
I'll come back if I have a better simpler idea, or not.
ranmaro.
CrispyCritter sorry forget to mention fast passes. Don't know how much one can have for a month, but if one per day, then thirty per month, so this would be considered as thirty free chapters calculated to be read without paying.
Sigh, it's too complicated and I'm too tired to do maths right now, but things like these make trying to mimic any external example here in wn hard and unpredictable.
ranmaro Yes, ongoing and completed novels are a bit different, but my guess is that most ongoing authors/translators would be OK with large batch discounts on their early chapters. Anything to get a new reader up to date on their novel so the reader can start paying the full daily chapter price and even have the chance of paying for privilege. That's where the bigger WebNovel profits will come from. I do think the author/translator of ongoing novels should probably have veto power over giving those large discounts, but I think most should be willing.
As far as fast passes go, they are pretty insignificant in these bulk scenarios. I already discounted the WebNovel prices by the full top up bonus (15%) and added another 5% for fast passes, which I consider realistic. Consider that if someone reads I shall Seal the Heavens for two months, and applies every fast pass possible in those two months to the novel, they will have saved just over 2000 coins or $35. The WebNovel price would be reduced to about $260 from $288 (after adding back in the 5% I had taken out) - still immensely far from Amazon's $45.
Winzentwinni The voting system improvements are in my opinion really needed. Your ideas are really good. I personally thought that they could make votinh time longer (2-3 weeks) and add more novels to it (so the variety will be higher) while still allowing only two winners.
It would limit book dump and probably reduce amount of dropped translations.
Ah, the dropped translations - that issue is pretty hard to crack because they weren't giving enough profit. I think they could add a event happening either irregularly (the event would start if amount of dropped novel went over a certain cap) or regulary (once/two times a year). I mean over a certain amount of time a dropped novel might get more fans (though dropped novels are pretty unattractive for obvious reasons)who would support it's further release. And I mean there are (or were) few novels really close to ending (less than 100 chapters) but the question is whether resuming of such book would be profitable. I mean it might be better than just letting the rights to publish certain novel rot in a corner?
I'm not that good at understanding how this type of business exactly works so take this with a grain of salt.
CrispyCritter with that kind of pricing im definitely going to wait for something to change before buying into this Site. Ive bought hundreds of Light novels on Kobo or JNC( J novel Club directly), but Have yet to buy any web novel related stuff yet. WuxiaWorld seems to have a decent looking paid sub service, and it sounds like this site used to have an unlimited sub.
Ryan_Pettit It did, but it didn't work out well. They tried it for a short moment, but when it became apparent that outside of the cream of the top, everyone's earning decreased by a HUGE lot, they decided to scrap it. Once again, a system won't work if it directly benefits only one side.
MotivatedSloth Are you sure about that? My recollection is that the top ranked authors' income went down substantially (50%) as the folks that had been paying just for the top author daily chapters started to read massive amounts of other novels. That certainly was the case with me - the percentage of top author chapters that I read went from 100% to probably about 5%. The top ranked authors got a lot less money out of me. Other authors got a lot more.
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CrispyCritter I'm curious. How would my proposal create difficulty in distributing payments? The vouchers mentioned have historically been only usable on a single work, so it would be clear which novel gets that voucher's worth of value. I also remember that once upon a time, vouchers that could only be used on a small selection of novels (probably 5-10) were given away during a number of events.
Theoretically, this means that it would not be difficult for WN to add this to their platform because they have done it in the past.
The other proposal for caught up readers was a single work subscription, which instead of requiring WN to create a new infrastructure of automatically unlocking a chapter of a pre-specified novel, they could drop a single work fast-pass into the subscriber's account on a regular basis. Hence, the entire value of the single work subscription would go toward that specific novel.
KoraL I dont know how much a light novel comparison to the web novel market. But JNC( J novel club does something similar). theres a $5-11 buck a month subscruption that has includes a rotating list of titles for catch up purposes every month. so if you wait all year you can possibly catch up to all released parts of their translated books).
KoraL You're right; I was misinterpreting your proposal as allowing unlimited free reading among the 30 (or whatever) novels on the allowed list, but your proposal is actually that each 12 (or 4) hour voucher is for a single work chosen from the 30. There is no problem assigning the payment there.
6 days later
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MotivatedSloth 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.
Your pp smoll.
P.S. Here’s something consructive tho - add a TL;DR for people with ADHD like me.
Sythcake Basically MotivatedSloth is suggesting that Webnovel implement a seasonal monthly pass that unlocks an entire volume of a specific series for readers. That is to say, divide an entire series to several volumes, you pay a discounted sum to binge-read a single volume (can be up to 100 chapters) within one month, rather than pay for each chapter.