https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/qidian-sent-dmca-notice-to-patreon-for-all-ww-translators.63127/

My take on this:
Since QI is ruining the patreon revenue model for their translators via the forced transition to Premium, they are attempting to disrupt the model for the overall translation scene; especially with Wuxiaworld.

Qidian International is a bully. There it's been said. They are like a child on the playground that knocks over a set of building blocks another child was playing with. For no reason other than from sheer pettiness.

For me, enough is enough.

The poaching of HJC ignoring even their own licensing deal with WW—especially given the fact that they can't even keep up with some of their own series (Martial Arts Master anyone?)—had given me pause for concern since it seemed like a stupid resumption of the fight with WW.

Then they resumed posting unauthorized WW's translation's further reduced my desire to support QI.
And now the underhanded DMCA requests, clearly another form of bullying by QI.

Combine all that with a revenue model (premium) that has pushed many novels out of the realm of affordability and it's clear. It's time for me to spend my money elsewhere.

My condolences to all the translators and editors stuck with such a toxic management team.

    Le sigh. If you read the contract revealed by rwx on nuf itself, it does state that the translated Qi novels are only allowed to be hosted for free on wuxiaworld.com.

    The whole whether completed means fully-completed novel or just a completed chapter is another whole can of worms that require lawyers to navigate.

    If you do the math, premium is actually cheaper than most patreons.

    So basically, WW can DMCA qidian but qidian cannot DMCA WW when there's a breach in the contract?

    But since neither of us really know the true content of the contract in question, let's not buy into propaganda and see how this all unfolds in the end.

    Ps. I enjoy working with Qidian so you can save the condolences.

      Lonelytree Premium is cheaper than most patrons? How does that make sense? Just to read 2 novels it costs $50 a month now.

      Maybe from the point of view of a rich patron, then yes I guess it makes sense. Other than that, I have to agree with the previous poster, what are you smoking???

      And I noticed you didn't address the toxic environment or even the outright poaching of a licensed HJC translation?

          Shaff Someone already did the math for it some time ago. I'm too lazy to find it to prove a point on the internet.

            checkm8 Toxic environment? I'm assuming you're talking about the whole monetization of translation. I doubt you can blame Qidian for that, i mean that's how capitalism works no? If you're talking about toxic environment for WW translators/editors, imagine you're a Qi translator/editor visiting the noveltranslation subreddit or hell, just nuf, now that's toxic environment.

            The "poaching" is part of the contract and relates to the argument whether "completed" counts as fully completed or completed chapter, I am no lawyer so I admit I have more faith in Qidian's company lawyers who drafted the contract than internet lawyers, but if you can find me a lawyer that states Qidian is completely in the wrong according to the contract, then... let's see, I'm not that powerful enough to have Qidian takes down the translation here, so I suppose you'll have to settle with my personal apology, if you still want it that is.

                Shaff checkm8

                You can read the posts of @shelwyn

                https://forum.webnovel.com/d/4131-library-of-heaven-s-path-premium/290

                I pay $20 dollars a month for 7 chapters of early access to Mystical Journey.

                I pay $10 dollars a month for 4 chapters of early access to Mansion in a post apocalyptic world.

                I pay $50 dollars a month to Super Stars of Tomorrow for early access to 14 chapters of early access on patreon.

                The Strongest Gene used to cost $80 A month for 25 chapters of early access. That one is premium now.

                https://forum.webnovel.com/d/4131-library-of-heaven-s-path-premium/292

                80+20+10+50 = $160
                160 x3 months = $480

                9 packs of $50 spirit stones for 7500 (2500)
                1 pack of $20 spirit stones 3000 (1000)
                1 pack of $10 spirit stones 1500 (500)
                So in three months I could have

                9x 7500 (2500 permanent) =67,500 (22,500)
                1x 3000 (1000 permanent) = 3000 (1000)
                1x 1500 (500 permanent) = 1500 (500)
                In three months of patreon payments I could buy 72,000 (24,000 permanent) spirit stones.
                At 20 spirit stones a chapter I could buy 3,600 chapters here. Those are some expensive chapters too.
                At 14 spirit stones a chapter I could buy 5,142 chapters.

                That's three months worth of patreon payments for me.

                Remember, you are paying on Premium for an equivalent to the rewards from the highest tier Patreon.
                If you can't afford it, you can always not support Premium at all, read the free chapters at 1/day. If you want to blame the high prices, you really have to blame the translators who first started high tier Patreon tiers. Webnovel is just following industry practices.

                      Lonelytree Toxic environment? I'm assuming you're talking about the whole monetization of translation

                      Not at all, when I speak of toxic environment I stand by my first post. QI's stupid actions like Poaching HJC. That is what I term toxic environment. It was a petty stunt and is an action that serves no purpose but to create antagonism/drama within the translation community.

                      What purpose does it serve to poach the translation?

                      1. The novel will not be going premium thus all QI hope to earn from it is the small amount of potential ad-revenue.
                      2. It's not even locked behind the bonus chapters, so QI doesn't even earn that ad-revenue/SS.
                      3. The only purpose it serves is to stir up shit between QI & WW.

                      That's the toxic environment I'm talking about.

                      I may bitch and moan about premium, but that's only because of how expensive it has gotten. It rapidly priced me out of reading novels I enjoyed.

                      QI has a right to earn a profit. No one should argue with that statement. How they choose to do that is what is starting to become disturbing.

                      Why wouldn't they have focused on increasing/fixing exisiting translations like Martial Arts Master instead of senselessly starting a fight.

                      TOXIC!

                          checkm8 MAM translations are already being done. They are just undergoing corrections and editing. Since it is a group working for QI, with proper communication channels, it's easier to understand the other party and give them time to work out any problems. It is exactly what WW did with HJC back when Zen was having trouble keeping releases consistent.

                          WW, on the other hand, is just not very friendly with QI (obviously). And since a group has been hired by QI to finish the translation of HJC, there's no reason to bow out of the race, especially when WW slows down its release speed when QI doesn't release chapters fast. Since both sides are bent on translating it to the end, I don't see how this affects readers. In fact, the competition gives rise to faster release speeds from both sides, benefiting readers.

                          The idea of poaching by the community is frowned upon since it can cause burn out to both translating parties, eventually causing both parties to drop the translation, causing harm to the readers, as mentioned by RWX himself.

                          In the current situation, that will not happen since QI is the one funding this 'war.' WW doesn't seem like it will bow out from the race either.

                            CKtalon You completely ignored the fact that PATREON was ADVANCED READER CHAPTERS! Meanwhile, translators were still releasing a regular number of chapters every week for regular readers.

                            Under QI's current implementation all novels under premium have been moved to 7 chapters per week.

                            You all chose a very slanted example, not many people were shelling out $160 a month on patreon. Those are WAY OUTSIDE THE NORM! The numbers were more like $10-20 per month.

                            $20 per month = 1250 SS

                            1250 SS = ~104 chapters @ 12 SS per chapter.

                            That's what was more typical.

                            Yes, it is much cheaper for the RICH and well-off.

                            Congratulations! You just saved them money.

                                I leave it with this:

                                Which company continually starts shit, creates issues within the community and seems more focused on fighting rather than innovation.

                                That's usually the company that is the issue. As I said. TOXIC.

                                It's no longer a company I'm willing to support No more purchases, no more traffic.

                                But thanks for the chuckle about how the rich will be saving money now under the premium model!

                                checkm8 Yes, most people are willing to pay $10-20, which is roughly how much it costs a book on Premium! It was all priced based on what users are willing to pay.

                                QI is still releasing 7/week for free!

                                People who began subscribing to Patreon chapters have to wait for the free chapters to catch up if they want to stop paying as well (perhaps not as long as QI's system), but that is where the monetization models change slightly. Remember, QI lowered the price from $100+ a book to $10-20 a book to give paying readers the treatment high-tier readers were paying.

                                    checkm8 checkm8, i've seen you in our discord chat before. good old days when we talked with billdoor about gun violence in the us. and how we were all surprised to find out your age (at least for me anyways).
                                    :wave:, hope you're doing well m8.
                                    it's no wonder you haven't been around often to see the discord page revamped by none other then @Millman97.
                                    i believe that what you said make a lot of sense, in their journey for profit, qi has made many enemies and spilled the blood of both translators/editors from their competitors, and readers.

                                    it's unfortunately that in my journey to look for entertainment, i stumbled here and met some very cool people.
                                    there's no helping it.

                                    here is what i Will say to you though, if qi didn't have a phenomenal group of translators, editors, and behind the scene supports from their employees, they would have made history a very long time ago with the amount of hate they have accumulated over the last few months from not only readers of their competitors, but also readers like you (who can no longer tolerate their greediness).

                                      Alright, let's do some numbers again to play with the logic.

                                      Cost of the SS is derived from buying ss at the current rates with the current bonus, find out which is the cheapest option yourself (... the option might surprise most.)

                                      Let's talk about the value/month. I've done up the table below to show what the average cost is/month based on what is shown on the screen. Note that some of these estimates are higher than normal (Trial Marriage Husband is 2/day rather than 16 or 2.3 chapters a day for example) so this is actually in favor of making QI look as bad as possible.

                                      The values look absolutely horrendous correct? Until you realize that I have a little something extra at the bottom. The free SS that makes everything significantly more palatable.

                                      Effectively it ensures that unless you are consistently unlucky over a whole month, you should be able to afford to read basically any one premium novel completely for free.

                                      Does any patreon afford this same level of "helpfulness"?

                                      More importantly, Patreon in general signifies the idea of "reading ahead". Remember that QI has reduced the number of "free" chapters, but NOT the absolute release rate, which means that I can do some very silly things with the numbers that are left over.

                                      For example, the distance between Immortal Mortal's last free chapter (760) to the current premium chapter is (955) is nearly 200 chapters. I don't have access to IM's rate, but let's assume that it's a pretty normal rate of say $5 for 1 extra chapter and the highest one is say... $100 for 40 chapters (which I think is a pretty big discount in it's own way....), if you're keeping up to date to the current stuff, effectively, you're reading ahead by a total of about 5 months in advance by this going rate and the distance between free and premium will grow until the novel ends.

                                      Is there a way to assign value to this "even further ahead" chapters?

                                      ... not my place to say. I was just curious and wanted to play with some numbers.

                                      tldr; at absolute minimum, Qidian allows you to read one Premium novel entirely for free and be up to date on that. Please inform me where Patreon allows that to happen

                                        Thormented Not sure if you are using USD for your currency.

                                        The price of 1SS = US$0.0153 - 0.0167

                                        So a cost/month should be closer to a 1/30th of that those numbers, which maxes out at $25 for Immortal Mortal.

                                            CKtalon

                                            Ah that was what looked weird to me. I forgot I was working in cents rather than dollars, so everything is actually about 1/100th of what I posted I believe. Probably need to double check some parts of the table too if I made that error....

                                            Edit: Also, I was working directly off the lowest and highest in the get more section i.e

                                            50/0.99= 50.50505051
                                            (2500+750)/49.99=65.0130026

                                            Edit2: hm... no that actually seems accurate now that i'm looking at it more. @_@; whatever. I'll come back and double check the numbers and everything in a little bit.

                                                I'm reposting this here because it's pertinent. It's hilarious to expect premium for free to last much longer. Sure it gives QI some talking points at the moment.

                                                I don't really expect Premium for Free to last for longer than another 3-6 months for most novels.

                                                A. Qidian's primary concern is profit. Why would they continue giving it away? Premium for Free is just a temporary measure to get existing readers used to premium, as well as to allow QI to punt the dreaded 'Pay Wall' outcry from the translation scene, especially for novels with slow to intermediate release rates.

                                                It will only last until the majority of bonus stones that users have accrued over the last 90 days completely expire. Once those pools are gone, poof no more Premium for Free chapters for most novels. After that, QI will be able to ensure most SS spent are actually paid for.

                                                B. Another thing about Premium for Free. Novels with fast release rates, like Immortal Mortal for example. Let's say you as a reader just found the novel and read up to the Premium chapters. You get your 7 Premium for free chapters, and then decide to continue reading. You read 100 premium chapters (at a cost of about 1200 SS($20 currently). You then decide to wait for the next free chapter. How long will you have to wait? Answer: Over 14 weeks for Immortal Mortal to reach your current reading point. The point being, if you are a daily reader of novels, Premium for Free is just an illusion, it doesn't benefit you much at all.

                                                Where this changes is for a new reader a year or two down the road. Why would Qidian continue giving away 365 chapters a year for premium novels? That just doesn't make sense for a company so focused on monetary gain.

                                                C. Premium for Free also doesn't make sense long term if QI really expects translators to switch from a paid flat rate per chapter to a share of the premium spirit stone revenue.

                                                D. The end goal for QI is to have an exact duplicate to how Qidian.com works. New novels will get a shorter and shorter amount of free chapters before they are put behind a pay-wall. And there is no doubt that a pay-wall is forthcoming.

                                                  Web Novel Novel Ask