Webnovel.Forum

Grand_Void_Daoist but still I mean this doesn’t change the money grabbing nature of wn not a good enough reason.
It’s just blatantly admitting wn wants more money

notimegamer What kind of books have 1,000 chapters? The light novels on Kindle you're talking about - how many volumes per series do they have? 12? More? Each volume is about 10-20 chapters, and these are series who used to be web novels. For example, Mahouka no Koukou Rettousei, hundreds of chapters, divided into 20 or so volumes.

You are paying $150 for about what, 50 volumes? Stop the false equivalence.

Now, the problem is that these webnovels are often not of good quality, there are mistakes and typos, they are not edited, so you should be paying less for them, and they are expensive for what you get. But the whole "I'm paying $150 for a whole book that is 1,000 chapters long!" is just false equivalence and detracts from the real issue. Nobody is going to take you seriously, and thanks to people making up false problems, the real problems don't get addressed.

CrispyCritter Exactly, this is the problem I'm talking about! Not "one book costs $288" but how 9 volumes cost only $45 as opposed to $288. That's the comparison you should be making, i.e. "9 volumes cost $45 instead of $288 if you buy them in print" and not "1 volume costs $288."

Imagine if you just say "1 book of 1,611 chapters cost me $288! It's so expensive!" Nobody is going to take you seriously. But f you point out that you can buy 9 volumes worth of books in print for $45, yet you've to pay $288 for the same amount of content online - that's the real issue. That's like $32 per volume, which is almost twice the price of a regular paperback. That's what I meant - make true equivalence comparisons, not false ones. False equivalence will only cause people to overlook your problem and not take you seriously.

CrispyCritter I would say it's series, because unless you have the context, nobody is going to take you seriously when you count 1,611 chapters as a single novel.

I mean, you could say it's just semantics, but how would I know what the context is? The guy literally complained about purchasing a thousand chapters and he compared it to a single volume, especially since he mentoned kindle and Amazon books that only cost $7 (and obviously he's referring to single volumes from a series). Are you telling me that's semantics? Like I said, the former webnovel, Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei has a few hundred chapters that are spread out over 20-30 volumes. Why was he comparing 1,000 chapters of a finished series to a single $7 volume of a kindle ebook? If he actually added it up and compared it to the 20-30 volumes of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei instead, you'll see that the price is actually reasonable. 20 volumes cost $140. So yeah, paying $150 does seem fair.

But that detracts from the real issue here, because you're paying $150 for unedited and low quality work off the Internet, as opposed to the professionally edited Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei that has wonderful illustrations. The point, though, is that, nobody will take you seriously when you cry about spending $150 for 1,000 chapters while comparing it to a single $7 volume that has 10-20 chapters. Aren't you going to roll your eyes and say, yeah, based on quantity of chapters, that price is obviously a given? But they will take you more seriously when you actually compare series to series, not a series to a single volume.

Maekellen Print is by page count and web by word count.

No. Print is also by word count. Professional authors get paid by the word, not pages. I don't know who told you that, but you're mistaken.

Maekellen In addition, there seems to be no consensus among web authors about how many words should constitute a single chapter.

Yes. You can have superlong chapters like in Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, but then you can have short chapters like in Fixed Damage or Nidome no Yuusha or Healer's Redo.

Maekellen All of this means you cannot always tell how many volumes will be comparable to a completed web novel.

Yes. Obviously you're going to have less chapters in a single volume of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei while you will have like 20 chapters in one volume of Fixed Damage.

Maekellen Further, as the original work is termed a novel, it is entirely accurate to make the comparison as price per novel instead of columes, series, et al.

No, that's not how it works. Technically, you can try to cram 1,000 chapters into a single "novel" but then it's definitely not going to cost as much as a novel with 20-30 chapters. Unless you're telling me that each chapter is only 100 words, which is definitely not being discussed here (because we have literal examples such as Against the Gods and novels here on Webnovel), in terms of word count, 1,000 chapters is way more than the words collated in 20-30 chapters, even if the chapters in these printed novels have like 5,000 words each. Typically, a printed novel has a word count of anywhere between 70,000 to 200,000 words, and are about 300-600 pages in length. Let's say a webnovel chapter has 500 words (and that's the lower end), even that is going to be 500,000 words, about 2.5-7 times the number of words you get in a typical print novel.

The quality, of course, is not there, so you simply end up paying for quantity, which is a problem. You're paying like 2 cents for every 200 words if I'm not mistaken. So the 1,000 chapters of 500 words is going to cost you like $50. A typical 70,000 to 120,000-word novel costs like $8-15, whereas a 600-page novel easily costs you about $25-$30. So if you count it by word count alone, the price isn't all that different. In fact, it seems to be a little cheaper. But we're talking about unedited, unprofessionally written, amateurish novels, so the issue is that you're paying nearly the same price for amateur work when compared to a professionally published novel.

But you can't just simply pretend that you can compare a 1,000-chapter webnovel that's anywhere between half a million to two million words to a single novel that's about 200,000 words max and complain about the price discrepancy. That's sheer dishonesty.

Maekellen I have seen the same paragraph, merely reworded, 3-4 timea in a single chapter. This is useless fluff that distracts from the atory and no one should have to pay for.

When this happens, why the f are you still reading the story and paying for it? That's the author's fault, boycott the author. Don't pay for recycled garbage and then complain that you're getting recycled garbage. Or did you think you're entitled to receive recycled garbage for free?

This is precisely the issue I'm raising. It's not the price and length of the damned webnovels when compared to the price and length of professional novels that's the problem. It's the quality. You can't just not pay people for their labor, but the problem is when these people decide to cut corners and skimp on quality. If you're not happy with the quality of their work, stop feeding them. Like, seriously. When their sales drop and people stop reading their stuff, they'll be forced to wake up and reflect on how to improve their writing. But if you're going to demand that they write for free or get paid less, then they won't take you seriously because they think you're entitled (and also because morons continue to pay for their work and lap this garbage up). That's common sense. Unless you're literally telling me that you're fine with reading garbage as long as it's cheap or free. Really?

CrispyCritter I'm talking specifically about how you can't compare the price of an entire series of webnovels to a single volume of a print novel.

Look, if Wuxiaworld is selling novels cheaper on Amazon, all the more power to them. Should Webnovel lower prices to compete with Wuxiaworld, especially given their low quality translations? Absolutely! But that's not what I'm arguing against here. I am simply arguing that you cannot make false equivalence comparisons by complaining about how an entire series of 1,000 chapters cost you $150 while comparing it to a single $7 volume. However, I agreed that you can compare that $288 1,611 chapters to a $45 series of 9 volumes. That's a fair comparison. Complaining that you have to pay $288 for 1,611 chapters when you can buy a single volume for $5? Nobody is going to take you seriously.

Also, you can talk about Wuxiaworld all you want, but what about other publishers? Should Kadokawa lower their prices too? Kodansha? Viz Media? The content you get from purchasing their $7-11 volumes is less than what Wuxiaworld offers. What about Black Library, whose novels are $17 for 90,000-100,000 words? Are you arguing that all publishers should lower their prices just because Wuxiaworld sells their products for an amazing price? These are literally the light novels that the other posters have been talking about, which was why I was measuring prices against them and not Wuxiaworld. You know, like how former webnovel series such as Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, Sword Art Online, Dungeon Seeker, Fixed Damage and lots of other isekai novels on Syousetsuka ni narou got ported over to print novels? Isn't that the comparisons the others are making? That's the context I'm using. Of course I have no objections against calls for Webnovels lowering their prices, but these people are literally demanding that they should be able to buy entire series for $7 and not your $45, which is absurd.

Also, if Wuxiaworld is better, then readers should simply purchase from Wuxiaworld. Vote with their wallets, force Webnovel into reconsidering their marketing strategies by going to a more efficient and higher quality competitor. It amazes me that people unironically complain about how rubbish the translations are, yet they still stubbornly insist on reading them. It's as if they're saying that it's all right to read rubbish as long as they are cheap or free. Why are you even reading them in the first place?

Point is, not all criticisms are equal. Anyone can complain and criticize. But if you want people to take your criticisms seriously, you have to deliver a proper one, not simply make false equivalences and then wonder why nobody is listening to you.