As someone who spends quite a bit on various entertainment purchases monthly, here is my feedback on the current pricing, based on my consideration of a few of the current premium-priced novels.

If I come back to a stockpile of, say, 500 premium chapters split across 5 novels, and the average price per chapter is 10 stones, I would need to spend approximately 100 USD to read them.

If the novels were well written with a high quality plot, good dialogue, and novel world building, this might be worth considering, but as always, everything is relative. These novels exist in a continuum of English-language entertainment which ranges from premium to webnovel.

An alternative way to invest that 100 USD in entertainment would be to get 5 premium Kindle novels from tier one novelists, at 20 USD per novel. Those are typically 400-500 pages long.

The middle ground would be the 3-5 USD self-published Kindle novels which are 300-400 pages, but can be hit or miss quality-wise. The worst of those are very seldom of poorer quality than translated webnovels. You can get quite a number of those for 100 USD.

Against this backdrop, my preference would be to pay 5 USD per month to access all webnovel.com novels. That would make sense.

    2 months later

    For example, I just bought Peter F. Hamilton's book The Reality Dysfunction, 1200+ pages, on Kindle for $10 USD.

    His work is professionally written and edited, the English is excellent, and the story isn't biased by ultra-nationalism or racism. Female characters don't exist just as a backdrop for male characters.

    This author alone has a bibliography of over 20 full length novels, of 700 to 1200 pages each.

    On webnovel.com, $10 USD would have bought me 500 stones, or 40-45 chapters. I've tried to emphasize the importance of quality in story structure and translation, but the quality on webnovel.com is nowhere comparable to, say, this author's works.

    Please consider the market when you're pricing your product.

    You're comparing light novels to Peter F. Hamilton's books? Are you for real? They are of totally different universes. It's like comparing apples to oranges. Light novels are for casual readers who read purely for entertainment. They are written without much deliberation and oftentimes these authors have no deep knowledge of the things they write about. They don't have time to go consult experts or read references books either, unlike traditional authors. Light novels needed fast and constant daily releases after all.

    Also, about the pricing. Do you know how much it cost to get professional translators and editors' services? Each would cost hundreds of dollars just for a few hundred pages. If QI do get them for these light novels I'm afraid the price of spirit stones would skyrocket exponentially. It is simply not applicable.

    Your complaint about the spirit stones being pricey is true. But that's why QI allowed free spirit stones. To give people other options. You can read for free, but only one or two books at a time. You want more then you have to pay. And this info might shock you, but there are people who are willing to pay for what they thought of as an entertaining novel, no matter how trashy you think it is.

    I'm comparing a dollar spent on Kindle to a dollar spent on webnovel.com. From a buyer's perspective, because that's what we are.

    You seem to have the misapprehension that the world owes a seller on a market, to buy at their first price, because they have costs, just like everybody else. Or that QI's investment into novel IP, which can be resold again and again, somehow resembles investment into perishable inventory that can be sold only once. Why don't you think about these things for a while before returning to the topic with more commentary?

    A buyer's decision to pay 10 USD for a better return on market A, instead of a worse return on market B isn't a complaint, it's an invitation to investigate the market options for one's customers. On this planet, there are any number of people at any time who are trying to sell something without a clear understanding of what their customers' options are. Businesses who get stuck doing this usually end up bankrupt, and take their offering with them. I don't want this to happen to QI.

    Sure, the novels have their hardcore fans, but in this market, compared to China's censored and limited entertainment market with WeChat payments, they won't float the boat.

    Again, you're making the mistake of comparing apples to oranges. Webnovel is not comparable to Amazon. Because,
    1. Webnovel is selling stories by chapters while Amazon sells completed books. Completed books are not that popular in Webnovel.
    2. Webnovel is targeting different market than Amazon. Webnovel's target market is the niche market of light readers. If you want to compare, then it's comparable to those self-published books you said could be a hit or miss. Those books you said cost 5 dollar a piece for 300 pages. But guess what, Webnovel gives their first 300 pages for free. And you want to pay 5 dollars a month, for access to all books, when most of them have more than 300 chapters. Isn't that too unfair?
    3. Most Webnovel readers are not English language native speakers. Most are people who use English as second or third language, like me, thus we don't bother much with the quality of translation, as long as the writing is readable. So what if there's something to be desired about the translation? We are grateful enough there's people willing to translate.

      mikaelhg it doesnt make sense. A small amount of readers (whales) actually pay hundreds a dollars for a few chapters. There are not enough readers who would pay 5$ amonth to make up for the profit they make from thos whales

          ShouldBeStudying That's not true, the fact is the pay per read model doesn't work well in the west compared to China while the subscribe model does.

          They could give less stuff for free if there's only a small monthly charge for all of us to read everything.

              Mute i think they make more money this way otherwise theybwould know what to opt for. Quidian has probably a team that really thought about the monetisation approach. And they realisez their service is different from Netflix that cam employ montly fees

                  ShouldBeStudying . Quidian has probably a team that really thought about the monetisation approach.

                  LOL, you uttered the words Qidian and 'thought' in the same sentence.

                  That's hilarious. Look at all the stupid actions they repeatedly keep taking to alienate their readers and translators.

                  The truth of the matter is only 5.8% of all readers for China Literature (Qidian parent company) in 2017 were paying readers. That means 94%+ generated zero revenue for China Literature.

                  Where China Literature has been making most of their money is with licensing to other media markets. Think of things like Anime, Manga, TV series, Films, and Merchandising.

                    8 days later

                    ShouldBeStudying The scenario you're proposing, where "a few readers will pay hundreds of dollars for a few chapters" doesn't seem to be based on observable reality. Perhaps you would like to present some concrete observations of this kind of activity taking place in the low-end entertainment IP marketplace?

                    In a few years, when you graduate and enter the workforce, you'll find out that while you posit that Qidian has a team pondering content monetisation in the western market, people who work on such matters are just people, exactly like you and I, who have their own perspectives into the matters of their expertise.

                    In this case, I would bet good money that when we provide this sort of feedback to those folks, it's not entirely redundant, as some of us do have pretty good visibility into the western IP marketplaces.

                        LetThereBeMagic When we were discussing similar competing products on an open market, you brough up the hypothesis that apples and oranges aren't comparable products on the fruit market, which sounds like the accidental inversion of the obvious facts.

                        Did you mean to say that indeed, apples and oranges are competing products, and when your mother goes shopping for you, if apples would suddenly cost 10x more than oranges, she would definitely fill your fruit need with oranges rather than apples, instead of paying more, or going without for no particular reason?

                        Because that would seem to make much more sense, obviously.

                            ShouldBeStudying
                            I too think that Qidian is targeting the few percentage of ppl who pay. And doesn't necessarily care about the others bi*chings. That got a working model and they don't wanna listen to anybody else. My idea is...
                            They should keep short 5 second ads for all chapters, like ALL of them (like on youtube, we still using it aren't we?). And keep a subscription fee for only the premium works, like weekly or something. There's plenty ways if we think a bit. China is not the world. Wat strategy works there doesn't necessarily work everywhere.
                            But, I hope their business model is working. For the sake of all the readers of webnovel....

                                I am one of the few that have spent $200+ on SS and am slowly weaning myself off of this model to other comparable stuff as my SS runs out. This 'whale' is getting tired of feeling that I am getting ripped off vs. paying a fair $ for good service.

                                  Write a Reply...
                                  Web Novel Novel Ask