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.
Pricing feedback
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.
LetThereBeMagic b*tch that phrase doesn't make sense, why can't fruits be compared?
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
- Edited
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.
- Edited
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.
- Edited
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.
Bluboy as a free user, on behalf of my common-folk, we thank you for your sacrifice.
kishenkp the best way to fight against premium is not pay quidian a cent