So I became a premium member originally in January when it first became available. I purchased premium stones for 49.99 with 5000 bonus stones. This lasted me for a couple of months as I am consistently reading 7 premium novels and a few other non premium novels. None of these current novels I'm reading were premium before I started reading them and am quite invested. Now I want to support translators/authors/Qidian. I pay for stones I support other translators through patreon. I want to support them and do not have issues paying money for chapters. I do however have a problem being gouged for novels. Now I'm going to do some math based off a current premium novel prices.

First lets look at Spirit Stones. In January the bonus for spending 49.99 was 5000 stones which as now reduced to a mere 750 stones. I can even buy the argument that the bonus was so high because premium just was new. I do get irritated that something that you pay for will be taken from you if you decided not to use them but that's another rant. Now some simple math using the best conversion rate for stones for value it comes to approximately .06 cents a spirit stone.

Ok so using just one premium novel that has a SS cost of 10-12 stones even using 10 for this example....each chapter is approximately 70 cents to read. So for instance War Sovereign Soaring the Heavens which is currently at 814 chapters currently translated. This novel is still ongoing by the author and at the moment has around 2800 chapters. So that means currently there are at least 2000 remaining chapters at approximately 70 cents a chapter. Which comes to 1400$ for a single uncompleted novel for 1 person to read a novel. Well there are other ways to get SS but they are negligible at best. The daily check in usually isn't even enough to read a single premium chapter. It's not like non premium chapters don't make money either they still have adds attached to them. So even if you take a regular novel that you would pay 25-30 dollars per volume. The cost still exceeds this by a huge margin that you would pay to just read one novel here and that's PER person on 1 single novel. Do not forget that these authors are supported not by just 1 country but multiple countries that people support them.

I read a mere 7 premium novels which again I stress were not premium when started and was already invested in the novels. Most of these novels I read release 2 chapters a day so I'm spending approximately $2.50 a day in SS to just keep up with my novels. I understand there are tons of novels here and some of them don't have a cost but the only novels that go premium are popular novels which are the ones that most people read. I want to know how I can manage to spend over 50.00 a month to just read my favorite novels but if I were to buy them out right would cost just a mere fraction of the cost.

Now I've just done some basic math here and some of this is up for interpretation...but understand I support other translators not just the ones here. I can't afford spending 50.00 every 20 days or so to get more SS. There has to be a better way read these novels? How can Qidian justify these prices?

    They dont care
    They just use the method where they got more money.
    Qidian can use a monthly subcription and have more people with that
    But they know its less profitable...
    So dont bother to cry here you will just lure some guy who preach the
    "Go work" attitude.

      it's irritating...I do work and I am not poor...but when did reading novels cost so much? it's absolutely ridiculous costs and unless I'm some hermit who inherited a fortune I don't know how I am suppose to be able to afford a past time that I truly enjoy

      As a side note, if we compare prices from Webnovel.com to their website for Chinese readers, the price here is roughly 11 times higher per chapter (If we're going by 50$ for 2500 SS). These prices are more expensive than most paperback novels.

        Yeah I'm usually someone who tries to defend supporting the translator, author and publisher but even with paying large amounts of money (for my personal situation) I am having issues keeping 4 premium novels up to date and that wouldn't be an issue if the free chapters came out at a respectable pace like 7-14 chapters behind the premiums but you get some novels that are rediculous like the strongest gene that has 76 premium chapters out at the moment ahead of the free releases, if we say 10 stones per chapter that 760 stones just to catch up with the releases and the gap grows daily...

          Why is there even a need for Qidian to "justify" the prices? Do your closest whalmart justify the prices of their cookies?

          I really don't get it..

          Yes, prices are high.. but it's mandatory to you to read premium chapters right? you can simply wait the end of translation, no? Then buy the ebooks (if they do) or read the unlocked chapters with time.
          If they do like the Chinese Qidian, you would have only they early chapters for free (something like an arc, depend) and then it's paywall. We don't know anything of how it will end up, but right now, we now for sure two things:
          ~ You can read freemium chapters.
          ~ You may ignore premium chapters.

          It's as easy as it is, can't wait? around an average of 30 spirit stones a day. Not enough? buy them! Can't buy, too pricey? don't read premium and go damn-fu**ing wait. 👌🏻

          ✌️ this master cat is going to take a nap 👋

            I quite agree with you, you're forced to use spirit stones if you want to keep up with the release schedule since if you don't, you'll be up to 100 chapters late. But it costs more to unlock a chapter than the daily login bonus, so even if you only follow 1 series (which i don't think is the case for a lot of people here), you'll be forced to pay, and quite a lot at that since SS cost so much.
            I tried to see how long 600 SS (which cost 10 dollars) would last by following only 3 series (Library of Heaven's Path, Monster Paradise and True Martial World), and guess what, even with the daily bonus, they only lasted 8 days.
            I really don't want to pay 50 dollars per month for translations of such low quality. Now that the translators are getting payed more regularly, as opposed to when they were "freelance" (i hope), I find it way more difficult to accept all those errors, which sometimes aren't even translation errors, just plain spelling or syntax errors.

            So yes, SS are way too expensive for what they are: having to pay 50 dollars per month to have bad quality translations of a few hundred pages is just absurd (a random 600 pages pocket size book costs 8 dollars max if you want something to compare with).

              solution 1, don't read so much - just follow one or two premium titles.
              solution 2, go start a business and become a billionaire, you can read as much as you like after that.
              solution 3, make clones.

              Aside from the money issues with premium, there are many other issues in my opinion.

              On Qi, there are no notifications for the free chapters. Premium chapters will get released, and then some time later the free ones do. It makes it hard from a readers standpoint, because I usually end up checking the novel seeing a new chapter, only to find out it was the premium chapter and not the free chapter that was released. Then Il periodically check to see when the free chapter comes out (gets annoying).
              Another big thing is the comments for each chapter. With this system, you have a divide where the chapter is being commented on and discussed on the first day by premium readers, then the free readers come by about a couple of weeks later, and the discussion has died. It just doesn't feel good as a free reader to be 'catching up', or late to a discussion.

              On WW or other sites, the patreon system was SEPARATE from the regular chapter releases. You still got updates for the daily releases, and still got advance chapters for patreon (if you wanted).. The comment section was not affected either since readers were essentially reading those free chapters at the same time. You had the CHOICE to read ahead, and regular free readers would not get affected.

              On Qi, you see how many chapters you are behind as a free reader. You can see all the comments and even sometimes spoilers in the comment sections. It makes you feel like you are missing out. You have nobody to excited with, or happily discuss those chapters, since lots of people have already commented and discussed that. Its simple psychology; Humans are social animals, and half the people on this site read and comment to feel a part of a community. When that social aspect is taken away for half the community (free readers) it does not feel good. It makes you want to spend money on ss, to 'catch up' so you are relevant, and part of the community again. Here, it almost FORCES you to be a premium reader, unless you want to be missing out on everything.

              I get why this is happening, and I understand this is business. I am not trying to argue against Qi, or even the premium system. I just think the implementation and execution of this system was poorly done.

              Saint Prices are usually justified in a supermarket. If they are not, people would move to another one with better prices to get their product.

              Here QI is in a monopoly (for the novels they provide), so you can't go somewhere else to read the premium chapters. Therefore, they don't have to explain how they price their SS. In fact, we already know how they price them.
              Since they are a monopoly, they don't have to care about competition. Prices are then the maximum prices people are willing to pay.
              Furthermore, the more people buy SS at this price, the more they are assured they can raise the prices anytime they want.

              Anyway, you can't blame the way QI does that. You can say it's not ethical from your standpoint but any company in their position would do that (that's how capitalism works and why people usually promotes free competition in a market).

              However, I do agree for better GUI concerning Free Chapters: separate chapter counting.

              Instead of asking for better price on SS, you can ask a promotion when you buy a whole batch of chapters from a premium novel. Like, instead of paying 750 stones for 75 chapters of 10 SS, paying 10% off or something like that. I would find this more useful for them: people would spend more quickly their SS when catching up.

                They want an outrageous amount of money, but they don't want to quality work, every day I see at least 10 or more errors in the novels I read and I only read 3. When i'm done with 2 of em, it's bye bye Qidian, can't be bothered to support this shit

                In another site, we need 100 usd a month to read 30 advanced chapter...

                  You must see it from bussiness perspective.. supply and demand theory.. if the novel still high demand they will never lower their price. Take a look WW bussiness model based on monthly subcription, if WW in the future get more customer than Qi. I'm sure Qi will follow that bussiness model. So it depend to us.. which model bussiness more popular..

                  In my opinion, the actual problem is not the premium releases or prices. After all, it is our choice and we still get free 1 ch/day, which is much better than most translation sites which have avg 3ch/wk.

                  The actual problem are the "traps" set for premium user. By their strategy, once a premium user, always a premium user or leaver. They should atleast unlock chaps on individual basis(like from last ch we bought).

                    Water0202020 I don't think they would do that even if it's a good idea on its own.

                    I'm taking an example: "It's not easy to be a man after travelling to the future". This novel have a steady release rate of 7 chapters per week. Because the releasing chapters 1 per day, if you are at the latest available chapter, the new released chapter won't become a premium one. Since, according to your idea, they should unlock one chapter per day from where you've stopped reading. To illustrate, here is with numbers, let's say you're at the latest chapter available which is 190, the translator publish a new chapter the next day (191), you go to the novel and since you were at 190, the 191 which is premium for everyone else is free for you. So they don't get SS for people who keeps reading.

                    In the same way, if you say, one free chapter unless it's the latest, you'll create an intent for people to stop reading at chapter before the last one. Since they would have a free chapter everyday just before the latest chapter is released.

                    So this idea would work as long as the release rate is higher than or equal to 2 chapters per day. But this would also mean that QI would lose 50% of their SS per day (if it's only 2). In other word, they would give one premium chapter for free to readers that are at the latest chapter. It's a costly choice and I don't expect them to do it.

                    But then you have the mass released chapters exception and here your idea would be something QI might agree to do. Mass released chapter can be a great buffer and some novels have 50 to 100 premium chapters because of periodically mass released chapters and high release rate. If someone has already bought 50 premium chapters from a novel and there are still 20 premium chapters left to catch up, he would either need 50 weeks to be able to read another chapter or would need to buy the other 20 chapters left. In this particular case, people won't wait and would be compelled, at some point, to buy those chapters. And this is really a big problem because here, if you are a premium user, you only can stay premium or stop reading for a very long time.

                    Two possible solution for QI, they also make mass release for free user time to time reducing the time someone who already bought them have to wait for free chapters. Or they can release a premium chapter for free per day for those people (your idea). In the first case, it would be simple and they can do it now since it doesn't need to be programmed by the devs.
                    For the latter, it would mean programming a new functionality in the website so it would take time. However, it's better for QI to it this way. Since people would still have to buy the mass released chapters if they want to read ahead and would mean a less costly option.

                    However, people still give their SS for chapters and still buy them. If you think about it, QI doesn't feel the need to find a way to help people who are stuck in middle of mass released chapters. Even more, they would say that they give free SS every day through Power Stones, Ads and Check-ins and that people in this situation just need to buy their premium chapter with that and they need more, they would need to spend a little more for SS or just read something else.

                    That's why even if the basic idea is great, QI won't do it unless people move away from premium titles and don't spend any more SS on them.

                        Web Novel Novel Ask