Webnovel.Forum

bachingchung yup, but do you really want to stand up to a community of 10,000+ obsessed fanatical free fans with that statement?

Ataroth I am concerned that to pay their authors the amount of money they're being paid, that Qidian might need the, arguably draconic, pay scales they are enforcing.

Arguably draconic pay scales? Let's look at their arguably draconic pay scales:

Original Authors:
Minimum Guarantee System
We will ensure that every contracted work that goes Premium in the first four months will receive at least US$400/month if the revenue you earn is less than US$400/month.

Note: Requirement of releasing 120,000 words of content every month.
https://acts.webnovel.com/2018/62185143/index.html

120,000 words are 2-3 full-length novels worth of words every month. To make it easy, it's 60 chapters/month @ 2000 words each, for $400. If Qidian does not make a profit on the contracted novel, they will still pay $400/month.

That's the 'draconic' baseline for a contracted author. $400/month. If an author earns more than $400 in royalties, it stands to reason that QI is earning revenue from the author's chapters.

Also, don't forget that most authors will be working for free, just posting their chapters for experience and in the hopes of getting noticed.

I am not going to choose one side or another. Personally I pay 9.99/month for kindle unlimited. Qidian cannot even compare to the price per word when you compare it. However, I do not want anyone to really focus on that to an exclusion of not realizing that Kindle Unlimited is not Qidian. I think Qidian deserves to make money and be at a profit margin, I think authors deserve to be paid according to whatever contracted conditions they have with their publisher, and I think Translators also deserved to be paid whatever they have agreed to do the work for. As a customer, I will only spend so much money for any product before I back out. For this particular site, I will not pay more than 15-20 dollars a month, if it gets to the point where I stress about what I am paying, I will just not pay anything and move on to stories I read before coming here. This is just myself, maybe at some point, there will be a service available that I will find comfortable, but currently the spirit stone format, just adds stress to what should be something that I just enjoy. I do not want to worry about do I have enough stones to read what I want to read. I especially dont like to spend stones, money, on filler content, but I realize that Qidian is not totally at fault for some of that. I would prefer a monthly charge that I pay, and then that is it, which would mean I dont have to worry which story I should stay current on. I do not personally want to pay a monthly fee and then deal with ads. This might be easier, if there were just chapters available and there was nothing to indicate there were more chapters. I do not know, I just know currently, that I have already started considering what to do after the current stones I bought are gone. I am still at 3k stones at the moment, and I have only bought at the time when they first came out. I had about 9k or so stones at the time. I log to the site everyday, I try to keep current with as many stories as I can, until I have story that I want to build up in chapters so I binge on it. I am also open to a yearly amount, paid up front, bi-yearly, whatever. I just do not like the current format. I do not have a problem paying for the things I enjoy, and I have spent excessive amounts of money on things that I should not have. At some point though, I will not continue to pay for something at an excessive rate for the enjoyment, I just move on.

Yes, I realize that there are free chapters. However, the current model encourages me to stop reading at Qidian currently, and then come back and just read the free chapters. If they move to 25% of the book is free and the rest of the content is paywall with spirit stones, I will just not come back(I am just using this as another example of a payment type of system that could be used)(I am not saying that Qidian has or will use such a system). These are not the only stories, I can and have read books from the Library. I can and have bought books at the bookstores. I can and have found stories on the web, and read them. I am a customer here, I have paid money. I am willing to continue to pay money. However, I will budget the amount I am willing spend, and if I cannot be 100% satisfied with what I receive, then I will just not spend it.

Having said all this, I do want to thank Qidian for putting up this site, organizing the translators, editors, and other people involved in this endeavor. I want to thank the translators for translating the stories up to this point. I thank the editors as well, without them I am sure we would have a much harder time understanding the stories that are here presently. Last but not least, I want to thank the Authors, for without them, we would not be here on this site. Hopefully, there can be some model that will achieve goals that everyone can be satisfied with.