Webnovel.Forum

KingBiBiK
Except the girl doesn't care. :)
I didn't want to release this, but here's a timeline of what happened today.

I told Yuren(The Boss of Webnovel) that I wanted to quit at 4.09p.m. GMT+8
Sunny came and sent me a message instead at 4.28
I didn't like how unprofessionally he was handling this by sending Sunny instead of talking to me directly, so I decided to just go ahead with my post at 4.30
EFT's boss aka DAN told me he got the novel at 5pm
Yuren comes asking what happened n if i need help at 6.20
Then says oh I saw your post at 6.48

Also, I pretty much admitted that I'm not happy with the pay now because it's not worth my copyright. Which also implies I was fine with it while I was able to post on Patreon.

SS doesn't pay a cent to any TL because there is no premium contract to convert to right now.

Yes, I always liked WW, and I was lazy. I'm a gamer, I had to compare between giving up hours of gaming time vs something that might not work out, so yes I didn't bother to try.

Honestly, the main reason I even decided and had the feeling that I should approach WW was because I didn't feel Qidian would be able to run through the thousands and millions it does for all the novels for long. Frankly, it wasn't earning anything while spending a ton to build itself up. I felt their extremely high expenditure on things like very bad mtl-ish translations and people like CK would sooner or later cause their venture to be unprofitable. I secured a backup plan which turned out to be a wise decision.

Final note, yes I'm trying to end it well which is why I gave up the glossary which benefits both QI and all the readers.

KurazyTolanzuraytor

KurazyTolanzuraytor Except the girl doesn't care. :)

You got that right lol.
The girl does not care about a LOT of things.

Looks like I nailed it except exaggerating it a bit, lol. There is nothing wrong with what you did and if I was in your shoes, I would have done the same.
Unless they implement original authors successfully and earn a profit from it, I see no bright future at the moment.

Yea, WW has high-quality standards which makes it elite and hard to get in even as a translator, not to mention an Original author.
But the offer of steady pay for a beginner itself is alluring. It did increase the translation rate of each novel for good or bad (quality dropped for most).

As for QI, there is a lot negative trend going on, some with base and some unnecessary. I just did not like how people started using this to start bashing QI (which is kinda unnecessary). You signed up knowing you won't get rights and you quit when you felt you deserve better. Period.
Hope you understand.

I thought it wasn't a fixed pay anymore with SS? I thought you got a share of that no?

If not, it's certainly not worth it, SS is a ripoff as a currency aswell.

Mute It has not switched to royalties yet and is still a fixed pay though there is an inclination to shift towards that soon. He just lost patience waiting for that to happen. In my opinion, it's KurazyTolanzuraytor loss and EFT's gain.

Besides, one should make a short time/monetary investment to wait to see if Premium actually works out before switching fully to a royalty contract (giving up guaranteed fixed pay in the process). Since he was unwilling to risk that short 2-3 month investment, it's really his loss.

Besides Sunny is the person in charge of translators/editors, so it is in her job scope to handle @KurazyTolanzuraytor's matter, not Yuren.

CKtalon ¯_(ツ)_/¯

CKtalon Hmm, having so many novels might be becoming a burden because of the fixed pay. After all, people with interest in reading these kind of novels are a limited resource. At some point, instead of attracting more people, it will instead start thinning the herd for each novel. People can only read so many novels with the limited time they have...

KurazyTolanzuraytor Hey Josh, I wish you the best of luck in your further projects. To clarify all your concerns first, Sunny is the right person since she handles all translator and editor relationships, instead of Yuren. I don't see any unprofessional practices in this case, frankly.

Secondly, according to your comments, both Sunny and Yuren replied you in few hours. I believe all of them showed you due respect. It's quite impossible to demand an instant response.

Thirdly, all the details were laid out in your initial agreement, nothing was hidden or violated from our side. In addition, the advanced chapters (Patreon) were bonus money for all translators who work for QI until the particular work joins the Premium program. This is not a new rule that you were never informed initially. All QI TLs know this rule clearly from the very beginning. Don't forget that you agreed to that initially.

Fourthly, translators need money, and looking for better offers is 100% okay and understandable. You are always free to quit. However, in a professional setting, I believe you should have informed us earlier, like 7 days in advance. Oh, if you check the contract, you will see a clause that requires the translator to provide 30 days notice if the translator decides to quit, and you initially agreed to this too. Unfortunately, in your case, you did not even give us an entire day to prepare. I would say this is rather unprofessional. Despite such acts, we still wished you good luck in our personal chats, right? None of us blamed you or said anything nasty. I'm really disappointed in what you posted in this thread.

Last but not least, don't forget we did not get a single cent from "your advanced chapters" from Patreon until we released Premium and enforced not having advanced chapters on another platform. You had received almost a year's worth of bonus money, which you shared nothing with either of us - the copyrght owner, or the author. Premium is the system that allows authors, translators and us to benefit together. Unfortunately you did not have the patience to wait another few more weeks.

As for Patreon, yes, you are probably able to get more because you don't have to share anything with authors or the copyright owner. If you consider the split among all three parties, how much do you think you can keep in your pocket? As for the WW, from what I know that they will only give 30% to the copyright owner (except QI because they are actually violating the agreement which never allowed them to monetize the translations except ebooks on specified ebook platforms). Usually the publishers like Zongheng or 17K, who grant the license to WW, would also split another half of the revenues that they receive with the authors. Basically, authors can only expect up to 15% maximum in royalties from translations. Do you really think it is a fair deal to authors? We can't comment about authors who work for other platforms, but we—Webnovel or Qidian—won't do such things to any of our authors. We will directly split the revenues equally among authors, translators and us. We admit that we need profits but we would not hurt our translators or authors. We don't believe that making a fool of authors or translators would work in the long run. Best of luck to you and all authors whose titles have been abused by the monetization practices of WW.

PS: WW is still translating MW and ED, as well as many more unlicensed novels. They have even put those two titles into their in-house Patreon/advanced chapter system. They have also monetized many unlicensed KR novels. If that is not copyright infringement, then what else is?