Webnovel.Forum

Daoist2017
That's what Ideal is arguing. They -don't- have to pay for it if your novel just happens to get popular and you posted on here. In that case, they don't have to give you a single cent.

I haven't read any premium novels in weeks because I made the mistake of supporting this website and now I have to pay even more money while the chapters I paid to read backlog clears into becoming free.
It's an insane system. You'd have to be insane to implement the current one instead of the far more reasonable and logical "buy chapters and new chapters release from your most recent one" that just seems like common sense.
I guess qidian is trying to get the addicts and whales.

Heyun The problem is probably a technical one.
Keeping track of each individual accounts paid chapters then adding free chapters is a lot of information to store. Storing information costs money. It gets orders of magnitude more expensive the more books and accounts you have. Then you also have to account for corner cases like someone who skipped ahead with their premium chapters. Does it start unlocking from the oldest unread chapter? Or does it start unlocking from when the reader stopped reading?
On the other hand, a blanket approach of "All chapters <x are free, add accounts to the books chapter list of 'can read' when they pay to unlock it" is much more efficient.

$200 for a single novel is a very good argument. If this system is successful I can see a lot of western writers trying to make a similar system because that is an absurd profit margin. Even hardcover college books don't cost that much.
I think the "pay $30 to fully unlock the novel" is an elegant solution.