KoraL

  • Jan 10, 2022
  • Joined Jan 17, 2018
  • CrispyCritter I'm curious. How would my proposal create difficulty in distributing payments? The vouchers mentioned have historically been only usable on a single work, so it would be clear which novel gets that voucher's worth of value. I also remember that once upon a time, vouchers that could only be used on a small selection of novels (probably 5-10) were given away during a number of events.
    Theoretically, this means that it would not be difficult for WN to add this to their platform because they have done it in the past.
    The other proposal for caught up readers was a single work subscription, which instead of requiring WN to create a new infrastructure of automatically unlocking a chapter of a pre-specified novel, they could drop a single work fast-pass into the subscriber's account on a regular basis. Hence, the entire value of the single work subscription would go toward that specific novel.

    • MotivatedSloth You can read over 450k words in 12 hours? Maybe I'm underestimating most readers? Also, it was an example of how they could price it, and the intention would be to limit it to novels that weren't generating (much) income to begin with. Heck, they can make it a rotating list of 30 or so novels and reduce the number of vouchers to 5 per month of the 4 hour vouchers. (You also divided 20 by 8 wrong.) And at a higher tier, like bronze/silver/gold vouchers, they could have 100 or so novels on the list for $50. Eventually people will forget to use some and WN income will increase, although participating authors may be disadvantaged, but they would get readers they otherwise would not have gotten.

      • I still think that they could sell limited free reading vouchers. They already have the infrastructure in place. They have historically been able to place restrictions on what novels they could be used on too, so it wouldn't be as onerous to implement as the suggested chunking method. The only downside is that the chapters read would not remain unlocked. To avoid additional overuse, they could sell them only as a part of a subscription. For example (Eight 12-hour limited free reading vouchers for participating novels per month for $20 that expire after 30 days).

        As for the "caught up subscription" they could sell a type of subscription that drops one (or release rate number of) pre-specified single-work fast pass into your inbox daily. Then they wouldn't need to implement an auto-unlock system.

        • Darren_Laudat I can't determine what happens with the novels, but maybe if someone just sent one of the studios they contract the translated continuation of the novels, they might find a way to release them.
          But there is no chance they would ever release their IP for free.

          • CKtalon that only addresses one word though? Surely the author didn't remove half their word count after editing right? Where did all the details go? Why would the translator make their own judgement to remove half the details? Is that acceptable behavior for a literary translator? Do you hold yourself to that kind of standard too?

            • Dropped novel tag is probably too unprofitable. But how about they at least give us a dropped novel note in the most recent non-privileged chapter? And you know, unlock privileged.

              • Darth_Xiane for those who subscribed to membership, it certainly does feel like they aren't getting the coins that they paid and worked (yes, navigating to and clicking a certain thing daily seems like a lot of effort to some) to get though. People are already disappointed enough that membership doesn't feel like what's advertised.

                Now making it extremely difficult for those who frequently top up to use their bonus coins means that they're penalizing their high frequency customers for poor coin management.

                • Man, I must be horribly bored, but I looked at a reader compiled list of dropped novels, and there are at least 15 with less than 200 chapters left. I still think my idea is viable if the per chapter cost of translation is $30 such that the total cost of the winning novel falls below $6k.

                • Darth_Xiane in my experience coin expiration varies depending on source. I've seen 1 year, 30 day, and I think even some multiple of 30.
                  Ultimately, I think this is appallingly unfair since bonus coins have a variety of sources, some available to both free and paid users. In this case, paid users have lost a perk that they had when they were a free user. Although, I suppose this is better for authors, but I think that there needs to be a better balance when considering who to favor in their policy making.

                  • CrispyCritter that's insane. How could they think that this is the right way to deduct coins??? sigh I think this might actually be what completely drives me from Webnovel. How can they possibly think that taking benefits away from paying users that non-paying users can retain is a better business model?

                    • Alanray64 Sure sure. 15 minutes a day isn't great, but it's still free, so take what you can get. Happy reading (be it here or elsewhere). :smile:

                      • Lonelytree Are you allowed to share what Webnovel does pay per chapter seeing as you're taking a commission (3rd party?) of less than $3.50 per chapter? Is the rate for unpopular novels worse than that? Do more popular novels at least get double digit rates?

                        • Jus7aguy the timer only applies if you are changing the chapter every 8 or so minutes on scrolling (not sure if it's the same for pagination). Basically anyone reading a chapter for longer than that won't be racking up points for that amount of time they're on that chapter. So for 960 minutes, that's at least 120 chapters. But they don't have to be unique chapters, so go ahead and reread something. Or maybe just leave a chapter open while you're taking a shower.

                          • SKYoupley it costs Webnovel an additional licensing fee for Korean novels. They already own all the rights to the Qidian Chinese novels, so it's cheaper and less risky to translate the Chinese novels, which is what they're doing.

                          • Alanray64 ah, it seems that people have stolen the translations and are posting them as ebooks elsewhere. If you wish to pay for piracy, then you can purchase those translations. Legal publications do exist, but I suggest you do your due diligence in investigating the seller if you wish to avoid supporting piracy. You may also want to report the seller for copyright infringement and have the illegal works taken off the other platform.

                            Also, you should be getting 3 fast passes per day. 1 from check in, 1 from voting for a novel with power stones, and 1 from voting with energy stones for which novel gets translated first in the what's next section.

                            • PsyberRose I think the works that they link to change periodically, and you can check what they are in the rewards tab. No idea if they can still change after the goal is completed, but maybe support can help you exchange yours since that seems especially... unfortunate? Do those single work fast passes also expire in 1 week?

                              • Alanray64 if you Google search the forums (because forum search doesn't work) you will see many discussions on the cost effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Webnovel. Almost none of the novels here will be adapted to other book forms (digital or otherwise).

                                Arguments for the price cost effectiveness should use comparisons of the price per word count. Those competing $3-11 novels are generally around 100k words which is equivalent to 9k to 35k words per dollar. Here, every 200 words costs one WN coin, or roughly 10k words per dollar. The first 40-100 chapters are typically free, so assuming an average 1.5k chapter, it's like getting the first 1 or 2 novels in the series for free. Supposing you unlock half the chapters with Fast Passes, the value of the unlocked chapters becomes 20k words per dollar, so you need to adjust with your personal utilization of fast passes.
                                Your cost for those coin packs does appear inflated, perhaps due to VAT tax or FX breakage, so if you do not get charged the same VAT taxes or apply the same FX rate, you will need to adjust the cost for your own personal situation.

                                I personally believe that the cost per coin is high, but others use the arguments that with Fast Passes and the free introductory chapters, the cost is bottom of the barrel. Their favorite comparisons are physical copies of NYTimes best sellers, but if you're okay with digital "dime novels" or the deluge of self-published digital novels, then Webnovel's sagas are definitely more expensive.
                                If your reading behavior changes with the source of the novel, then your cost per hour of enjoyment will also change. For example, if you are more likely to skim chapters here, it will exacerbate the cost ineffectiveness. If the opposite is true and you are more likely to skim the digital books from other sources, then Webnovel will become more cost effective.

                                • Dwarkin Nope, there is a clear basis and science behind this. It's called anthropology

                                  Unfortunately, it seems science disagrees:

                                  Anthony Appiah (1995, 1996) and Naomi Zack (1993, 2002) contend that the term race cannot refer to anything real in the world, since the one thing in the world to which the term could uniquely refer—discrete, essentialist, biological races—have been proven not to exist.
                                  Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/#DoRacExiConPhiDeb

                                  However, it does support that as a social construct that race is limited to very few, extremely broad categories and that the classifications among Asians that we have been discussing thus far are in actuality ethnicities.
                                  But, this does not mean that ethnic discrimination is in any way better than racial discrimination. And even "good" stereotypes can be extremely harmful. For instance, in the United States, Asians are viewed as a "model minority" which alone is detrimental to other minorites, but also conceals the harsh truth that other than first generation Asian-Americans, who are more likely than other minorites to be in a higher socioeconomic class (in other words successful), later generation Asian-Americans have a similar socioeconomic profile as other minorites. In actuality, if the immigrants are split by country, the "successful" families generally come from a small handful of countries, while the majority of the other countries' immigrant families tend to be in the worst socioeconomic classes. However, due to stereotyping, many of these families do not receive a similar level of support as those from races with more well-know negative discrimination (sometimes due to affirmative action requirements limiting opportunities for certain races, putting certain subclasses at an extreme disadvantage).

                                  • Dwarkin You're kidding about the same race comment right? I can't tell you how many times I've seen people get offended for getting recognized as the wrong type of Asian. I suppose you'll say that Filipinos, Indians, Mongolians, et. al. are also all the same race since they're all from the Asian continent?

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