Some (a lot) of people have been bashing Qidian International since they released that they might set up a paywall in the future, similar to the Chinese Qidian app. But in all honesty, how much do you think the paywall is going to cost (USD), how frequent will be the resubscription for the paywall pass be, and would you actually pay to get though the paywall?
Dude I am poor. Edit: PayPal isn't available in my country and dollar ratio is pretty high so I am pretty sure I won't be able to read it.
You have to take account of Qidians greed. It might go up in the future. But it'll probably be the same amount as what they charge in China.
Possibilities: Monthly Subscription- Could be around 5$ a month to 20$ a month (second most likely) Pay per chapter (kind of like Lezhin)- could be 1$ a chapter (least likely) Both monthly subscription (read Membership fees) and pay per chapter. (Most likely) Paywalls are NG, unless it's opt-in IMO.
But we'll make China pay for it! Aaaand They should thank us for letting them pay for it!!!! It's going to be amazingly amazing.
Its not only because of the paywall... Its because of the way they are trying to push off the community that actually brought all the awareness to CN novels Its because their platform is totally unfriendly to the community... you cant comment or talk to TLs or them to us... etc
If its a equivalent of Chinese currency it'll be in the range of 5-10 cents per chapter. Qidian paywall for chapters is word count rather than a flat price. This way an author can't write one page chapters and make you pay a full length chapter price. The only decent thing about Qidian really.
Also, it's not just the paywall that has resulted in their bashing. Another issue is their tactics towards outside translators. (Read the conflict between QI and WW, and all posts from both parties to get an idea of what's going on).
Seems like they are trying to make a play certain Manga groups failed at. There will always be someone willing to provide free translations. Trying to force pay will only cause people to get there translations from third party sites. Until a large group like Mangafox starts hosting Novel translations in a country with looser cyber laws to host.
If I wanted to pay for reading I would go to bookstore. In case of paywall I would just treat them as dead. Good while it was alive but alas.
I agree with you, however the issue here is that a lot of the novels being translated are LEGALLY OWNED by QI. Therefore, they can, most likely will, and have already threatened to, take legal action. Part of why RWX is having so many problems at the moment is because they will do stuff like that.