Cost of Qidian Paywalled Stories (with a focus on reverend insanity)

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by mrttao, Sep 10, 2018.

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  1. mrttao

    mrttao Well-Known Member

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    Most of the stuff on qidian is just bad fanfiction, Reverend Insanity is the exception. It reads like a professional book written by a good author who is an adult instead of a 15 year old's baby's first fanfiction.

    Qidian has paywalled it some time ago, and 25 days ago stopped the 1/day free chapter making it fully paywalled.
    Since I am so impressed with it, I was going to pay for it. However, just as I started pulling out my wallet I noticed that the prices seem a bit off to me, so I started digging

    2053 Chapters in chinese (more being written every day)
    500 chapters were translated to english
    445 chapters available for free in english
    2053-445 = 1608 chapters will be paywalled

    price ~11-12 fake money per chapter. lets say 11.5 fake money per chapter
    18492 fake money total needed for those 1608 "chapters"
    Best price to buy fake money is $50 USD for 3250 fake money (comes out to 65 fake money per $1 USD). But this fake money disappears if not used after 3 months. So realistically you will be buying less, making it closer to 50 fake money per $ USD (their worst price).
    get ~10 fake money per day for free for logging in. Roughly equivalent to $0.2 "worth" of fake money.
    4.35 chapters per $1 USD at worst price
    5.65 chapters per $1 USD at best price

    Translation rate currently listed at 11 ch/week (has been swinging from 7 to 21 for a while). But lets say they are correct and its really 11ch/week as qidian says it is. This means 132 chapters per 3 months, the fakemoney expiration period. Meaning 1518 is max amount of fakemoney you can spend on it before it expires. But during that time period you can expect to get ~900 fake money. Meaning you need 618 more, ~12.36$

    Expected price of the 1608 chapters that will be pricewalled. Using the best possible price on offer, is $284.49. Worst price is $369.84 USD.
    This is not taking into account the daily 20 cents "worth" of free fake money they give you. Incidentally, they also monetize it by forcing ads on you while you read.

    This seems like way too much to me... but I am told the chapters in those online xianxia novels are relatively long (especially because they inflate wordcount...). So lets examine this comparison.

    Let's look at a real book
    Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: 76,944 words.
    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 85,141 words.
    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 107,253 words.
    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 190,637 words.
    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: 257,045 words.
    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 168,923 words.
    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 198,227 words.
    Total series: 1,084,170

    Each of the above cost $8.99 to buy in a digital format, less in paperback (exact cost varies by book). Even though that is moronic and makes no sense at all whatsoever... are they still doing that price fixing on kindle books that they were convicted of before? fine, whatever. Lets be generous towards qidian and go with the digital prices.
    The worst price is sorcerre's stone, coming out at 8558.84 words per 1$
    The best price is Order of the Phoenix, coming out at 28592.32 words per 1$
    The total price of the entire series (all 7 books) is $62.93. Which comes out at 17228.19 words per $1

    Lets look at length of reverend insanity chapters, starting from the first paywalled chapter:
    c446 is 1979 words
    c447 is 1876 words
    c448 is 1960 words
    c449 is 2104 words
    c450 is 2137 words
    c451 is 2251 words

    averaged out the above come out to about 2051 words per chapter.
    HP and the sorcerer's stone would take about 37.52 qidian chapters.
    HP and the order of the phoenix would take about 125.33 qidian chapters.
    HP entire 7 book story would take about 528.6 qidian chapters.

    Each "volume" of reverend insanity is ~100 chapters, and has a well defined story arc. Making it a proper book (a better name than volume) and closer to the larger of HP books.
    At qidians worst price this is ~8921.85 words per $1 USD. (HP gives 93.1% more words per $)
    At qidians best (unrealistic, due to expiration of fake money) price this is ~11588.15 words per $1 USD. (HP gives 48.7% more words per $)

    I have been giving qidian the benefit of the doubt there, so many of those calculations are rounded in their favor. Despite my initial shock at the total price coming out to over 300$, I am surprised at how close the final price per word is to HP, although the amount of story actually conveyed per word is less.... however, despite being somewhat close, HP is still much cheaper per word, giving almost twice as many words per dollar. And I don't get subjected to advertisements when reading it. And I can make it even cheaper by getting it in paperback instead of digital ripoff edition. (and I am talking about brand new paperback, not used)

    To match harry potter's price, qidian would need to half its prices, not have fake money expire (or even use fake money at all), and limit ads to free readers or maybe make ads optional with some fake money income given to those who opt in on the ads.
    Even then, it is assuming qidian stuff is worth the same as harry potter (the world's number 1 best selling book)
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2018
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  2. juniorjawz

    juniorjawz Well-Known Member

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    Oh look another "How much it cost" Qidian threads. :blobpopcorn:
     
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  3. GameMaster

    GameMaster Well-Known Member

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    this again
     
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  4. fandiyogiaman

    fandiyogiaman Well-Known Member

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    Just a shtpost....
     
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  5. Suijin

    Suijin Blood God [Medic]

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    wrong thread location.
    pointless topic (complain on reddit where the echo is strong)
    just.. urgh.. annoying
     
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  6. Raphael

    Raphael Well-Known Member

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    It's pretty obvious of how much it ends up costing. Now I've never done the math you did specially including the comparison to an paperback book series but I was always pretty certain it came up to a certain overprice buy just because of how many chapters you have to purchase and how repeatedly you must do so.

    That it doesn't cost anything because you can get the stones free doesn't negate that they will have you going back to their site daily because you want to get the stones every day. It's a pretty open trap and one people have very little option than walk into if they want to enjoy the novels they post.
     
  7. MaliMi

    MaliMi The Cookie Guardian

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    Yep, they are greedy bastards. Also, I am starting to get why the people here always tell you guys to go to the QI forum. Btw, if you actually post it there, would they delete it? And if so, how fast would they be?
     
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  8. Goatse

    Goatse Well-Known Member

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    Spirit stones you buy apparently don't expire, it's only the free ones that do, but I've never bought any so I wouldn't know for sure.

     
  9. tahzib1451

    tahzib1451 Title?is it food?

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    another week...another QI sponsored post...
     
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  10. xd123

    xd123 Well-Known Member

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    Qidian has paywalled it some time ago, and 25 days ago stopped the 1/day free chapter making it fully paywalled.


    This happens in all premium novels? Since when?
     
  11. elengee

    elengee Daoist Ninefaps

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    Way of the devil had a paywall, i commented on how shit the translation was and asked why i'm paying for it and the day after it went to regular ad-blocked content. :blobwhistle:
     
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  12. FHandsome

    FHandsome Well-Known Member

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    Just go to underground will ya?
     
  13. mrttao

    mrttao Well-Known Member

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    Some of the spirit stones you buy do expire... If you are only buying spirit stones that dont expire then you are paying the worst price of 50 stones per $... at which point you are buying a small enough quantity that expiration is not an issue anyways. Their "discount" for bulk buying is done entirely in "bonus" stones that expire.
    [​IMG]
     
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  14. runsing

    runsing status : bleeding, health -10/s Novel Updates Staff

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    i almost jumped out of my seat reading this. "Holysh*t, that's freaking cheap!!. I should get another set". But when i read more then i realised you actually mean "each of the above". orz
     
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  15. mrttao

    mrttao Well-Known Member

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    They also delete negative reviews.
    I don't know if it happens in others, this is the only paywalled novel I read on qidian.
    Derp... my bad. will fix wording
     
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  16. trias

    trias Well-Known Member

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    Look like I'm really idle to able read this Accounting Report till the end.:coffee::notworthy::sweating_profusely:
     
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  17. Liyus

    Liyus Laksha's Desu~ Cat

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    let's suppose you have an Qi account.....
    every day there are at least 30 free "fake money"
    every week there are 11 chapter = 1-2 chapter every day
    if you are following only 1 novels then
    it's the same as reading it for 0,00$
     
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  18. mrttao

    mrttao Well-Known Member

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    You get ~10 fake money, not 30. It does not scale by the number of novels you read.
    Qidian is giving every account holder ~ 20 cents a day for free in their fake money.

    And yes, if you are reading 1 and only 1 story on qidian, you can slowly chip away at it using the 0.2$ they "gift" you every day. (more like your share of the ads you are watching)
     
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  19. chillo

    chillo NUF BioTerrorist

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    man all those brain cell you waste on counting fake money that used to buy utterly nothing which you would only used once and never meet with it again.
     
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  20. juniorjawz

    juniorjawz Well-Known Member

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    *pats pats* :blobpats:
     
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