Regarding qidian’s privileged thing

so, I only read a few books from webnovel.com, but it seems that around the time that a novel became premium, the number of comments dropped significantly, and then following the privileged bs, the amount of comments dropped even more. Like, there was one novel with consistently 99+ comments, then when premium hit the following chapters had only a few dozen comments and for the next hundred or so it fluctuated, and when priveleged hit, it began to consistently net 20 something comments per chapter. Is this a thing that happens to only a few novels, or is qidian’s business model really that bad?

 

The business model is not that bad and well there are many aggregater sites that copy the chapters so people go to read there and only some still read on webnovel

 

It's not a bad business model, but their ececution of it is plainly horrible, so you can actualy easily say it's bad.
As QI is acting right now it's like screaming let us milk you, until your wallet is emptyyy.

 

When you need to pay like 25$ to read 100 chapter and ask if it's bad.....

 

Don't forget that Qidian authors (& presumably staff) have "delete" authority with regards to comments.

 

If the people who have access to the chapters drop drastically, of course the amount of comments drop drastically as well.

The big question would be when those chapters are 'unprivileged' ie when either enough more chapters have been released or enough days have passed, and they're 'just premium' , to which level do the comments return ? No change at all ? Premium level ? Free level?

Honestly, nowadays I mostly use my ss for manhuas there, and use other sites for actual chapters and just visit those novels there to post comments

 

Qi is literally a prime example why Chinese giant companies are bad. Double standards, censorship, pure capitalist attitude that has mostly died out in the rest of the world around late 60s...
Its not an issue if novels are good/bad, or even the greedy payment system, the base policy of the company is horrible.

 

Well as DragonMage18 said, their execution isn't the best in the world. I've never really tried buying SS or anything for the lack of funds, but I do know other platforms that also costs more than $5 to finish reading a 'Premium' book and such. Perhaps if there was a chance to read a chapter by watching advertisements or answering surveys?

 

I’m no business mogul or tycoon but I believe that regardless of how good their business model is, it’s useless when they thrashed their own reputation to make a few bucks. As their eastern fantasy authors always say.. “they’re putting the cart before the horse”

 

a watermelon farm at the size of hundred hectares. . . .
and a person just asked for some watermelon skin. . .
not the whole, the pulp . . . just the skin. . .

 

You used to be able to read chapters after watching short video ads but then they ditched that when they went into their first "lets milk readers for tons of money" phase.

 

Really? You could watch short video ads before? Man, that sucks that they've changed it. qwq

 

i remember doing it to read one of the few novels i read on QI back then. It was probably about 1.5 to 2 years ago or so but then they hit their first greedy phase and scrapped it.

 

I see, I'm a recent reader and I'm saving up SS to read a few stories on there. They shouldn't have scrapped it, I know most people just read on other sites now.

 

To be fair, the only one that "thrashed their reputation" was the western webnovel community, voicing mostly baseless accusations because we feel entitled to read as many novels as we want, when we want, for free.

You can see the best example right here in this thread. The term "greedy" comes up every other post, and honestly I don't know why... Imagine calling J.K. Rollings publisher greedy because they're charging $20 (twice as much when the books just published...) for one Harry Potter book... or any other western author and their publisher for that matter.

 

Not bad in planning, bad in execution.

#nowExcuseMeWhileIFarmNuffies

 

Um, I feel like the main reason we western readers complained was because when qidian began their thing a few years ago, fan translations have been going on for free/donations for a few years already, and the moment they appeared, they began threatening translators onto their site or something, and then began gradually rising the cost of chapters beyond what was established as a status quo. I know the practice is common in their native countries, but the western community didn’t really get to acclimatise.
And regarding the Jk Rowling analogy, I saw comments in some of the novels who just began privileged chapters, and at that point you can get access to the translators stock pile for around 5 dollars, but still spend more to actually unlock the chapters, and even then have only five or ten extra chapters available, and THEN still wait for the translator to actually add to the stockpile to read more. They were charging exorbitant prices for a drip feed, which imo is completely different to purchasing permanently the completed product

 

So let's see how the math works

$25 per 100 chapters (on average 5000 word per chapter)

Would make Harry Potter that has 200k words consist of 40 chapters cost about $10

You would think this is a good deal until you realize you own the book, don't need internet connection and it's still yours even when the publishers go down; and it's not filled with fillers garbage.

Personally I'd pay 5 per month for unlimited reading. Until that time comes, I'd stick to other novels

 

You are aware they never had to threaten anyone? The majority of the translations on NU were (and still are) illegal...
That the translators actually charged money for something illegal is actually only the icing on top...

If any author or their publisher really wanted to, they could sue the shit out of any fan translator for copyright infringement.
And no, fair use does not cover translations you accept money for... If you accept money for your translations it's not fair use anymore...

 

Comparing published books with web novels is not really right imo.