How good does Webnovel pay its authors? For anyone who’s already gone through the process and become an author on their platform, how much money do you make? I’m a writer and am wondering if it’s worth my time to join up. As a reader I know for a fact that Webnovel has become a highly monetized platform so I’m hoping they at least give a decent cut to their writers since I might join
I don't about the payment but I know their app is easy to write and publish. There also sponsor etc options.
No there is a secure contract too that if you write a particular amount of words per month, you get paid a standard amount. This is for newer authors who are not very confident in their writing. That's why we see a lot of authors bring out never ending chapters of filler. As for how much they get paid, Aki would like to know too.
Don't use webnovel unless you don't plan to do anything with the story you're publishing. Their contract is extremely exploitative and could bite you in the ass if you ever see any level of success in the future. If you want to have full control of your work then it'll be too late. There's a reason why people were joking about refusing to become Qidian's contract beast a little while back. Definitely not worth the exposure IMO. Google "publishing rights" to get a better idea of how things work and avoid getting screwed in the future! It's a pretty big deal, especially if you decide to partner with a traditional publishing house, for example. I'd write more but I'm on a phone and my hands hurt already
You're more likely to get a proper answer at their own forums, we don't know much about the details of how things work over there.
Don't most of professional asian authors get payed by word count per month as well? That's the problem with 95% of xianxia even if it's their 3rd book and they're famous they still do it, in fact IET got worse over time. No offense to OP but if you're reading on Webnovel.com and you think your story fits there, we ain't talking about a masterpiece you'll ever regret not publishing with some big company and more royalties to yourself. I'd advise looking for some other websites as these guys are scummy. Even better, look at stories like Mother of Learning. No obligation to anyone, yet it became almost as famous as Worm, though of course much better and now the author is still editing for a paperback publisher. I think he had patreon in the meantime. Now Patreon is a beast, I wanted to give 10 euros to another author who wrote a very good Naruto fanfic. I saw there is no option for one time donation, unless you cancel after paying for the first month, but anyway it said guy is earning a 1000 dollars a month... and it's not even a top 10 fanfic I've read. I actually thought hey that's not fair...I mean your fanfic is very good but not that good, why are you asking for people to pay you 5 or 10 or 20 or 80 dollars a month for 4 chapters when professional books have that cost and you pay just once. Then I figured fanfiction and webnovel authors basically don't have advertisment and a very limited audience so it's fair you pay more. There are other donations sites besides Patreon(and Onlyfans lol), author Noodlehammer uses one because some Patreon policy and messages pissed him off.
china~ jp usually author kinda follow traditional route which is local publisher, put on mind jp still huge market on physical product~ kr dunno~ seem mix of cn and jp anyway yeah better ask QI aka webnovel forum~
How difficult would it be if a bunch of us came together to set up an alternative platform? Are we talking about millions of dollars of investment or what?
create something is one problem, maintaining it is whole different stuff~ that not counting expansion mind you~ on aspect of creating new platform for webnovelist~ the technical aspects such as create website, webmasters and such these day is easy, moderating on other hand different problem~ initial promotion also important~ after pass such ordeal go ponder this... free or paywall? for free there no much thing to think of but for paywall prepare yourself with competent legal team~ of course it can create along the way tho but if consider serious business the more preparation you have the better it should be~ we not on era there none site to use as example for learning~ there fanfic.net, royalroad, wattpad, webnovel, scribblehub and bunch of other thing~ feel free to create new platform~
There are plenty of alternatives. Wattpad, Scribblehub and Royalroad are well-known ones, but there are others as well. You can create a new one if you want, but you better figure something that would make your platform unique enough to the point people would prefer it over already established platforms.
Heck, even if a musician gets a million hits on a song they put on-line, the way royalties can be set-up means that musician might still get a very low amount.