I was looking for a new novel when a japanese novel caught my attention, do you know why? because the title was litteraly a paragraph. It was named: A Genius Healer Who Can Treat Instantly but Was Banished From Party Considered Doing Nothing ~ Even if They Told Him to Come Back Now, He Is Now Having Fun as a Dark Healer Now, So the Treatment Will Be Expensive, but Can You Pay for It? ~ Like guys we get it. but can we please return to the times where we had normal 1-4 words titles? even 1-6 is okay but please just stop it this is getting too out of hand, soon i will even be ashamed to mention to my friends that i read online novels if the authors keep pulling up titles like these. Like just stop it. this is too much.
In webnovel environment the first thing a novel has to sell itself for readers is only the title. In bookstores there are much more dufferent factors like the covers, colors, where it is located etc so there is much more depth to the titles, while webnovels need you to click them from a sea of other text only titles. The fact that this novel caught your attention is a proof that the system works. Its kind of like clickbait for novels.
Japanese Webnovels are published on Syosetu. Syosetu doesn't have covers, so authors are unable to catch reader's attention by using a flashy cover. Their only option is catching the reader attention through the title (by catching attention, I mean getting enough attention so that the reader may be interested enough to click on the novel and read the synopsis. Because the readers won't read the synopsis of all novels and stuff)... This led to the current environment of gigantic titles, as they're a good way of calling reader attention, by explaining the gist of the story through the title itself. You may dislike it if you want, but this is a phenomenon generated by the Japanese Webnovel environment. Authors are just doing what they need so that they have bigger chances of readers actually clicking their novels. This is not changing. It's similar to how lots of Chinese Webnovels have tons of pointless filler chapters, because they are paid by wordcount and they have a contract that enforces a quota that they have to meet each day... The authors just need the filler to meet their quota, it can't really be helped. You may dislike how it shaped the environment, but those things aren't changing.
That's such a dumb thing, the least the website could do is show a book cover, are they doing this stuff intentionally or something? isn't it the website itself losing out if it can clearly generate more clicks if they just let the authors publish book covers, that way they can get more readers. this is some dumb dumb stuff
No, it's not. Book cover? So who gonna draw it? Who gonna pay the artist? I sure as hell, the website wont pay for some unknown name authors' story that might get cut short/cancel/stop/not getting popular/etc. And the author themselves wont bother to pay artist or draw it themselves for a project that might or might not be popular. Losing clicks? That's why they come up with such paragraph as the title, to pull people to take a glimpse to their works. Get more readers? Sure. They're trying to pull their target reader, their fellow Japanese that might understand the reason of such long title. Not us. Remember that. Although I also dont like and couldnt bother to read these novel. But this method has worked out fine there. Dont say dumb.
Yep someone said it shouldn’t be taken raw and used as title, the translator can choose to shorten it and make up another title for it (but the long paragraph title will always exist as reference to the original raw)
Syosetu doesn't need more clicks. It's the website that basically every Japanese webnovel author uses, and where basically every Japanese webnovel reader goes to. Why would it need more clicks? Also, differently from the western webnovel industry, the Japanese one is actually carefully looked at by the Light Novel publishers. Popular webnovel authors frequently get contacted by Light Novel publishers in order to get their webnovel adapted into a Light Novel. Moreover, many Webnovel authors are teenagers that can't really afford to pay someone to draw them a cover. Why would Syosetu implement a system that shows covers, while also changing their UI to make covers more prominent, when it is completely unnecessary to their environment? The authors on Syosetu don't want to have covers. They want a Light Novel publisher to contact them and make a cover for them when they get their webnovel edited and published as a Light Novel. You're thinking of things from the wrong perspective. The readers on Syosetu are aware that the popular webnovels they're reading might get published as an edited light novel with a proper cover, some illustrations, and some editing done to the story too... They're aware that they are reading something that might be completely changed once the author gets a contract... And they're aware that they're reading in a website without covers. It's not beneficial for Syosetu as a whole to add covers... It's not beneficial to the authors either, and the readers are fine with what they have, so... Why should they add it? Answer: They shouldn't, and they won't.