What do you think gives a better reading experience. Web novels Eg Omniscent readers point of view, Trash of the Counts family, SSS class suicide Hunter other web novels in general or published novels Eg YA fantasy novels like Hunger games, Harry Potter, Children of Blood and Borne etc
Different styles different taste. I personally think webnovels are much better fantasy stories while published fantasy novels are really boring and a snooze feast. I remembered reading Mist Born and thinking wow, even though they stretched it out as long as possible they really needed to add a fourth book, like split book 1 (and honestly take out book 2- no one reads an apocalyptic novel for its politics.) Meanwhile, I won’t be shocked if a web novel could write the entire mist born in 75~125 chapters or so.
Web novels are generally less polished, but you get some real gems ocassionally. But they also have less staying power. Everyone in the world is gonna remember Harry Potter for generations. No one is gonna remember "I ran away to a different world because my sister ate my ice cream, so I became the frost king to take revenge!" Or whatever, no matter how good it is.
It's easy to point to specific exceptions - a good example of this is the Villainess novel. The best one out there is "Kenkyo, Kenjitsu o Motto ni Ikite Orimasu". Lots of other books, including published ones, have tried to copy it and they're all vastly inferior. But the general situation is that some shockingly bad webnovels get released; ones that would never get past the editor to reach the publishing presses. And so a published book is going to be better the vast majority of the time.
Published novels generally get editors. Any author that says they don't need an editor is a hack, and their writing is often worse for it. (I'm not just talking WN authors either -- just look at folks like Anne Rice who fired her editor when she got popular. The quality drop is noticeable.)
As I child I would probably say yes… But now I feel like stuff like Harry Potter, Wings of Fire, The Hunger Games, etc. is very boring, repetitive, and childish. Stories like ORV, SSS-Class Suicide Hunter, Tomb Raider King, etc. have much more relatable protagonists and a lot more compelling storylines.
I've become bored of some published novels as of recently and web novels have been a breath of fresh air; I feel like you can really sense a difference in writing styles and although web novels can get pretty long from what I've experienced so far, they are great at pacing and I don't feel like the story is trailing on as much as some published books.
Sometimes, what book publishers and editors consider 'higher quality' are features that I don't like in a book. Like inserting drama to make friendships and relationships more realistic - I'd rather suspend my disbelief about something like that than have an unenjoyable reading experience reading about something more realistic. Web novel authors seem to get that sometimes people just want to read trashy wish fulfilment.
I think published books are always better than non-published webnovels. I find the stories in books like Harry Potter and others have great immersion value unlike webnovels where the grammar mistakes can be a disturbance during reading. The stories in books are also usually more polished and have less meaningless fillers which lets you gets the real core of the stories. Still, for convenient sake, webnovel is much easier to access unlike hardcopies books.
If you consider quality wise in all category, certainly WN can't beat published novel. Published novel went through a lot of process before it actually gets published and they're reviewed by editors, beta readers and publisher before it's ready to release. It's judged by how well it'll sell. That's why published novel have more legit paragraph, quotation and stuff unlike web novel where a lot of paragraph is just one sentence long. But if we were to talk plot wise, I think WN is more engaging because people are free to create it with lesser amount of cost is needed. And so the creativity is large but the risk of badly written story, and plot went south are huge as well. Another advantage is that WN is easier to read. So I think if it's for deeper reading, published novel is better reading but for plot and engaging elements, WN have higher chances.
better at storytelling? not necessarily. deeper reading? nah. u know what got me started to read web novels? 1. read complete otherland by tad williams. before otherland, i always read through to the end; hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel. this series changed me. 2. (immediately after otherland) read a game of thrones - for the later books i skipped everything n only read arya chapters. i enjoyed dunk n egg novellas though (read the graphic novel adaptation) a couple of disappointments back-2-back led me to think: if commercial books with (supposedly proper) editors can be that brain-dead; might as well read amateur works. i was pleasantly rewarded by gems such as: - release that witch -- eagerly waiting for the release through lnmtl - kumo desu ga, nani ka? - ascendance of the bookworm == mtl'ed to the end ====================================================================== i'm sure there are real gems in published world, but they got drown out in this information era. worse; game of throne made me very skeptical about popular works. considering that some of us have been tempered by reading broken translations, we're not constraint to fluid story telling / flowery words. our brain, our imagination can connect between scattered dots -- filling in the blanks.
Majority of web novels are wish fulfilment stories which is why so many people love them but also why they aren’t as highly regarded as published novels. Spoiler: thoughts It’s a bit hard to compare though because the nature of web novels (ie. wish fulfilment stories that follow tried and true tropes) makes it so that the “best” stories aren’t the most unique but the ones that do the genre justice. Take for example the historical Chinese reincarnated revenge genre - good storytelling in the plot, world building, and characters isn’t necessary, people will read the same story over and over again because they like the trope and the well regarded novels in this genre do very little different to standout. The selling point of web novels is not in its uniqueness rather that you know what to expect in the story and what will happen overall. That’s not the case for published novels. While published novels also love to follow popularized storylines (ie. Maze Runner, Hunger Games, and the other dystopian teen novels of the 2010’s), stories that are unique (usually in world building) are what get published because publishers want to capture readers attention. The selling point is usually the uniqueness of the world in the story or where the story will head. Essentially web novels and published stories (usually) fulfill different desires in storytelling and what’s considered good storytelling to a reader will come down to preference - some readers love stories that simply do a genre justice, and some readers love a story that is like one they’ve never read before.
Web novels can and often are just as good (if not better) than published novels. However, published novels win as a whole because they're curated. They're filtered by acquisitions editors, their authors get suggestions from developmental editors, they have the writing itself combed by copy and line editors, etc. Even if web novels are good, the dearth of professional editing also means that their authors are prone to letting the story down sooner or later. So published novels aren't automatically better but the average quality is higher, especially if the book is being published by a reputable publishing house with a big budget (like one of the Big Five). Editing is EXPENSIVE. Getting your average book edited costs thousands of pounds / dollars.
Honestly I'm getting a bit tired of this question in general, a web novel can still have editors and go through a publisher even if many don't. So it seem more like it is a question of amateur novel versus professional novel, and even there the distinction isn't always that clear. Personally I don't really see any benefit in judging a story based on if it is a web novel or "published", that requires way too much generalization for me to be comfortable with as you can have gems and utter trash from both. And even if one might currently be better on average than the other it doesn't really have anything intrinsically to do with the story being a web novel or not and more to do trends.
won't hear the end of this topic, each kind has its perks and flaws. let's be honest here, people like whatever floats their boat, and it's up to their preference. but we need to consider that both kinds has its share of good or trashy storytelling which is fine as nothing is ever perfect as we know.