Amazon Prices vs. Qidian Prices

Thought we needed more threads about Qidian, because there “defiantly” not enough them.

Jokes aside, thought it would be interesting to find the answer to what would be the equivalent of spending Spirit Stone on Amazon. I enjoy a good statistic and was upset that I couldn’t found any on here. So, here are my findings.

First off, I’m pretty sure Qidian charges Spirit Stone by the word. I did find that it would fluctuate but, on the average, the more Stone you spent the more words you would get.

Looking at around 20 chapters, from two different series, I come up with (Yes, it’s a small sample, but it should be enough):

On the average, 1000 words = $0.08.

And with that, all we need to do is find out how many words each book on Amazon has.
Here are some books that I looked up:

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Waldo Rabbit Series Book 1 (E-Book) (Words = 123,296)
Amazon = $4.99 - vs. – Qidian = $9.86
-----
Waldo Rabbit Series Book 2 (E-Book) (Words = 74582)
Amazon = $4.99 - vs. – Qidian = $5.96
-----
King of Gods: Book 1 (Ch1-100) (E-Book) (Words = 166,041)
Amazon = $2.99 - vs. – Qidian = $13.28
-----
King of Gods: Book 2 (Ch101-200) (E-Book) (Words = 182,386)
Amazon = $3.99 - vs. – Qidian = $14.59
-----
Dragon's Soul Book 1 (E-Book) (Words = 254,853)
Amazon = $4.50 - vs. – Qidian = $20.38
-----
Blue Phoenix Book 1 (E-Book) (Words = 254,421)
Amazon = $2.99 - vs. – Qidian = $20.35
-----
The Divine Elements Book 1 (E-Book) (Words = 97,009)
Amazon = $3.99 - vs. – Qidian = $7.76
-----
The Beginning After The End Book 1 (E-Book) (Word = 56,448)
Amazon = $2.99 - vs. – Qidian = $4.51
-----
The Beginning After The End Book 2 (E-Book) (Words = 57,427
Amazon = $3.99 - vs. – Qidian = $4.59

And lastly an Amazon paperback to a supposed E-Book Qidian copy:
Main Character hides his Strength Book 1 (Paperback) (Words = 129,700)
Amazon = $16.99 - vs. – Qidian = $10.37


Do Note: Qidian does give you a bunch of free chapters to read and this is NOT calculated into the price (and the Spirit Stone they give you). It should be looking at complete series vs. complete series, and then totaling the whole thing up. But most series have not been completed yet. So, the Qidian prices should be lower, but would still be higher the Amazon on average.

The way I think of Qidian prices is that if you’re going to spend Spirit Stones on Amazon that is the price you would have to pay.


Overall Qidian charges you about the price for a paperback book to read their stuff. Qidian might be a little on the high in, but in retrospect amazon charges very little for their books.

Edit: The 1000 words = $0.08 is based on the must expensive package you can buy on Qidian, or the best value you can get for your money.

 

So what if QiDian overcharges you. You act as if you actually buy spirit stones.

I can’t think of any reason why anyone would actually buy spirit stones when there are so many free ways to read the chapters. (Making new accounts, multiple accounts, google search).

You either have to be an idiot, or loaded with cash, to buy spirit stones.
(QiDian’s target audience for spirit stone purchases: Idiots, Rich)

 

Lol
By the divine order of the emperor, off with qidian's head!

 

Amazon charged so low, publishers had a fit and sued to force Amazon to follow their price requirements on e-books. This happened a few years back. This is why e-books from certain publishers are nearly the same price as paperback or near that of hardback.

@Lib Interesting way of comparison, but e-books should be compared by publisher, not by store front. Quidan is kind of both, but they are foremost a publisher that hold printing and copyright. So I'd compare them to someone like Tor books, for instance.

Good research topic though.

 

We have had enough of these here already. But I can totally understand you not being able to find them among all other equally shitty threads (which are either shitty coz well shitdan is trash and shitty OR the same damn thing has been copy pasted for 1000 times)

 

Buddy we r lazy ppl here capiche? We don't have the time or the energy or the motivation to do all that...

Also, qi is quite hated so i decided to join the team!

 

You forgot about the third party, the Ocean.

Everything is free there.

 

I'm so tired of this. Can we just agree that whoever can do whatever they want?

 

Qidian is the personification of everything bad about publishers, and the authors get little to nothing from the English tls, and I don't think the translators get paid based on activity(hope not anyway). So I can't find a reason to give them a red cent.

 

I calculated prices compared to fantasy and romance some time back (short, long, self-published or by established authors, a wide variety) and it came down to QI being about on par (in some cases) at best, but at worst it was multiple times the price for the amount of words. They basically took the upper "normal" online prices, and put it on everything. So usually, broadly speaking, SS cost more per word.

Your comparison is pretty badly done. No wide array of novel lengths (long books go more than twice, maybe even more than four times the value QI gives), no comparison for new and old books (QI does equal or a bit better compared to new ones sometimes, worse compared to old ones), no different genres.

Not a very interesting topic to talk about. SS do not deliver good value for a consumer, but is that going to stop everyone? I don't know.

I'd like for QI to have a paying system that does not look like overpriced microtransactions but we're talking about QI here, they don't really give a fuck.

 

?

 

Assuming pirate life for me joke

 

Thank you for filling our weekly quota of Qidian thread.

 

There is a quota?

 

BTW you missed out one thing ( or i may have not seen it )
but if you have the amazon kindle pass or prime you can get almost all the novels for free to read

 

Ai-chan is defiantly against Qidian's assholery! Assholery is copyrighted by Ai-chan and it has nothing to do with upholstery!

 

Sorry but your statistics are flawed for various reasons.
It's like comparing the costs of a pay per view ongoing TV Show
By the cost of the same TV show on DVD when it gets off air.
Munpia is a better comparison.
Master of Strength at $0.10 per chapter is about $60 for 600 + chapters.
Of course an ongoing series is more expensive, when it gets completed you can buy the ebook version for a lot less in volumes.
Your apples to oranges comparison is laughably bad

 

What about quality? Or me weighing out where I want to spend time and money on? People compare apples to oranges all the time in their daily life. They do it, whether you like it or not. The amount of QI pricing threads are proof.

Munpia is impossible to compare to because that's Korean, which most here don't speak. We can't consume Munpia media. Not part of our market, out of the equation.

Going off of Wikipedia, pay per view's main use in the TV business isn't episodic TV series, but sports matches. Which creates an even larger difference with webnovels: you can't consume whenever you want. It needs to happen in order for you to be able to watch it, and after it happened people will know the results whether they watched it or not. Also, TV is TV. Consumers consume it in different patterns, yadayada. It's worse to compare pay per view TV with webnovels than Western books with webnovels, in my opinion.

 

Munpia's model and Qidian is eerily similar I do not know who copied whom.
The same with Alphapolis for Japanese, so it is relevant

Why I mentioned pay per view and TV series? Well, because it explains the instant gratification part of the webnovel scene.
You can either wait untill the entire TV Show is complete and buy it on DVD or you pay for premium access, not the greatest example but it explains it.
Quality is subjective, we should not go through that road again lol

 

Don't forget the quality.
You're paying multiple times the ebook price for something that's basically edited MTL, versus something that's professionally edited (most of the time)
And to tell the truth, 99% of novels on qidien (and NU) are power fantasy of some type. It's not what most people consider a quality novel, though they're fun to kill time with.
Most tend to be something that has a cookie-cutter plot, virtually no character development, and a setting that screams ctrl + c. Not saying that the qidien authors are bad, but it's hard to properly write a good novel when you're pumping out word-bloated chapters daily to get money.