CKTalon is BETRAYED!!!

Who's CK Talon? Well luckily the novels I read there are in the hundreds in term of ranking. So it's still safe from paywall I guess.

 

Technically, the community gave Qidian the benefit of the doubt when they first announced they were going to be hosting their own novels. I remember people being cautiously optimisitic about having an official publisher bringing a giant library of novels to read. It just so happens literally everything they did, everything they lied about, every promise they made and broke, every translator they pissed on, destroyed all the good will and benefit of the doubt people had.

No one was doomsaying saying Qidian was the devil when they first turned up. They gained that reputation themselves.

Well, if everyone else kicks babies, then you can't really complain when someone starts kicking babies in front of you. It's just business.

I'm just sick of the argument that novels need to be monetized to support authors/translators, when they're never going to see any of that money. Supporting Qidian =/= Supporting Authors/Translators.

 

Not like an apology would do us any good. I told him this then too.

 

yes they gained that reputation themselves. but some bad reputation they gains is not fully because they broke their promises , some bad reputation because people just hate QI thus their judgement kinda one-sided.

ie. Correct me if i'm wrong

QI promises about no premium chapter.
QI make adwalled chapter . people raging because they promises no premium chapter which is unjustifiable hate since they did not promises about adwalled chapter.
QI make premium chapter. people raging . their hate is justifiable since they did not promises about adwalled chapter.


in conclusion, QI has bad reputation . but not all entirely because QI doings. some people just hate QI just because its QI.

people do complain, but did it even matter ? . Europe Commision heavily fine Intel because anti-competition strategy they use. but they pay the fine and still doing that since their profit margin is better. NUF can literally boycott QI but their profit margin will only dip a little to actually care.

now about the bolded things . did any groups out there that give percentage of their patreon to the author ?
unless i missed lot of things, i only encounter single example that percentage of donation goes to the author. i believe it was on TMW translation with CKtalon who initiate it.

 

QI is here to get $ cut as the middleman. Plain and simple. You aren't really support any authors/translators with the kind of contracts QI gives people anyway.

 

Since somebody mentioned Intel and the EU, no, they have not paid the fine. They still owe AMD.

 

They actually paid the settlement in US (to AMD, 1.25b), they didn’t pay one to EC (European Commission) which is currently under review.

 

?... Where exactly am i wrong? First of all, this is 2 novels, and it seems a lot like an isolated incident, meaning same thing wont happen to other novels unless they explicitly mention it, as opposed to what all the ''paywall is coming'' people are saying. And, even for these 2 novels it's not even close to being a paywall, since, unless they remove it, you still have the option to obtain spirit stones in fairly large quantities for free, so at most it's only a partial paywall, which i also said in my op.

Now, let's see where YOU are wrong. They havent removed patreon, as you say they have. They don't stop their translators from setting up a patreon, as proved by the fact that, among others, the translators for Gate of God regularly advertises their patreon AND discord in the translators thoughts, and, the fact that some novels, like Joy of Life even have a fcking button, a button on the page itself, likely designed by Qidians web designers, that links to their patreon. Idk if you get anything for supporting them on patreon tho, idk how that would work since i doubt they can give out free chapters by their own, but they still have a patreon.

2nd wrong. You, and many others, keep acting like this is the start of the paywall, when, as i've said twice now, it is very clearly just 2 novels. Sure, you could argue that it's a beginning, but tell me then, why they chose those 2 novels? Both of them aint even in top 20 on the popular or power rankings, so why exactly would they do it there? Maybe you could argue because they're finished novels, but i refuse to believe they have no other finished novels with a bigger fanbase. So, stop acting like the paywall have already happened when it's not even close to starting yet.

Listen here, i can understand it if you don't like Qidian, and don't support their practises, but hate them for the right things man. If you just took 2 seconds to look at the facts instead of one-sidedly believing what you've read from other Qidian haters, you'd know that half the stuff taken as ''facts'' on NUF is either outdated or straight up wrong. So, could you please stop calling random people ''Qidian fanbois'' just because you didnt understand my original post? I don't support Qidian, i just support that you should hate on them for the right reasons.

 

They are now forcing my hand! Qidian! YOU DARE!

If the paywall popped up in one of my favourite novels, I would then set sail to the sea for I already had the map of the treasury.

 

Wow, QI never stops creating drama, huh.

Sure, business needs to survive, but I'd very much prefer QI being upfront about it. J-novel makes all titles available for paid membership models, so you head there while knowing that you're expected to pay, but QI's business moves were just low blows, really. Promising so much only to just cross them in the end... Wow.

Just wanna say that they did remove patreons. It's only for the popular, paywalled titles, sure, but they did. Note that they don't stop the translators to keep their patreons running, just that all of the advanced chapters that previously rewarded behind patreons need to be taken down. As a result, some of the translators still get patrons even without the advanced chapters.

If QI eventually paywalls all of the titles, those with patreon now will receive the same treatment.

 

A must read novel for me is Tales of herding the Gods

 

For me the only one is The King's Avatar.

How is your must read?

 

People generally summarise things because 'Qidian killed Patreons' rolls off the tongue better than 'Qidian disallowed translators to host advance chapters on their Patreon, and since 90%+ of people only paid on Patreon for advance chapters, they lost a huge chunk if not a majority of their income'.

I guess you could say 'Qidian killed off most of their Patreon income', but still doesn't roll off the tongue. And since killing 90% of their income is basically the same as killing Patreon, you get the the short version that's slightly politically incorrect.

No. No but actually. Their patreon income got massively slashed. Translators are worse off than they were before. Whether they didnt deserve it, or it was breaking the law, or Qidian didnt intend to do that, or they have vague promises things may or may not get better in the future, no one cares about stupid god damn technicalities.

 

Currently my favorite and I think Its Way better, i often skip paragraphs with tka, but with Tales of herding the Gods I read sometimes twice the same chapter to enjoy it more.

Kinda reminds me of reading World of cultivation.

Highly recommended, even to the qi haters(lul).
Also on topic, two full weeks of free reading for two series, I will download them and read later. Why are people upset?
It's literally Free novels lol.

 

So QI needs more money now giving free Premium not effective enough lol

 

I've heard that it is going premium soon.

Novels that went Premium are forced to remove the advanced chapters from their patreons, essentially kill them. More importantly, translators from premium novels were not paid any royalties from Webnovel that was charging for Premium novels, as of early June. The reason for this is that Webnovel was only contractually obliged to pay translators a flat rate per chapter(which of course is why translators worked so hard at building their patreon!) In essence, it screwed translators who had worked hard at building their patreon subscriber base over the last year or so.

Hell, Webnovel didn't even bother offering a royalty contract that Premium translators could sign until June—5 Months after the Premium program started.

This is incorrect, Qidian owns the Copyright to all of their novels. The authors transfer permanent copyright ownership to Qidian in exchange for royalty payments. Basically, Qidian can do what they want with a novel since they own them.

This is their business model.

 

I don't mind keeping up to date with it.
There are around 30 free stones a day. There is always pay method if you are die hard fan of some novel or reading from that site that fucks the text on mobile.

I like qidan because the mobile app is awesome and there are many novels to choose from. No need to bash their business model.
I read many novels with chapter a day pace.
Go fork out money to pay for chapters at ww. You
As for qidan if you really want to help motivate translators without "freebies" , most of them have patron set up.

 

It's extreme naive to think this is an isolated incident. Let me ask how if QI doesn't paywall their completed novel where in the word is money going to come from? Let me remind you that QI payed for each of those chapters and if the SS during the translation doesn't make up for that cost (also site cost). Even if they made up for the cost of translation during translation it still be extreme naive to think they won't want to make more money. If they didn't want to make money they won't have stared this whole thing.

Only way to make money off these completed novel for QI is to premium X% of the chapters forever so new reader always have to pay to finish so they can keep making money off these novels. I personally have nothing against the ask of premium chapters (I mean they have to make money somehow) but I do have issue with quality of a lot of works on there so I never pay for them.(However not really related to this topic)

The reason people hate QI so much is honestly QI's own fault. When they enter the scene they promise a lot of things and one of them was no paywall. And here we have it paywall even more so than before I suppose. At least during translation you can say you're paying to read ahead but now you're literally paying to read. Also while you can get free spirit stone right now its being heavily abused so I expect QI to do something about it in the future.

 

I understand your point but think you’re premise about charging is flawed (I agree with the rest). You assume that charging for a completed novel is the only way to make money. However, WW and Volare are also translation businesses, but they don’t require people to pay to access and they keep their completed novels on their websites for free forever. In fact, if you look at WW’s statistics Desoate Era and Battle Through the Heavens are almost always within their top 10 on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis even though they’re completed and have been for months. Because they’re so popular, and also completed, they bring people to the site and keep them there, making the site more popular, bringing in ad views which the TL directly monetarily benefit from in perpetuity, and direct people to other series, benefiting other TL as well. WW’s model has increased TL rate, and caused more people to TL full time. I don’t know as much about volarenovels, but they are actively recruiting TL and starting new projects so they must be doing ok too.

On QI, TL are basically in an adversarial relationship with each other. If somebody spends their spirit stones on one novel, that means that person is potentially not reading many other novels. You might say the TL are contract workers and it doesn’t matter how popular their novels are, but the power rankings and the many publicized events that Qidian only invites the TL of their most popular novels to says otherwise.

You might also say that Qidian is a business and it is their right to make money as they choose, and they are now in the red. It was also their choice to hire tons of translators over a short period of time, pay them by the chapter, and keep bringing in new novels without end before they had completed any. They put themselves in the red.

 

Except you forget the fact that WW and Volare runs on a lot of ad money but QI doesn't. QI has like 1 at the end of a chapter compared to all the ads require to keep WW and Volare running. That's not to mention the fact that WW and Volare don't pay base translation rate but a share of the ad rev. WW has also added a VIP system to help generate money to run the site/company.

Kinda, people abuse the free spirit stone so no matter how much free spirit stone you get from reader its no money for the TLs XD Also popularity doesn't matter to the translators if they get paid flat rate but it matters a lot to QI because it determines how much money they can make off a novel.

Well like I said QI put themselves in their own shitty position. Originally they thought they could expand the market and take over by dumping novels but I think past year had shown that the market isn't really that big and can't really sustain their methods. So now their trying to salvage what they can.