Discussion Money for Chapters (poll)

Eh? Why would I pay to read a chapter? I could just buy a book with the same amount of money, I'd never do that.

... For some reason people do donate for faster releases though... Well, it doesn't make any sense to me anyway, so I wouldn't do it.

 

Well there is a reason crunchyroll is still live and fan subbers who began around that the same time no longer exists
I disagree with most people here, I hate the world word free. It does not exist.
Someone is paying for something even if you are getting it free. Translators are paying with their time, instead of using the time to earn money from extra work.

But lets be honest, almost every well known legal company has stolen something in their history. The difference is whether what was stolen was turned into a legal business after(dramafever, crunchyroll,viki) or it wasn't(dramacrazy and a host of others)

 

Can't agree more with you. There js no free meal in this world. Free cheese is only for mouses.

All who wrote above that they will drop novels if they will see something like early access sound so immature, your reasons are childish. What will you loose is couple of hours maxmimum days before chapter gonna be released for everyone, for you guys nothing gonna change in this aspect and you still will be able to read it as usual.

Ps to translate one chapter it takes from 2 to 3 hours of personal time. Most of you got used so much to be leechers that you think that everyone owes you. Translation is kind of work as well and after you translate text, it will be already kind of different work, so you cant say that people are asking for some cash while leeching on authors works as after translating its already their work that they spent they time and mental health.

Happy days. My 2 cents

 

That is another good point. The prices are way way off. A chapter is literally 1 page. There are countless books (who have proper grammar and have gone through editing!) that can be bought at a price of 4 pages per cent or even more pages per cent.

 

Wrong per chapters are cheaper.
Compare the cost of buying Harry Potter on Qidian versus the book. It's as little has half the price.
I don't like it when people use wrong information.
Everything I said can be backed up with actual sources.
I can provide them later

About a chapter being one page is erroneous. One chapter of Girl Who Ate the Death and books by the same author can be up to 20,000 words. Putting all that in one page is impossible.

 

1. Nobody said anything about buying raws from Qidian. We were talking about fan translators that charge people to read the translation

2. Since when does Qidian sell harry potter?

3. Why would I buy harry potter on Qidian?
https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter...8&qid=1487027082&sr=1-3&keywords=harry+potter
On amazon.com I can buy harry potter and sorcerer stone for $6.91 and get 309 pages.

 

I doubt we would have the same prices if the same system is implemented for the english market though, localization do tend to drive the cost up a bit, for example english releases of japanese lightnovels quite easily can end up twice as expensive as the japanese release.

 

I did post a link, economists call it the McDonald's rule or something. A meal from McDonald's is not the same price in every country.
Books sold for $9.99 in the US on Amazon can be bought for $6.99 on the Indian . Version, head hurts so I might have misquoted but here is the link
Sorry can't find it but I started a thread with it.
It just explains that standard of living determines prices but light novels would be a bad example.

 

Well I mainly meant cases where it is a niche market, kinda doubt the cost of living in Japan is half that of the US, although I could be wrong.

 

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/954896.shtml

This so-called new writing model got its start with Wu and his team on qidian.com in 2003. Back then users could subscribe to a particular author's work, purchasing chapters at 0.02 yuan per 1,000 characters. As a reference, if the Chinese translation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (about 516,000 Chinese characters from the original 197,651 English word work) was published on qidian.com in 2003, readers could buy the entire book for 10.32 yuan ($1.61).

@mrttao I had to pick up my computer to find the bookmark but I believe $1.61 beats $6.91 and it was probably a while ago. Although it states that it wasn't exactly published so my mistake in that part. But if it was , it would be cheaper

Even in Japan, otakus can spend a thousand dollars on limited edition products. Japan is a really bad example haha

 

I have no idea why there are these type of threads... If the translator put their novels behind a paywall, they would lose at least 90% of their readers. Rather than losing an a large amount of their fanbase and money from ads, why not keep the current system?

 

Viki and dramafever are doing it, and both technically are fan supported, at least viki is 100%, paywall can be for early access.

 

What kind of books are you reading? Ones with A3 size pages?

A normal chapter is something like 2000-2500 words (going by Martial World, which is pretty average, as a standard).

This source says an average page is 250-300 words. I'm not saying that a web novel chapter is as long as a book chapter, but they are absolutely not "literally 1 page".

 

If I understood correctly, the OP is talking about the paywall not being an early access, but the only way of reading the novel.

If the payment only give you an early access then I'll just wait like usual and continue reading for free like I always did ever since I discovered the system of fan translations.

I still buy official translations though, just not a fanmade one.

 

Otakus spending that much on limited edition products only really factor in for works that have that merchandise to begin with though and I don't think literature is relying on it to the same degree as the anime market.
Light novels being cheaper in Japan despite actually having a higher cost of living than the US would likely be because the market is too niche in the US to survive at the same cost as in Japan.
Now compare that to a situation of paying for chinese translations when the cost of living in china is lower than the US and the english market for the translations is still very much a niche, at least if just counting readers that are willing to pay.
Not saying it would be all that expensive, just might not end up all that much cheaper than english original e-books either.
Won't be surprised if qidian is aiming more for the ad money, at least for the start.

 

The web novel community is already beyond salvation tbh.

 

Webnovels that are found on this wonderful site called "novel updates"

 

Yes, and as I said in the rest of my post which you have ignored, they tend to have 2000+ words per chapter, and a novel page is around 250-300 words. Still not a single page.

 

see

 

See?
Qidian is an example of a successful paywall, this thread is talking about paywalls, I wasnt talking about raws