Novel Universe: Why Not to Adopt the Qidian Model

WARNING: Text wall ahead.

I was surfing through NU looking for something new to read when I stumbled upon what seems to be a newly published website that has 8 novels that they have taken on. 9 chapters were released for each novel and they seem to have already instituted a paywall model that operates off of a new independent online currency that you can buy to unlock more chapters. Stop me if you've heard this before.

From doing a little digging, it looks like all the novels' original publisher was Tadu. From what little information they have provided, it seems as thought Tadu has established their own personal website that exclusively hosts all the novels under their banner. Now I love capitalism as much as the next guy, and fully support translators monetizing their services for a profit, but there was something odd about their site that gave me pause. As I was navigating through their homepage, it hit me. The website's UI looked eerily familiar. It is almost a one for one copy of QI's website with some stylistic design changes. It seems that they've been hard at work because they have already instituted a sword-based(?) currency system that resembles QI's Spirit Stones. It was at that point that I calmed down and started to think about this post and what I wanted to write. I don't expect this post to change anyone's mind regarding this entire debacle of in-house currency systems, but I simply want to start a conversation about the reasoning behind and why it should be avoided.

As a long time lurker, I was there for the entire sh*tshow that happened when the dreaded Qidian International first entered the scene. They were running around preparing everything for their American debut, salivating about the untapped market potential and reader base that they had initially been missing out on. Things seemed to be going swimmingly until a post from Ren over at WuxiaWorld kicked off a massive controversy among the community. The facts that QI was trying to poach translators and manipulating the law to try and serve WuxiaWorld with copyright infringement suits despite previously having given verbal permission to translate their novels. The fallout from this post was felt throughout the NU community and started a schism among users. Some didn't really care about what QI was doing, some actively supported them and others showed an amount of vitriol that I had never seen before. It was definitely an interesting time and the separate camps were solidly entrenched in their positions.

Now it would be unfair and dishonest of me to address this topic without disclosing my own personal biases. I am very against what QI did and what they are currently doing. As someone who got into Chinese novels early on, the shi*ty, unethical actions of Qidian drove me to dislike them with a passion. The biggest part of my dislike was the way they went about employing their staff and newly-contracted translators, who had initially started and sustained their sites through reader donations, to go out to bat for the company's reputation. They were treated like human shields and the community saw through their shallow arguments for what they were, utter bullsh*t. Then QI's paywall plan leaked and many in the community again rallied together to show their disdain towards the commercialization of their beloved pastime. I understood and sympathized with many in my camp, but couldn't help analyzing it from the opposite perspective. As a company, QI answers to their shareholders. The only way to show that they are getting their investments worth is to generate profit. However, there in lies the rub, the method that they went about generating revenue had single-handedly pissed off a sizeable amount of their market. The reason being, their market had come started their journey through independent translators who they supported through donations. These independent websites had built a brand for many years, some before NovelUpdates even existed. Their hard work, honesty and dedication had allowed them to build a large following that supported them in their endeavor to bring the enjoyment of Chinese novels to a mostly non-Chinese speaking audience. QI's debut did nothing but spit on the concept of working hard to build up a brand and used high handed dishonesty to try and co-opt the entire community purely for profit.

This has lead to them being hated and despised by a large amount of the community and their public perception being tarnished. Novel Universe(or Tadu, whichever), I implore you to not follow in their footsteps. It might seem simple and you might be just another company trying to tap into a previously unknown market. You may have even been influenced by the "success" of Qidian to try your own hand and things, but trust me when I say, you are overestimating how well Qidian is doing. While profits may fall like meat pies from heaven in the beginning, it will eventually run out. The rule of diminishing returns is in full effect and Qidian has even started to try and offer monetary(albeit, a paltry sum) compensation to aspiring authors to try and encourage their friends to buy their Spirit Stone currency. They are not doing as well as you think and you need to understand why that is.

Goodwill from a community is a powerful thing. To get that, you must first work hard to build your brand. As far as I know, nobody knows you yet, which is a perfect, God-given opportunity to learn from the mistakes of your predecessor. In-house currency is not something that most people support. I for example, would much rather donate to a Patreon account rather than buy tokens from you that I can only use on your site. While I am hardly representative of the NU community at large, my opinion seems to be in line with the majority of them. Please rethink this strategy, as it will not work in the long run.

Thank you for reading this rant(?), not really sure what this can be categorized as. As I mentioned, I wanted to start a conversation about the creation of custom currency/tokens to "unlock" translated chapters. Whether you agree or disagree with me, I would love to hear your opinions and analyze the NU community's feelings as a whole in regards to this strategy of monetization.

Edit 1: Forgot to link the website: https://www.noveluniverse.com/index/index/index.html

Edit 2: I've found some more information as of posting, it seems their sword is under a "Disciple" program and you can earn more by posting on social media and encouraging friends to register for accounts. I'm not gonna make an account to try and get details on the Disciple program, but feel free to do so and post more info. They apparently will always provide free translations and have no future plans to paywall, according to their introduction. How truthful this is, time can only tell. Read more about them here: https://www.noveluniverse.com/index/notice/detail/code/Introduction_of_Novel_Universe.html

 

The SS system is kinda like patreon (I just read regular chapters at 7ch/wk ratio.)
So, I don't really care about monetization, I mean it is a company.
However, the translation needs to be worth the effort. Most of prev qi novels have bad translation or plot not worth it

 

the model isn't bad of itself, however, imo it has a minimum requirement of only implementing it when you have 50 (30)+ chapters per novel and a constant translation speed with consistent quality (at least 3 chapters per week would be reasonable, especially at the beginning)
besides that, imo it would be best to have 5-10 chapters ahead blocked and ~3 of them unblockable by paying the swords

btw I didn't read a single word of your text wall, just wanted to write some shit here

 

please give us the link ref. of the site....

 

Well, it depends on the quality of translation imho. What's the use of donating if the quality is shit.

 

I do agree that quality has to be there, but if you're trying to make more profit, you would have to translate more novels to get to a point that you can safely make them premium without fear of backlash. QI's model is all about generating profits, damn the consequences and public perception of their actions. As a whole, do you think this hurts the community?

 

I'm not sure if you read the thread that noveluniverse made to discuss this. Currently, their site functions more like Patreon. The sword currency is only awarded as a daily thing. Kind of like the handful of spirit stones you can get on webnovel.com for voting and commenting. For full access to everything, you have to become a disciple or something. To become a disciple, you have to pay a monthly fee. Just like being a Patron on Patreon. I haven't been bothered to look more into it because they only have 8 or 9 novels with only a few dozen chapters between them.

 

Quality seems to be the main thing, but here's what I think initially spurred quality. When groups were initially going only off of donations, the passion they had towards there translations and its quality directly encouraged more people to donate. Consumers like to support companies that put out quality goods, however, in this case, they are incentivized to simply pick up more and translate them, quality be damned so they can have more novels to go premium in the future.

 

I have not yet seen their thread and definitely will check it out to try and gain a better understanding of their business model.

 

Rather than the readers, it would most likely hurt the translator. For me, I find no difference in patreon and premium. Though, I wish better novels would be translated. The problem I have is that qi tranlslates unpopular novels and do not allow other sites to tranlsate popular ones as well.
I do not have much problem with the business model itself. Individual translators have patreons for extra ch as well, it is a matter of choice. The actual base is 7ch/wk.

 

I agree with everything you just said

You Sir are a Scholar

 

So the exclusivity bothers you? How would this new site be any different then? They seem to also be, from what I understand, translating novels under their own banner. I doubt that they would allow others to pick up their novels, much like Qidian doesn't.

 

NUI still in infancy, unknown publisher with unknown novels and not yet have a big fanbase. If they want to start using SS or similar stuff, first they must prove their (novels) quality.

 

I blush at your compliment.

 

The model itself isnt that bad. There are other things I would prefer instead but all in all it isn't bad at face value. The problem is when the context of the people who are behind its implementation come into play.

Qidian has pissed off and spat on the community at large nearly every chance they have made an announcement aside from pick-up announcements. This is the same company that sent their representitivr to lie, manipulate and deceive to community at large In an attempt to garner goodwill and put temselves in a morally superior position to their competitor... which backfired hard when they were caught doing it.
They have broken the law very blatantly and have denied it vehemently despite the fact that they put the evidence to their crimes on their front page.

The model isn't bad in the right hands. In the right hands it is a in-house patreon without the flexibility of Patreon but allows you to manage everything via their website. Advantages and disadvantages.

Put Qidian behind the wheel and all the lies they have given us... things they have told us about permeates paywalls which were found to be lies after we found in their ToS their intention to implement said paywall despite denying it previously.

At the end of the day Qidian will eventual turn a profit in this international market, but it's going to take way longer than it could have and they will have lost a large margin of profit due to their lies, illegal actions and in general moral bankruptcy.

I fear them keeping these premium chapters locked behind their wall permenantly once the novel hits completion instead of continue their free release shecdule.

So while I wouldn't encourage anyone to follow this route if their work is of high quality and the books the translate are good I could be convinced to support them assuming they aren't morally bankrupt. It isn't a horrible idea... There are just better.

 

I don't the spirit stones QI implemented. Well, they are a company, and they had to feed their employees and generate results and profits for their shareholders. And in my opinion QI is not super greedy, at least there are free spirit stones.

If any translation group wants to commercialized their translations I'll support them. It wouldn't be bad to return their effort. I just hope they wouldn't be thick faced to demand payment for their translations if its poorly translated and no proper schedule.

 

I can definitely get behind your sentiment. Quality seems to be the primary thing that most people care about, but principles comes in at a close second. The model that they follow is, in my opinion, geared more towards a well-established company with a solid reader base that would be willing to say, pay a monthly fee to unlock certain features. Novels Universe is a completely new website, yet they have taken that strategy and implemented it in the beginning with no real substance to show for it. From their written announcement, quality seems to take a backseat as it contains numerous grammatical errors and the like. They are currently peddling in promises, but have already chosen to create an in-house Patreon. I'm sure that some people would trust and support such a system, but Patreon is something that would both encourage and demand a certain level of transparency that in-house systems do not. Take for example the Qidian Spirit Stone deduction that they retroactively went back and took away from their users and just announced their mistake. Would you be comfortable with Novels Universe doing the same thing and just taking away their swords from users who earn them due to a mistake on their part? Where's the accountability?

 

well, strangely i prefer QI than NUI in term of User Interface. NUI site is bit too confussin to access cuz i need to open all tab for the links alone. tho the main page is quite promisin', i do hope that they put a simple tutor for first timer user at how to operate the site.
as a baby site wit it's first months', i hope that NUI will do well in future and learn bout things that problems QI made and face in the past.


P.S. there's no NUI authorize user in NUF who compromised bout this kind of discussion?

 

I do agree that this new site seems to be getting a little bit ahead of themselves. It also shows what their priorities are which isn't a huge problem but is very revealing of what readers can expect when dealing with them in any capacity. Making a in-house payment system immediately shows where most of their efforts are going.

If I were to make my own site, I would go about things a bit differently.
Initially I would release a bulk load of chapters for each novel under my banner for obvious reasons. (Drawing in readers).
I would be very open about the fact that once we get our in house system up and running it will be implemented. Even if it was ready day 1 I would hold back awhile. This gives people access to all your chapters, enough time get a feel for your site and what you offer without having to pay to get an idea for what you are like. After a couple months I would implement the system and perhaps even give credits to the most active members on my site as a way to promote the most active members of my community, thus keeping them and their comments and discussion alive on the site. They would also help spread the good word since active people online are usually active in more than one place. Word spreads and that's the best form of advertisement you can get.
All this under the assumption I am trying to hit the same goals as this new site. I'd just switch up the order and add a couple things that reflect the kind of owner I would be and paint the group in a great light.

Ill tell you what I wouldn't do... anything Qidian has done as far as PR goes... honestly they are a textbook of what not to do for PR... they should teach about them in College course as examples of what to never do.

Edit: Retroactively taking away Points from people is just stabbing your clients in the back. It doesn't matter if it was an error or not you just can't do that without pissing off all your paying members.
It is a horrible decision to make for the public image and trustworthiness.... all I can say is that doing this is very Qidian like.

If this New Site did this I would likely never support them. If you made an error sucks it up and learn from it. Don't punish your members for a mistake the group made or punish them out of greed. It's just bad business in the long run.