Discussion Opinions on Qidian Mega-merge thread 2.0 - All future Qidian Opinion Threads Will Go Here

He said at the high end. Deathblade has over 2000 patreons and the translator for martial god asura made 4.3k a month the last time i checked (few months ago). So extremely popular novels have breached the 5k barrier.

 

Yes no matter how we look at this it involves money and its only business. But i dont think the community here cares for that much about business things. Its more of good quality translated novels and no pressure to pay for these novels.
Its like those mmo games, theyre free to play but if you want individuality then you can pay for extras like here the novels are free but if you want faster releases or extra chapters then you donate.

Its simple
As long as its free then its all good. No matter which side you look at this thing with qidian, the free stuff only matters. Add a paywall, better expect less readers

 

I actually have no more than 2 problems with Qidian other than the back stabbing. Their platform is great and giving Translator's a fixed income sans employee benefits is helping out a good majority since there is no guarantee for a great novel to get donations until it pickes up which gives us all these young master antagonists and hypocritical MC's .

My two problems with Qidian is:

(1) (which has two parts) they went back on their verbal agreement just cause they could implement their site earlier than planned, then went on to lie and defame a trusted community site in an attempt to sway readers.

(2) They don't quality check their works! This is the biggest issue as it directly impacts the reader. all the TL drama is secondary to any reader who isn't a loyalist to a TL or site. If a TL is getting paid a fixed income there should be a standard for quality!

Things like paywalls don't matter as it's not going to be huge chunks out of poket, to be honest and frank the TL rate is a lot faster than you'd normally get both by consistent TLs and normal TLs. NOT to mention they getI hate to admit it but Qidian is growing the community , last time I checked they had 4.5k chapters released over a half year! If focused on a standard 1k long book that's already 4 and a half completed books... What other host has that output rate?

Most of the malice probably isn't coming from readers loyalty but the fact that we leeches will actually have to spit back some of the benefits we've been chugging down .

Shame me if you want I'm just being honest. I like WW, GT, V and other Chinese sites and will continue to read from them in the future as they become partnered with other publishers but I'll read from Qidian as well .

--Though seriousness Qidian letting WW have 20 novels wouldn't have hurt you at all... You ruined trust in the community for such small gains.

*edited for clearer understanding

 

The paywall is inevitable..
So better off being ready than get your hopes up and gets dissapointed later right?
As one of th 95% non paying readers, I rather not read something than reading something only to be left unfinished..
They need to establish a huge and loyal fanbase first tho before unplugging the free to read cord.. otherwise I can see them fail misserably..
and well... not all of the people in NU follows chinese novels only tho.. theres still jp and korean novels to read from.

 

I don't buy it. Your estimate revolves around patreon, but the patreons will survive Qidian, and patreon is at root an altruistic payment. It usually gives nothing the reader would not get for free. Treating patreon sponsors purely as opportunitics is a bit...

 

I hope they use something similar to Crunchyroll because I like free reading while also support the authors through ads.

http://www.crunchyroll.com/en/premium_comparison

Free with ads
$6.95 a month Premium with no ads and you can watch it one week early

There is some good discussion here whether the $6.95 is well spent or not
http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-956373/is-crunchyroll-premium-worth-the-money

Even though Crunchyroll is free, it still have 1 million paid subscribers. This figure will likely increase in the years to come.
http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-ne...scribers-details-daily-giveaways-to-celebrate

 

The thing is, China <>Japan. Means not equal. I'll get to it in my following post but the big idea is anime and manga from Japan is a multi billion dollar self sustaining industry. CN novels are not and are actually deriving their value and market from Japan.
* Edit: as in without the JP market there would be no international CAN market.

 

oh that's good one~can you make post for probability if Qidian turn to add? with similar way your analysis~
for subscription despite I'm not on economy major I can guess somehow from experience but for add income, I have no idea despite I know it small~

 

Anime/manga is probably 30-50 times bigger than Chinese novels in the international English market.

Crunchyroll is raking in $90 million from the 1 million paid subscribers to their $6.95 a month and $11.95 a month Premium plans. They also have ads income and sell merchandise. Crunchyroll is a huge business and QI can't never be anywhere near Crunchyroll size and number but it doesn't have to. Even if it is only 3% as big as Crunchyroll with only 3% the amount of free and paid users, QI can still make $3 million a year in revenue.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong. So not taking into account the growth rate, and, using 1% of the total NU userbase (correct?) as paying customers they stand to make minimum 300,000$. And using the average amount of paying customers from NU they stand to make $2,250,000. Not bad if I do say so. Taking into account growth rate, that number can jump quite a bit.

Also, going for 0.1$ per chapter, and using a constant reader ship base of 10,000 users per chapter, they stand to make a 1,000$ per one chapter. And 30 chapters is probably the average, if not a bit below average depending on the series, of releases per month.

Your Tl;dr is pretty accurate; but, do correct me if I got anything though.

"*If you noticed, I left out marketing costs, barriers to entry eg; why Qidan is going to run into issues trying to capitalize on going international, other models, and why this is happening. Ill write another post at another time to address those issues." I'm looking to your post about it.

 

Qi really got y'all WW stans pressed

 

In the end every true reader will be like this guy in the comment of
History's Number 1 Founder

 

You know what I like about Qidian? There is


When a translator is having trouble with real life, there is a substitute so no more waiting for 3 months.

 

Ah I'll address this in the follow up post. Qidan doesnt have the market to get what crunchy can get. Ask your self, how you learned about CN novels. Where did you learn about them and how you are here in the forums right now. Does your answer have anything to do with Japan? If it does you can see where my next post is going.

 

Unrelated to my post. Try the mega thread.

 

ah yeah, my mistake. wrong tab

 

the fuck this subject is getting more complicated than i thought it would

 

What is so complicated about it. Either go with the hivemind and bash Qidian or do critical thinking of reading what you want and if it's not free anymore either you pay up, stop reading it, or read it from the aggregators. If there is no licensing agreement you know damn well the C&D cannons will be firing left and right, especially now that Qidian is aware of international readers just like the JP LN scene

 

Well you make pure mistake (I'm a business owner myself). You simply forgot about QI staff salary, cost of lending office for QI HQ - it's a branch company thus they employed new people + delegated 1 or 2 (I'm not too sure about exact amount of delegates) from Q to manage this branch, cost of advertising across the globe. Overtime this branch company will grow the same as amount of novels on their websites thus costs will grow (but slower than income from website). You can't forget now QI is only generating losses which will need to be recovered within next 3 years. If I will want to make estamination there is just not enough data to do so in a professional level. As per QI official announcement they want to spend 10 milions on developing this branch and there would be costs on top of it too. In order to recover those loses QI will need add paywall - and this move will exclude many people donating to Patreon/paying now. If you include thoses loses QI is generating day after day (and those are numbered in thousands daily) recovering it wouldn't be so easy - thus QI is poaching now the best translators/trying to rope-in any translator with fanbase in order to get their views numbers up and build up better base to recover losses later on. To be honest there is much more to add to rough estamination of QI costs (like deal on e-books later on etc, international travels for QI representatives in order to seal deals [for example Amazon deal] and many more). Even IT need to be employed on 24/7 contract just in case.

Now they don't save money in order to build up their fundation fast and minimalize generating loses (even 3 months faster development mean hundreds of thousands saved for them). Main question should be - when QI will stop generating loses and recover previous loses.

PS QI have been generating loses since first day their branch company have been created. Now after few months you think how high their loses are? Don't forget they are spending more and more every single passing day.

 

Well..
Qidian just remind us that "money" is still attached to our small book community.
Whether we like it or not.