Qidian's Paywall

Yep. Let's hope for it not to be the final. XD

 

like hell i dont have any money.
i might stop reading webnovels cause of this paywall.

 

Then read from other sites.

 

Like Wuxia? hmmm

 

feel ya. And to think that there aren't many ways to earn SS and even if there are, it would just add +8 or something that won't even make any difference.

 

Whatever, Qidian's getting more rich as we speak.

 

they put up some new ideas as to how to earn ss in the webnovel forum go check that out.

 

Dude, that's not even implemented yet.

 

We are still waitin for that.

 

Like what? watching videos to earn SS? and how many SS will that earn you? It better be plentiful if they're giving out freebies like that.

 

best not to expect anything like that. Even daily check ins dont earn you a lot of ss.

 

Sounds harsh... (´・ω・｀)

 

What's harsh ?

 

Earning spirit stones to read? (´・ω・｀)

 

Lol, looks like i gave it a bit of a boost too. Much more of one than i thought.

Richer? No.

They just aren't accruing debt as quickly anymore.
With how many novels they have and the amount they pay out to translators and editors they cant be making money.
The popular novels surely are but the surplus from those have to cover the less popular novels which cost Qidian the same amount of money per chapter plus all the support staff behind the scenes and their silent PR team.


I'd be super interested to see their financials cause i think that even after this move they are still in the red. I would be very very very surprised to learn that they have become sustainable (minus all the accrued debt this venture has made up to this point) let alone profitable.

 

The amount paid to translators and editors are...peanuts...considering most professionals are paid by word, not chapter the way Qidian International does lol. But I do think they're probably going to be unsustainable bc they need to fire whoever is managing their art direction as well as who OKed that hideous website design.

 

It may be peanuts in the future (doubtful) but right now it is a large amount for them. Take all their novels at what is it 35-45 bucks per chapter and the editors make 5-7 if i remember all that correctly. (Assuming they still pay the same as they did when they first started.)
It adds up to a whole lot for a company ranked close to 3,000 by alexa which was running off just ads until recently.
3000 isn't the worst. (WW is just over 1000th place) but with costs like these it should be a huge financial blunder just running off ads. Even with the people who will pay now you still have to consider all of the support staff and the likely huge legal cost associated with breaking contracts, the law and NDA.
They are more than unsustainable right now. They just have to be drowning at this point. Only reason they are still going is because they are funded from their main business in China. If they weren't investors would have had their heads by now.

Edit: totally agree on the website design. Who gave that the okay, especially with all of the English errors they launched it with.

 

Now that you talk about it yah it's kind of a lot I guess lol...i mean I'm assuming Qidian is the main money bag so with Qidian it's still peanuts bc each chapter only costs a fraction of how much each chapter made on the original site.

Ikr? The site design is so bad...And if they're trying to run off ads...uh what ads? 3_3 Like just straight up their website design is so confusing and the illustrators they hire for the website art and the novel covers clash so badly. It's like they decided to pay $$$ for the website illustration that don't even fit the website theme and then paid peanuts for new cover illustrations that look horrible and done by babies with photoshop. Also god stop promoting really bad novels that you've bought the completed chapters for. Buying those chapters were probably a huge financial mistake anyway.

Navigation is a hideous pain and they're stubbornly trying to maintain the boy/girl separation in the form of 'hey there's a bug that delegates all for girl novels into romance even if they might not have romance as their main genre'. The forums are a shit show, how the fuck do they navigate forum threads? Also god why that blue and weird ass bright colors? The entire site and their mother is a mess.

The only possible bright light I see for QI's future is their original novel segment. If they can push for a more comprehensive original fiction movement (lol what) maybe they might be able to make the $$$ that AO3 never did.

I hate the reader they use for their site???? Qidian has a better reader on their Chinese site that isn't infinite scroll with confusing ass buttons and a weird ass commenting system that's just a claustrophobic mess. If you want to copy infinite scroll then goddamn look at Tapastic you dumbfucks.

Also lastly, why the fuck did they choose 'webnovel' as their english brand name. The fuck did Webtoons not teach them shit? Like Qidian means 'Starting point' so????? I'm sure people could come up with better names in the company lmao......

im sorry im just so picky with design but like just looking at design should be enough to tell ppl if something's going to fail or not l o l

 

They chose that name because if this niche market takes off, it is the most logical term people are going to choose to input into a search bar. Qidian's website will be the first site to show up because of the similarity to its name.
WW for example will be high up on the list for common searches but with Qidian's name it is likely to be the first. Most people just click the first link so it is a smart name though it lacks any originality.

It is the company's first impression and i agree with you. It is very important. i think Qidian rushed completion and didn't check over it very well plus made design choices i would never make myself. You are a translation site and your English on your website is so poor it's laughable... they really made a bad first impression leaving aside all the drama.

 

If you have webnovel in the description then wouldn't it? also show up? 3____3 Idk i feel like if someone wrote 'web novel' they might be expecting original work and not translated web novels from overseas. Also when looking up web novels, I feel like people are more likely to just write 'original fiction' or 'original novel online' rather than just purely 'web novel' which is more of a colloquial term for the CN/JP/KR web novel translation community. Like honestly this kind of online fiction is very East Asian? Outside of a small % of readers in the West, no one really knows it's a thing.

If they really must choose to use webnovel as their name then I think they should have boosted the whole original fiction part first instead of creating bad rep in a zone that most of their readers might come from (and probably where they got their initial boost). Idk i feel like the people in charge with this expansion have problems with their brains...at this point even if I really do want to read stuff on their site, my splitting headache from their entire force of bad design choices makes me unable to stay on there for more than 5 seconds.