Discussion Qidian's way of shitting on us

I don't consider QI the good guy. I specifically said that they exploit readers. It's a gambling..addict driven model.
But unlike Amazon they make authors into millionaires.
No I disagree that Amazon is doing any good. It's Patreon that funds Western Amateur writers

 

You guys forgot one major issue your all comparing prices to purchases of books or e-books, but QI is not about purchasing your chapters, your paying for renting a chapter, you don't get to keep it! You might even lose your right to read that chapters you payed for after a day. That is how QI operates, no one get to keep anything whether it is the customers, translators, or even business deals. They will screw you over when ever possible. P.S. QI prices are horrendously expensive even as a purchase for what they offer, which is not even a purchase but rather a rental with unknown expire date.

 

Of course, I'm the one that needs to result to insult others.

Yes, because you definitely played games with microtransactions before to understand how they work so well... Because that's not how they work at all. Most games sell their microtransactions mainly by adding a bunch of bonuses with special packages that also include the $$$ currency of the game, and what ends up happening is that people buy stuff mainly for the bonuses and not for the cash currency itself.

Qidian has only the cash currency, it doesn't try to sell you a bunch of bonuses because those don't exist. Their system is a pay per chapter, and you're trying to argue that people will read more because they have paid more, instead of paying more because they want to read more... This is a complete inversion of the logic, it doesn't work this way.
You don't buy a book in the bookstore because you have money in your wallet and might as well buy a book, you buy a book because you want to read the book and has the money for it in your wallet.

Your "proving" is basically saying "Hey Alice, you're right, Qidian is cheaper when comparing to smaller novels just like you said, but I'll pretend you didn't say it to try to prove my point", like... Seriously...?

You put it right here for heaven's sake. And then you compared the prices with a bunch of big novels to try showing that Qidian in general is more expensive when you just so happened to only pick big novels to make your argument.

 

In this one counterexample you carry forth, you ignore the digital version of that very same first Harry Potter, which is about equal in dollars/words (0.11 as well). So QI isn't cheaper, you'd know if you read my reply. At best, it's the same. In any other case, it costs more and oh boy a 2x or 4x markup is quite significant. Don't you think so?

Most western fantasy novels are 300+ pages. There's a general 80k-100k words lower border for a finished fantasy book. Not something fixed, but most abide by it. You can look it up on Google. And let 80k words be the point where QI matches dollars/words ... Any higher, like many fantasy novels do, and they beat QI. I'm not cherrypicking, look at some of the more famous ones: GoT, WoT, NotW, LotR, Mistborn, ... Typical, average western fantasy/sci-fi is like 90-120k, thus already beating QI, but many popular ones are epics going far above in word count. And prices don't scale linearly with length. That's the reality.

Traditionally published western fantasy is cheaper, up to four times the dollars/words of QI's novels for epics and a more modest but still significant percentage for shorter ones. QI matches, but it does not do better. Western fantasy also has the advantages that you are not locked to platform, the quality of the English is so much better, etc.

And no, that's not what I argue. Spending another virtual currency instead of simply money adds a layer of abstraction, making the threshold to spend money lower. As a reader, you're finished buying the last chapter of novel A, and see interesting novel B. Buying chapters of novel B is so easy - just some virtual currency, and the fact that there's not a fat dollar sign there makes me feel totally not guilty for buying chapters of novel B instead of doing the dishes.

It is a form of microtransation by definition. It is there for the extra layer of abstraction, lowering customers' threshold of spending money.

I earn my own money, I took your comment as an insult. It was condescending. You can screw off with that assumption of yours. Assuming things about a person, let alone insulting does not belong in any civilized discussion.

 

A lot publishers like to make it so you can only buy hardcover versions for a year or so before they do the (cheaper) paperback versions, and then they make an even cheaper mass market paperback version later. I don't really follow Kindle pricing, but I imagine it gets cheaper as the new versions get released.

A lot of new books come out only as hardcover for a year or so, and usually significantly more expensive than paperback editions.

As can be seen on Amazon:
Shadows of Self: A Mistborn Novel Hardcover – October 6, 2015
Shadows of Self: A Mistborn Novel Paperback – October 6, 2016
or
The Wise Man's Fear (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 2) Hardcover – March 1, 2011
The Wise Man's Fear (Kingkiller Chronicles) Paperback – March 6, 2012
or
Lord of Chaos Hardcover – October 15, 1994
Lord of Chaos Paperback – December 11, 2012

And they've been doing this for as long as I've been reading fantasy. Sure, if you want to wait a year for a cheaper version to read it, go ahead. Publishers like making people who don't want to wait pay more for it, and webnovel basically follow the same business model—targeting people who don't feel like waiting. If you wait a year, there'll probably be at least one 50% off discount for whatever Qidian novel. What you're really paying for is reading daily and not having to wait at webnovel, not some $/words number. It's a shitty, predatory practice, but let's not pretend Western publishers are any better. I'd pay far more than Qidian charges if I didn't have to wait 15 years for the Stormlight Archive to finish.

 

You must have spent some time on typing, good job on responding with nice information~

*For quest, don't mind me :3*

 

For me it's arslan senki

 

Hobb, Canavan, Sanderson, Rothfuss, Weiss, Weeks, Feist, King, Glenn Cook etc. All do better than QI, especially in ebook. Most fantasy is 90k+ words, literally almost all of it. Some shorter book examples from Kobo ebooks because you complained:

Dark Crusade by Karl Edward Wagner, 3.99 dollars, 63k words, about 0.05 dollars per thousand words.
Discworld series: 4-10 dollars for 80k-160k words, 0.0875-0.82.
Stardust, Neil Gaiman, 7.99 dollars for 73k words, 1.09 ratio.
Chalice, McKinley, 7.99 for 75k.
A knot in the grain, McKinley, 2.99 dollars, 57k.
The hero and the crown, McKinley, 6.29, 88k.
Jinx by Meg Cabot, 6.49 for 60k.

For short books in digital format, it's more volatile. Plenty of examples for my case but I found one or two more expensive ones as well, forgot them though. Anyway, while it's not as pronounced as for the fantasy epics, and while they are a lot less in number, new (like, published this year) short fantasy (e)books sometimes spike above QI's ratio.

A permanent price decrease after a year. That's different from praying to hopefully get a discount throughout the year. Of which I haven't seen many actually. And to be clear, ebooks can get discounts as well above the already pretty good price.

The ratio only served to show that QI doesn't hold back at all when setting the price for a crummy product, novels you don't even really own yourself with shitty grammar.They ask too much for what their product entails, even if only looking at such a basic metric not considering everything else.

Paying to read daily? In the original language, sure. But in translation your case is a lot weaker. Well, of course it's predatory, they want to tie you to their platform instead of translating and selling it as a whole. It makes it even worse in my eyes that they dare ask as much and often more for a mere WIP.

Western publishers are cheaper and more transparent to buy books from than QI in general, I stand by that. Nobody said anything about them never pulling a fast one here or there though.

Brandon Sanderson is a machine already , it's not like he can write much faster. Maybe if you give him an extra head and two additional arms? Don't forget he's doing like ten different series at once.
Rothfuss is taking his time too. But hey, if we get quality in return I'm not complaining.

Oathbringer by Sanderson, 14 november 2017, ebook on Kobo/Amazon is only 12 dollars, 453k word count. Hardcover and paperback cost 22 and 17 dollars respectively, a fuckton better than QI's ratio even in the pricy hardcover version. So ebooks probably don't suffer from the markup. Maybe in a few years it goes down to 10 but that'll be it?

 

You know people didn't start pirating because of that, don't spout nonsense.

 

It's about the money

 

There is a big difference if you compare 1st books to Qi stuff. 1st book is always short until later books.

The reason is that they are forced to be short so publishers can sell at a decent price rather than printing 500 page epic that might not sell.

So most 1st books would get edited down to less than 90k words. The exceptions are SciFi and high fantasy which can go a bit higher.

Only in later books that the author can prove that he can bring in the doughnuts that he can write longer books which would cost a fair bit more.

I don't think people buy QI stuff for the quality. You know quality when you read edited novels. They buy them because there aren't anything close to it in the current US publishing world.

Namely: super long epics that give instant gratification through daily chapters.

Almost all fast selling QI novels are just stuff that jump from one excitement (or heart throb mystery in romance) to another. The rare gems that take time to build actual stories are fairly rare.

 

This is based on my own assumption from my observation of course. This isn't a thesis paper so why on earth would I waste my time researching so that my point of view is supported by citations? Ridiculous!!

Since you claimed I'm making baseless claims, may I see your citations? I'm curious why hadn't you use any citation to dispute my 'claims' since you are apparently so focus on numbers lol?

Anyway, I feel QI is like a sinking ship because I have a feeling that their cost may have been higher than revenue earned, (they keep recruiting translators for new novels rather than for current popular novels) which could be one of their reason for overpricing their spirit stones so that QI can break-even. Or another reason may be they are trying to milk as much as they possibly can from readers before the whole thing collapse from reader boycott.

 

I think the closest model in US would be Baen books. They offer free books and there is an epic collection called "Ring of Fire" series that seems to spread into the thousands of chapters if you count all of their publishcations.

They cost much much less than QI.

 

How much would the Harry Potter series cost if it was on Webnovel?:

Since we know that 1 SS = 200 words we can figure out how much the series would cost if hosted on WN.

Total Word Count for the Harry Potter series(books 1-7): 1,084,170 words
The first book (Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone) would be free since Qidian usually provides the first volume/arc for free.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: 76,944 words (322 pages)
Rest of the series 1,007,226 words = 5,036.13 SS @ 200 words per SS
1 SS = $.015369 @ a purchase price of $49.99 for 3250 SS​

The cost if purchased on Webnovel:
$77.40 (5036.13 * $.01538)

For comparison:
The Kindle cost for the series:$56.64
The BN Nook cost: $56.64

Essentially the series would be an extra $20.76 if it was on the webnovel platform as a premium original novel.



Sources:
https://wordcounter.net/blog/2015/11/23/10922_how-many-words-harry-potter.html
https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Complete-Collection-1-7-ebook/dp/B01B3DIPMW
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/harry-potter-jk-rowling/1123152409?ean=9781781106471

 

If I was still running my digital marketing business, I'd definitely give you a buzz and offer you chance for an interview for a sales position.

You're wasting your time here, though. It sounds as though you can see what others can't - at least, that's the impression I have.

Kuro_0ni speaking sense, too, lol.

 

I feel like NU is a sinking ship. Prove me wrong.

No, for serious, QI's amount of visitors is pretty stable. They're rolling out new novels because they want quantity on their platform, and want already paying readers to stay hooked and not leave the site for other reading material elsewhere. They won't mind having a loss, because they want to pull most of the Chinese webnovel market to their platform. They want Chinese webnovels to be synonymous with webnovel.com. They've attained their own audience already: about 80 percent of their 20+ million (not unique) monthly visits is direct, not via referrals on NU. This 20+ million has been a stable figure for more than half a year. QI is actually pretty large compared to NU, while NU addresses a larger audience theoretically (JP/KR and other Chinese novels as well).

This reader boycott, I'm not noticing anything. Stable numbers. By the way, on QI, there's many people who love novels going premium. The reverse of the sentiment often seen here.

I don't think they're losing much money anymore. Their business model is fully up and running now. It's a business, they will have made it so it runs a profit, they're in this business long enough already. They overpriced SS and that is the actual long-term price they want. Their price matches higher prices asked for traditional books, so it seems a bit reasonable to some (while in actuality it is overpriced). This combined with a stable audience makes for long-term reliable income. But hey, they can do that, because of ...

This. It's not like QI is the only place you can get this, normal publishing has its equivalents (cheap feel-good cliché romance isn't hard to find, cheesy fantasy or even western fantasy with eastern influence exists, look at The Dandelion Dynasty), but it's not exactly the same as QI's and QI has a lot of it.

They can ask a lot because of a de facto monopoly, but that doesn't mean that it is a positive influence for the scene and prevents piracy, that it's good for the customer, or that we can trust them with their monopoly in the future.

The only saving grace I can think of, is them saying that eventually fully locked novels will become free. An argument they use when defendig their prices, but do you trust those words? It's not like they've been very trustworthy in the past, or transparent in any way.

 

My my? That's a... Honestly pretty smart marketing decision.

Nobody does that over here though, books are already expensive enough without hardcover versions... Whenever a hardcover version appears here it's usually a super special edition that costs twice as much (or more) than the paperback ones... >.>

Yeah, amateur writers usually make smaller novels, and yet most price comparisons we got in this thread were of well-known authors that make huge novels... >.>

If people say that Qidian has such terrible quality in their novels, I think it would only make sense to compare it to other novels that don't have a very high degree of quality either I think? Which would usually mean novels by amateur writers, which are pretty short in general.

*laughs* Thanks I guess! xD

 

Mnhhh
So much popcorn worthy replies
Well let me put in my 2 cents
First the part about pirates being liberators. The boom of pirate sites and them being treated as liberators is product of qidians own actions. Its made an environment where pirating is acceptable and understandable sometimes even praised. They arnt liberators, all qidian has done is just give them an excuse for their actions. So as long as qidian continues its actions instead of giving a platform thats fair for both the readers and Content providers pirates will keep popping up.
And since yall arguing about the price.Is it even worth it to pay the price?
Come on guys unlike traditional completed books we arnt even given a guarantee the book will be finished, not even a steady release rate or quality control. Its basically like gambling, where all you can do is just pay and pray that you hit the jackpot and that the book you reading is Probably edited, has a steady release rate and wont be dropped out of the blue without no notice or promise that the book will be picked up again.
So i cant really see the pirates in a bad light here

 

So yeah, traditional publishing provides equal or better (up to 2-4 times as much) raw value overall, for better quality (grammar, no platform lock, etc.). What about novels more similar to what QI offers? What about self-publishing? Patreon novels are free for non-Patreons so the whole of RR and any is of course better value than QI, no need to look at that.

Shoddy romance novels are pretty popular as well if talking about western fiction. My sister read a lot of those. Romance is also popular on QI. The Goodreads genre "New Adult" contains most these modern wish fulfillment romances. I went to their "New releases in New Adult", started at the top and took every fully romance focused novel in there. I looked at price and pages or word count:

Royally Yours, Chaser, 4.99 dollars on Kobo, 215 pages.
Fall, Kristen Callihan, 4.99 dollars on Kobo, 568 pages.
Brothers, L.A. Casey, 4.99 dollars, 452 pages.
The boy I grew up with, Tijan, 3.99 dollars, only found a word count: 107k.

These are brand new books! Older ones are often downpriced to 4 if they started at 5 dollars, or even to 1 dollar! They beat QI handily.

What about self publishing? This was a harder to look up. I took a list of self published books from here and looked at the first three, ebook prices:

The shadow of what was lost, James Islington. Was on sale for 2 dollars at some point, but difficult to find a price on Amazon US. Is it free with Kindle or something? I don't know. Amazon UK lists 5 pounds or 6.5 dollars, which is a steal for a print length of 604 pages.
Phil Tucker, Chronicles of the black gate. First book no price listed on Amazon free or something I guess, next ones: 4 bucks, 5.6 bucks, 5.6 bucks, 6.6 bucks, 1.1 bucks. These books are all about 400-500 pages print length. Beating QI handily.
Contractor, Andrew Ball, Kindle price was 7 dollars according to Google. For about 400 pages ...

You're seeing this trend too right? The later ones in the linked list follow the exact same trend. These are even cheaper than traditional publishing ... And the English is still better than QI's, going off of Amazon reviews. Look at TTNH's translation for example ...

Fantasy novels by amateur writers aren't shorter necessarily. Baen books another user linked to above also beats QI, and its books often don't even have a decent Goodreads page. The examples I listed were self-published, independently written and they were all 400 pages or longer.

So yeah, by probably every western fantasy (or romance?) metric, however published, QI is overpriced.

 

It's stupid to make a comparision about price/word, simply because they encourage fillers. How much repetition do you get in books like HP in comparision to any random CN? Very often the first few sentences of a chapter are a summary/repetition of the last few sentences of the last... And important stuff will get repeated over and over again over X chapters.

Stuff like this simply doesn't exist in "real books", because they often get consumed as a whole and not over days, weeks, months or even years. Real books "assume" that the readers still remember what one site/chapter before happened.

Also, if HP was released on QI (WN), J.K.R. would need to add more repetition, filler and banter scenes.

Spoiler

Malfoy: "You mud!"
Hermione spit a mouthfull of blood. Ron was so enraged, that he couldn't control himself: "You are courting death!". Malfoy first frowned and then snorted: "You dare!?"
Ron shuddered and took a small step back, tasting the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, but swallowed it reluctantly down. Harry put a hand on each of his friends shoulders and whispered: "It's not worth it."
Harry himself felt rage burning in his chest and even the Purple Lightning Thunder Scar on his forehead throbbed in bloodlust, but he pushed it down, at least he had to avoid getting into trouble right now - after all they were on their way to Hagrid.
.... Oh well, I kinda lost my interest to write more, but I can imagine a lot of "You dare!?" and "You're courting death!" of Malfoy, Snape and other Slytherins. lol
And of course scenes of Snape/Dumbledore/Seniors watching the junior generation fight, but they almost never step in, to save face... Except when Harry(s group) is winning, oviously.

Real books try to cut out as many "useless" scenes as possible, even going as far as to cut out semi-important scenes, just to make it less costly when printed/short enough to not intimidate potential readers. Webnovels do exactly the opposite, authors are encouraged to add as many fillers as possible, while balancing the act with the risk of losing readers.