Regarding qidian’s privileged thing

It’s bad. They’re pretty much saying “let’s overcharge these guys”.

 

Well, I probably am just being very stupid now, but isn’t accepting donations acceptable? (I am probably just very ignorant)
And, like some websites like Wuxiaworld initially had an agreement to translate some stuff, but things like issth got copied onto webnovel.com?

 

I remember that incident, what happened was some shitheads started using bots to rack up the ad views, the people posting the ads got screwed over for the payment of bot watching counts and had to stop sponsoring since the numbers were so artificially inflated they could not pay, so it wasn't totally QI's fault, just some shitheads that got greedy and ruined it for the rest of us.

 

Mentioning that I don't even know what the maths you talk about are... You realize that after paying for a page on qidian you literally bought lifetime access for it? Unless they go bankrupt and have to close down, they are literally not allowed to deny you access.

They also offer you the option to download all available pages, so that you don't need internet connection?

And to bring up "filler garbage" to complain about the price of a novel... lol
If you don't like the content of a book don't buy it. That's just hilarious.
You are basically saying "Hey author, your book is shit, I don't want to read it. Now give it to me for free so I can read it."

The term "donations" is already wrong here. Anyone calling it that is either intentionally lying because it sounds nicer or because they don't know better.
Patreon and Paypal for example make very clear that what they call "donations" is considered (under law) taxable income... Which is pretty much as far away from a "donation" in the real sense of the term as you can get Even money gifts you send out to friends is (under law) considered closer to a donation than the money you give people through a "donation" button. With the exception of actual charities, but you probably already know that translators aren't a registered charity...

Edit: In patreons case it's the monthly support, they don't call it donations... My bad...

 

Just to point out, legally, donations ARE taxable. Especially if they go over a charity's operating costs, then the rate skyrockets since by right a "not for profit" organization that declares itself so for tax deductions should not generate a profit. It's one way the government makes sure the money actually gets into the hands of those that need it.

 

Well, yes. Didn't think that needed clarification in this context, but thanks for making it more clear. Generally there is no tax for it.

 

Idk how it is now. But when they implemented the vip on a novel i had been reading, they locked the chapters i had been unlocking with either ads or ss (after they removed the ads i unlocked some with the daily ss). That was part of a deal breaker for me. Well, last i read there was before a year or more.
What i am trying to say is that even if you had unlocked something with the ss, it doesn't mean it will be there permanently unlocked for you. Especially if the novel had yet to turn vip.

 

Most web novels have about 1500-2000 words per chapter and most Harry Potter books are incredibly short. So QI is actually much cheaper than Harry Potter books for roughly the same level of writing for the most part. Now if you were to replace Harry Potter with say The Sword of Truth novels or Wheel of Time novels then the price point is actually rather similar based purely on word count with Western novels (paper backs) a little more expensive on average. The difference is quality, Western novels often go through many drafts and editing so the quality tends to be much higher and more consistent.

PS: only dumb people buy hard backs.

 

Again, I may just be stupid, but when I said donations, I meant like when the reader decides to give some money to the translator purely out of goodwill, because from the smaller translators outside of qidian, that is the impression I am getting from them (I.e the translators either translate for fun or to practice their English or another language, and as it benefits another person, that person decides to give a bit of money to the translator for their efforts. Conversely, the translator may then decide to thank the people who gave them money by translating a bit more)

 

As a side-note. Yes, WW and Qidian had an agreement.
WW had licenses for 20 novels to be hosted on their website with Qidian. Then they went ahead got 11 other unauthorized novels from somewhere and hosted them too. According to Qidian that voided their initial agreement/contract which was only for the first 20 novels and so, since the contract was voided they demanded that WW takes down ALL novels, since they are now all illegally hosted. Qidian took so much offense that they even considered legal actions, should WW further disregard their warning. Understandable imo...
You can find Qidians inital post about that somewhere here in the forum.

WW went viral afterwards saying they are innocent and also considered legal actions, there was a bit of back and forth and after a while WW got quiet... I'm not sure what happened after that.

There was even a post of some other translator that had to step up to explain that he sold his translations to Qidian, because the community just assumed Qidian stole them when they went up on their website iirc...

So yeah, afaik mostly just baseless accusation on our part.

The problem with that is that they receive money exactly for what they are doing. Nobody would give them money if they didn't translate the novels. Because they translate, they receive money on a voluntary base. Sometimes even offering services like "early access" if they pay on patreon...

And it doesn't matter if it's voluntary or not, that is considered payment.

If it wasn't payment a waiter/waitress wouldn't need to file for taxes for their tips either, because that is basically the same concept (the normal wage only plays a minor role here). Would be pretty stupid if a waiter/waitress could just get their boss to tip them instead of paying them monthly wage, so they can evade taxes completely.

And as soon as you get payment for something you provide in fair use, it's not fair use anymore.

 

I can’t speak for other people but for me, when a business promises one thing and does the other then it doesn’t matter at all whether it’s the “right or wrong” thing. Reputation in business is priceless but they put a price on theirs. When webnovel first debut’d, I clearly remember they promised to not put up a paywall or any such things. You can argue that they still haven’t done such a thing since most of their novels are free up to the first 20-40 chapters but in the end, they still have a paywall in the form of SS.

And you can’t compare a book or a series of books that you can buy for less than $100 to webnovels inflated SS prices.. I can’t be bothered to do the math but for the same $100 that you can buy all J.K Rowling’s books for, you can barely read one novel that’s 1K + chapters on their platform. The people that say webnovel is greedy just don’t know how or are too lazy to voice out the actual problems and hence, opt to simply saying “they’re greedy”.

Anyway, back to the main point, regardless if a business has a good, bad, kind or greedy business model.. they aren’t worth half a fart in my books if they have a bad reputation.

 

I have yet to see a single post from official qidian where they promised they will never ever put up a paywall...
The only thing I saw was a post saying they noticed that problem too and are working on finding a suitable solution, until then they will not demand anything.
And they did exactly that... They didn't demand any money until they found what they (and apparently most of the community) think is a good solution...

And again, where are the prices inflated? There is no SS inflation, it's a virtual good with a fixed price... If you just want to say it's expensive, ok. That's subjective.
But that doesn't make them greedy or liars. They just have their own opinion on how much their books are worth... and if they think their books are on the same quality level as a western book (and again, the price are about the same if you go by any sensible measure like pages or words) then that's on them. If you think the content of the books is not worth the money, that's also ok... just don't buy it, like you do with any other western novel you think is not worth the money for the content offered.
Insulting the publisher just cause other people are doing the same isn't the right thing to do...

Even worse if you just insult them because the book you yourself said wasn't up to your standard, should be made free just so you - the person that didn't want to read it, because it's not good enough - can read it for free. That actually makes you the hypocritical, greedy bastard that you call them all the time...

Edit: I noticed it's worded poorly, I don't mean you exactly are a hypocritcal, greedy bastard... I don't want to insult you. That was more directed at a certain vocal part of our community that's shouting exactly that...

 

Just one thing I wanted to point out (not really speaking against you or anything), but I noticed that the free daily spirit stones have been altered a bit as well as far as I can tell. Previously, they gave a random amount each day, so you can sometimes get up to 8 on a weekday and 15 or something on a weekend if I recall correctly, but I’m pretty sure that has been lowered to a fixed 5 on weekdays and 12 or something on weekends. I may be wrong but that is what it appears to be for me anyway. Just something I wanted to put out, please correct me if I’m wrong

 

Previously it was just a button you clicked and you got (what seemed like) a random reward. Sometimes only a couple SS, rarely 15SS, sometimes free XP.
As far as I personally can tell they only streamlined the process with fixed rewards (5SS per day, XP for a whole week)...
I, personally, am still reading the same novels with the same amount of SS (chapter per day) as I was before...

Maybe they just removed the dice roll but kept the average reward the same? Actually not sure on that one...

Edit: I will actually test that one out next week...

Edit2: Also don't forgot that you can multiply your reward now, so watching ads gives you 8 SS instead of 5 per day

 

I’m not that petty or narrow minded, you obviously have your own perspective of their business model and platform and that’s perfectly fine.

I honestly can’t be bothered to look up and search the posts where they promised what I said they had promised (besides I’m on my phone) but I clearly remember they said no paywall- like their Chinese platform, that it’ll be free and they’ll make their revenue through other ways. Anyway, you’re right about some stuff especially my poor choice of wording, it’s true that SS aren’t inflated, they're simply expensive.

Just FYI, I didn't insult them, I simply don’t trust them anymore because of their poor reputation amongst both the reader and translator communities and no, I’m not blindly following what the masses say; I’ve been part of this community for years, a few years before webnovel even thought of getting into the English translation market and I saw first hand their poor conduct with many websites and individuals.

 

I'm a simple woman of simple vices.


Qidian bad, harem badder.

 

You can earn SS daily by watching ads, checking in, and voting. These SS expire after 30 days but you can build them up if you don't spend any and read free novels.

 

This works well for me too. Just don't let it expire.

 

If you're using the app then there's a "multiply rewards" button where you can get 10 SS instead of 5, and there is now an extra reward for logging in 7 days a week.

 

You do realize even at 1500 words per chapter at 1k chapters that is 1.5mil words compared to maybe 800k-900k words for Harry Potter. Which by the way is a young adults series and not exactly great (reading them was pretty boring). People keep throwing around "filler" as a negative but even Western novels can be bloated with useless parts(Lord of the rings books especially) disguised as world building or detail.

As for reputation of a business it's all bs, they buy and sell it just like their products.