This is late but the way i did it was to make a new reading list called "." without quotes. add all qidian novels to it. go to list settings and click on everything (check marks). that way you don't see them in your main release page, and you don't recommend them to anyone cuz they're hidden from ur public reading list. ...too much?
I believe they typically get contracts for multiple novels, so it isn't a permanent thing, but it does keep you locked up for awhile unless the webnovelist is willing to put out substandard work to get through the contract quickly, which seems unlikely.
I have looked up his comment, it took me some time, so here is the link and for people who don't want to click on that I will quote it below, as it turns out it is in some contracts: http://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/qidians-announcement.37767/page-8#post-1920334 "They also take complete ownership of all copyrights from authors. They have even put in some contracts stating that if you sign with Qidian, not only is this current book owned by Qidian, ALL FUTURE BOOKS YOU WRITE are owned by Qidian. How do they treat their authors? I recommend you learn Chinese, then search Baidu!" There is a bit more from him about authors and how they are treated: http://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/qidians-announcement.37767/page-10#post-1920530 I was curious about how authors are treated and as I don't speak Chinese and cannot look up things on e.g. Baidu, I went with the safest thing I could come up with and searched around in the databases that are available for me atm through my uni (nowadays you can find studies and articles about pretty much everything). If someone wants to read a bit about this, I can recommend the following article (unfortunately it's behind paywall): Zhao, E. J. (2016). Writing on the assembly line: Informal labour in the formalised online literature market in China. New Media & Society. It mentions things like how new authors must target specific genres that can be commercialized if they want to earn money from it. There is also stuff like how ghostwriters are selected and used in the industry. There is also a section titled simply as "dodgy contracts". As it is about the whole industry and they don't name specific authors (for obvious reasons), it is probably not just Qidian's way of doing things, but they are one of the biggest and most influential players on this field - and we have seen how they behave and treat business partners, so it is safe to say that they are part of the reason why things are like this over there.
I am not privy to their author contracts but I have seen authors with works in both ZongHeng and Qidian
That's why I tried to highlight that he said some contracts - not all. Plus bigger authors are likely to have enough bargaining power to renegotiate the terms of the contracts and have a bit more freedom.
Authors are more likely to get beginner on Qidian than on ZongHeng, last I checked ZongHeng does not own a TV and gaming empire that compares to Disney. Oh well, I still think authors will make a deal with the devil if it increases their chances of success
If we are talking about commercial success, than I guess it is unfortunately true at the moment - but keep in mind that the other big publishers also have rather big companies behind them, so it's not like they cannot catch up or expand into other fields. One additional thing: the whole industry is based on the amount an author writes, so it promotes quantity over quality (haha, I've realized just now that this partly explains Qidian's attitude towards the translation quality). Being successful as a writer can be about other things than just money, so I would be curious to see what those Chinese writers do that don't face the kind of pressure the online literature market brings. I know I am kind of drifting away from the original topic, it's just a thought. Maybe I will try to look something up later to see how they compare to the online authors or to the Western literature.
While he might have good reasons this is not good for the novel community and some haven't realised that, including some authors. Don't you see that QI is in fact trying to monopolise the western novel industry? We will be quite fucked if this doesn't stop.
That's completely apparent. In China, one company monopolizing an industry is common and Qidian wants to do the same here. The problem is, they have the rights and they own the majority of Chinese web novels
I was away for a week and this news really shocked me... Question, is @Qidian so bitter with WW that they won't even reply ren's email or consider dual hosting like TKA? since some of their contracted TL'er do post their tl'tion on their blog/site albeit a bit later...
Reading the whole things.. Ponder.. Proceed to reading list and delete IRAS and TMW from my Reading List.. Yep.. Zhang Ye, i will always remember your fillers and your naughty hands.. Yi Yun, you were cool at first, err.. you're still cool *cough* *avoid eye contact* Well bye bye to the both of you, stay loyal to your partner