Webnovel now selling Public Domain eBooks

I made some changes in my post but yes, if the book is famous and free, you can find a free translation but not always it exists.

 

I wonder if they even spent the time to copy/make the epub or did they just rip it straight off gutenburg and slap a new cover on it

 

Of course they would cost, but those are physical books, the paper , ilustration, translation in other languages, will cost. The OP is atlking about ebooks, which are not physical and if the book is on publik domain it makes doesnt make sense to sell in the ebook format

 

pst. . .
you sure it's not just CN title that somehow get an inspiration on that book title that they somehow also pasted the name of the book where thety got their inspiration at??

like that green guy with a hard hat or stuff like those,

 

I don't like this attitude.

It's like some street seller is shouting "I'm selling excellent quality shirts, 100 bucks!" while they're actually just thrift store shirts. Of course it's people's prerogative to buy or not, but the least you can say is that that street seller is disingenuous and tries to profit off of people not knowing what he's selling.

The typical "but it's the consumer's choice" and "the consumer should've known better" are stupid arguments.

 

If there's a demand, why not sell it? Just because It's public doesn't mean they can't sell it, right?

I could go around selling snow or rainwater if people were willing to buy it, I don't see any meaningful difference in concept here

 

lol $16 for public domain digital books? Whoever bought them must be either occupants of a cave or utterly stupid when you can get it for free by just googling.

Of course, it would make sense if Quidian actually make them picture books, but nah, they're not that decent.

 

Obviously it won't be entirely free in most non promotional cases. You need to pay for the bandwidth and server space used, and the paper/ink to make it.... But it should never sell at the same rate as a normal fing book, especially not as a digital version

Qidian are just crooks, and anyone who reads there is supporting it. Thanks for helping this tumor grow.

 

It's Tencent. What'd you expect?

 

Any demand only exists through the ignorance of their customers and they aim to take advantage of that ignorance rather than trying to help their customers get the best results. It’s fairly standard practice for big corporations. Occasionally you’ll find businesses that don’t do this, they tend to be smaller shops that seek to build longer lasting customer relationships through excellent service

 

Difference is you actually have to do something to sell snow or rain water. You gotta collect it, you gotta pass fda tests. You'll need to pay for filters and distributions.

Qidian is just taking shit that costs them almost nothing to keep, and hoping to make 15 bucks a pop out of its idiot customer base. They don't care about reputation because the consumers of their products have already proven that reputation means shit to them.

All you have to do to stop getting fucked over by companies like this is to STOP FUNDING THEM. They will immediately change to a more respectful business strategy, but nope. You guys are just cool to keep shoveling funding over to these fuckers, and just make throwaway comments on every new scam they come out with.

 

I know it's off topic but what happened to webnovel's fan fic section?

 

Actually Tencent doesn't really do anything except dealing in legal cases that come their way when they feel like they need to step in. In most cases, Tencent leave the subsidiaries on their own and only steps in when Tencent is losing serious money. The modelling company that Ai-chan works for is also partially owned by Tencent and Ai-chan's boss have been able to manage everything without Tencent's interference.

 

Actually most large businesses haven't done this until recently. Because until millennials if they acted like crooks or got caught in a scandal PEOPLE CARED. Do you have any idea how many large businesses nearly bankrupted because they were discovered doing unethical things or cheating people?

Reputation used to be the most important factor. It's why the customer was "God".

Nowadays you guys don't use the strength of a consumer. They want your money more than you want their product, USE THAT. Stop just bending over and taking whatever they give you because it's too troublesome to have to wait until they get their act straight to read/buy something.

 

Stop going so far to defend crooks. Even if you DID manually scan the product, it's still not worth 15 bucks for each sale. There are no royalties, no fees other than the electricity and bandwidth used each time. Even if you managed it HORRIBLY and it cost you a dollar per sale. After only 10 sales your effort of scanning that book was really with 140 dollars to you?. What about 50. Scanning 200 pages or so is really a job in worth $700s?

They're cheating people flat out. Don't go out of your way to justify it. Amazon are the biggest money grubbers out there, and they're PHYSICALLY selling these for less than qidian wants for a digital copy.

 

I'd argue if its public domain then people can do what they will with the work, even if they make a profit from it. I just think who cares if they're selling public domain works, no need to buy them since they are free elsewhere so just ignore it.

 

The issue is a large public business is using possible ignorance to sell a book they got for literally nothing, for 15 bucks. They sell even one single copy and theyve made enough to keep the entire public domain library hosted for years.

That's just called a scam. The only negative of being a scam artist is people no longer wanting to buy from you, SO STOP JUST LETTING IT GO. If you guys want to stop getting cheated, stop supporting known crooks.

The fact they are willing to do this upfront shows they have absolutely 0 respect for their customer base. They should have their reputation ruined by this. But nope. You guys will just slide this under the rug and keep paying this giant to keep fucking you over. Cuz you're just passive idiots like our entire generation.

 

If I were to sell snow or rain on the scale Qidian sold novels, such costs would be negligible in the same way their server costs etc. are negligible to them.

If the idiot base keeps buying then let them buy, I say. As long as they're satisfied with their own purchase then there's no problem: buyer is happy, seller is happy, transaction is happy

If I'm not satisfied with it then I won't give them money. And I don't. I'd rather go to aggregate sites than to knock down that paywall they put up in front of their novels.

 

The problem is that our society is getting really fucked up because our generation is always just a happy customer. We buy anything from anyone and don't even complain when we get scammed. So the scammers get huge and spread, and just keep making more money than what a legit business makes. So they bury all those legit businesses using that generated wealth(in this case WW is going to be the victim).

Go forward and now they're basically the only option to buy from, no hope to reduce their hold, no hope for a boycott to do anything unless it gets MASSIVE exposure. All of that could be stopped, but the people were just so complacent that not only did they not fight back, they couldn't even just simply get the guts to stop paying them.

Every large corporation is giving less and less respect to the consumers, and people just keep letting it happen with no negative repercussions for them. If you can gain so much and lose so little why the hell wouldn't every company do it?

 

They are doing no different to what many publishers do with classic works where the novels have become public domain. The point is that it is responsibility of a person to know what they are purchasing as much as it is a a producers responsibility to sell as described. I'm just saying this topic isn't worth getting impassioned about since they have done nothing legally and morally wrong. Btw, I don't pay qidian a dime nor do I care for them, I just think this topic has no real reason to be upset over.