What Do You Know About Munpia/Ridibooks/Joara?

I am curious how these pay to read book websites work. Unlike sites like Lezhin, I havent seen negative new articles about them.
What is their secret? I want to know

When All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Webtoon Creators vs. Lezhin Comics
Webtoon artists protest unfair work conditions

 

If you read the article you've yourself posted, you'll find the conduct of the Lezhin managers questionable. The questions against Lezhin have less to do with content and more to do with the behavior of the staff vis à vis the content creators.

As far as I know, Naver has invested and monetized their platform pretty fairly, with serializations getting a fixed wage of 2000 Dollars a month in fixed salary. A lot of it probably has to do with Naver's webtoon platform being the proto-monopoly on content and not trying underhanded stuff like QI has been doing in the hopes of quickly fleecing a profit(translations with good quality control in multiple languages, rationalized payment system and regular free chapters unlike the bait and switch on qidian where they charged for chapters on the premise of regularly freeing up backlog and instead simply throttled the speeds of most of their content.)

I do not know much about the Munpia/etc scene, but probably not being an asshole to either your readers or your content contributors probably goes a long way to help.

 

Well, they said work conditions so it is probably work conditions

 

Easy. Blackmail.

 

Are you asking specifically about the user's end or the business end of these sites?

On the business side of things, a lot of these sites are able to run as smoothly as they do while still keeping a positive reputation because they generally don't have to worry about making a profit. As in, the income doesn't come from the webnovel/webcomic content. The webnovel/webcomic platforms in and of themselves probably run at close to, if not at, a deficit.

I'm not super familiar with all of the sites you mentioned in the topic, but in general the platforms' funding comes from their parent companies or from external sponsors with an interest in spreading national soft power. E.g., KakaoPage and Naver Webtoons are funded Kakao and Naver respectively; Munpia is partnered with big-name companies like MBN (a major broadcasting network in Korea).

I believe RidiBooks also manufactures physical goods (books, ebook reading devices) as well.

 

Soft power. Exactly, people see lots of profits it's not so.
Although paying authors based on sales is more sustainable than paying translators with no guarantee of sales.
I watched this drama recently and I learnt a bit about the business side.

http://asianwiki.com/Search:_WWW
I am guessing popular authors have contracts while your average author is just a temporary worker.
I know novels are free until they get lots of views and become paid.
From the comments on munpia, I don't think they offer proofreaders.