Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It is indeed, but given that there are people who are apparently doing it for free anyway, this seems to be a way of formalising something that's already happening. I don't think any professional translators will be losing any sleep as a result of this.
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Yes. They won't hire professional translators because it would be too expensive.
It's more for "fan" translators who do it more like a hobby and earn some money from it ($40 for about 2500 words translated) + Patreon money from readers who want to donate to the translators.
There are some popular fan translators who are making $5000 + a month from Patreon.
Will Qidian/Tencent be able to recoup the money they invest in for this English expansion? Only time will tell. They are depending on ad revenue and (soon) ebook sales to break-even / make a profit.
In China, they are profitable because they are very popular. They pay 70% royalties which mean they have 30% to pay for staffing, office, servers, editors etc...Whatever left over is profit.
It looks like in the West, they are experimenting with ad revenue + ebook sales to pay the bill.