$10 million investment into webnovel.com

[Xianxia]

https://acts.webnovel.com/2017/59195029/index.html

In 2016, China Readings shared over hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties with our writers. We are looking forward to the rapid growth that the webnovel translation market will be able to achieve just as the original webnovel market achieved. （http://www.donews.com/news/detail/4/2945961.html）

As Qidian International, incubating and developing the market will be always our first priority rather than profit gaining. We plan to invest over 10 million dollars in next few years to build a better ecosystem for all webnovel translators and editors.

Tencent bought Qidian for around $800 million back in late 2014.
It is now expanding internationally.

Their business model in China is quite interesting. Readers read on the web or the app. First 80-120 chapters are free. Each chapter (about 2500 English words) after that is about $0.02. Authors get 70%. There is also tipping/reward the author function.

Right now, they are focusing on translations but it is assumed that English originals will be on there in the near future. After all, there is no translation cost when it come to English originals. They could attract a lot of top web authors on Wattpad etc...


http://publishingperspectives.com/20...e-web-authors/

Rewarding Your Favorite Writers

Most websites also include a "reward function," which allows readers to award their favorite authors money or "props" which they can exchange for cash.

Some sites also encourage what is called "fan economy" through monthly rankings of popular web-writers, determined by readers’ votes. The wrinkle to this is that readers pay to vote, and the more they pay, the higher the ranking for their favorite author.

In fact, there are now so many web-writers in China (in the millions) that they are now "ranked," both by their earnings and number of fans.

On the lowest level is the ordinary writer, also "known as poor guy (or poor guy writer)." They have a limited number of fans, and their work is seldom recommended to others. Their annual income is around 1,000 yuan.

Next up are the Xiaoshen (low rank god) writers with a fan base of more than 100,000 and annual earnings of more than 100,000 yuan ($16,100).

One step further up the ladder are the dashen (super god) class of writers with earnings of more than 1 million yuan ($161,200) with fans counted in the millions as well.

At the very top of the tier are the 20-30 web writers known as platinum authors or zhigaoshen (the Supreme God) class of writers. The 2014 Chinese web-writers list ranks Tangjiasanshao first, with earnings of 50 million yuan (around $8.06 million) per year from royalties, while second and third on the list both raked in more than 25 million yuan ($4.03 million) each.

The translators are mostly from USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc.. They are "fan" translators. Readers who are fans of the novels as it gained popularity in the West. Translation is not their full-time job. More like a part-time job, something they do on the side for 6-10 hours a week.

They are paid $40 per chapter (2500 English words). It takes about 2 hours to translate a chapter so about $20 per hour pay rate. Translators also get money (tip/reward/donation) from readers through Patreon/Paypal so they could potentially earn a lot more than $20 per hour.

If it's professional translators, the cost would be prohibitive. They wouldn't expand into English language if it cost something like $250 to translate 2500 words. I read that professional translators charge about $0.10 per word so 2500 English words chapter would cost $250. Using fan translations, they are able to cut the cost down to where they might be able to make a go at it.

[HarryT]

Good to hear that it's doing so well. These are not at all to my personal taste, but they're obviously very popular with many people.

[SleepyBob]

Translation is a hard job.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by SleepyBob

Translation is a hard job.

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.

[Xianxia]

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.

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.

[Xianxia]

The first ebook from Qidian (the Chinese publisher that created webnovel.com) has been released by Gravitytales, an independent subsidiary of it. From the IPO listing, Qidian purchased 90% of Gravitytales.

Post truncated; see cross post in Reading Recommendation forum.

[CarlosR]

I would like to translate english to spanish

[oliverqueennie]

the amount that the writer's make from the site is INCREDIBLE!!

[Xianxia]

All translated novels are free to read with ads on Qidian International. But that could change in the future if they implement a paywall similar to Qidian in China.

In my opinion, it would be better with freemium; similar to Crunchyroll, Spotify and Wattpad who are using free to attract users and convert some of them into paid users.

There is a survey here about paywall vs freemium

https://www.strawpoll.me/14527896

$0.04 per chapter paywall (first 100 chapters are free)

Free with ads; $5.99 a month to skip ads, read several chapters ahead of free users, extra power stones for voting

Spotify has something like 60 million paying subscribers...in large part thanks to freemium strategy.

Crunchyroll also doing very well with freemium

2012: ~125,000 paid subscribers
2013: ~250,000 paid subscribers
2014: ~480,000 paid subscribers
2015: ~740,000 paid subscribers
2016: 1,000,000 paid subscribers

Just from subscription alone, Crunchyroll is making 1 million x $6.95 a month x 12 months = $83.4 million USD a year

[oliverqueennie]

crunchyroll is doing well with it, but i'm not so sure about sites like Wattpad and others......

Netflix is the full subscription business with premium content, and I'd argue they make more money with full subscription than freemium

Originally Posted by Xianxia

All translated novels are free to read with ads on Qidian International. But that could change in the future if they implement a paywall similar to Qidian in China.

In my opinion, it would be better with freemium; similar to Crunchyroll, Spotify and Wattpad who are using free to attract users and convert some of them into paid users.

There is a survey here about paywall vs freemium

https://www.strawpoll.me/14527896



Spotify has something like 60 million paying subscribers...in large part thanks to freemium strategy.

Crunchyroll also doing very well with freemium

2012: ~125,000 paid subscribers
2013: ~250,000 paid subscribers
2014: ~480,000 paid subscribers
2015: ~740,000 paid subscribers
2016: 1,000,000 paid subscribers

Just from subscription alone, Crunchyroll is making 1 million x $6.95 a month x 12 months = $83.4 million USD a year

[Xianxia]

Originally Posted by oliverqueennie

crunchyroll is doing well with it, but i'm not so sure about sites like Wattpad and others......

Netflix is the full subscription business with premium content, and I'd argue they make more money with full subscription than freemium

Different strategies for different types of entertainment.

I don't expect Wattpad to abandon free and put up a full paywall like Netflix.
That would destroy reader base.

Crunchyrolly can't do full paywall like Netflix either because many anime fans will just turn to piracy. Even Netflix exclusive shows are highly pirated.

Spotify is doing well with freemium.

As of July 2017, Spotify had 60 million paying subscribers worldwide, up from 30 million paying subscribers in March 2016

Free will gain more users. Some of them will convert into paid.

Pandora Radio is also freemium.

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Xianxia

Different strategies for different types of entertainment.

I don't expect Wattpad to abandon free and put up a full paywall like Netflix.
That would destroy reader base.

Crunchyrolly can't do full paywall like Netflix either because many anime fans will just turn to piracy. Even Netflix exclusive shows are highly pirated.

Spotify is doing well with freemium.



Free will gain more users. Some of them will convert into paid.

Pandora Radio is also freemium.

You cant compare music streaming subscription to movie or ebooks like media. As music has a high replay consumption where as books, movies and tv shows etc people mostly consume once so freemium model for these is harder to sell to publishers and content makers.

[Xianxia]

Update:

I was hoping they make a subscription service...but they went with a pay per chapter model instead.

First 100 chapters are free to read. Then readers pay about $0.10 per chapter (about 2000 English words).

So a book with 80,000 words would cost about $3.99

They also have the gifting option for readers to donate to the authors.

They are also signing up ORIGINAL English novels. Popular ORIGINALS will get a contract.

If the royalties rate is 60% and an author has 1000 paying readers, then the author would earn

$0.10 per chapter x 1000 paying readers x 60% royalties = $60 per chapter