Rant: Why is Webnovel so popular?

[Xcalibur_Xc]

1) If you can somehow get popular on WN, you can earn a lot although WN takes around 40% or so as far as I can remember.
2) Webtoon, Comics, audiobooks
3) Best interface compared to others
Those are only the good things.?
Some of the bad things are they takes your work's copyright, too many bots.
The main reason for hate are the locked chs. Many gives many excuses but the pricy locked chs are the prime reason for hate.
Finally, even authors needs money to survive lol. Most doesn't get that fact.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I forgot to mention, does it still hosts translations? If yes, another reason for popularity.

 

[Anonjohn20]

I'm not a big fan of Amazon as a whole

Oh I really dislike Amazon. Their censorship of certain historical books to push certain agendas pisses me off. I couldn't read William E. Fairbairn's books on kindle (because he helped form the world's first SWAT team on China and he also helped form the British SAS) because the platform is so anti-second amendment that they have to punish the whole world because of their stances in US politics. I just can't deny that their subscription services are decent deals.

In other news, I was upset with Webnovel stealing my author enough to visit the circle-jerk echo chamber known as Reddit to see what they had to say:

 

[georgelee5786]

Because people are dumb and will use anything

 

[Bluebery]

I'm a WN author and had been there for a few months.

You can read 1-3 chapters a day, but... people are making so many alts that they read my book (200k words) entire for free in less than a week. If readers are patient enough they will find a way to cheat the system.

Also, WN really push me to write daily, otherwise I will lose the benefits. I could only write 50k in 2 months when I was on RR and SH. But 3 months in WN pushed me to write 200k. This means there will be much more content for readers to read everyday. Story will also less likely to be dropped.

Regarding the views, yes, don't trust WN view counter. It's x10 the actual view.

Most of my readers are from US though. I don't think I have Chinese readers there.

 

[cabbag3]

I forgot to mention, does it still hosts translations? If yes, another reason for popularity.

Fck. Idk if other sites do this, but they have this habit of dividing chapters. A 10,000 word count chapter would be divided into 3 chapters, so you have to pay more just to read something that would have cost less.
I haven't really seen this kind of practice in Korean novel translators but tbf, maybe I just missed it.

 

[PancakesWitch]

I'd like to push back on this to some degree. If you actually look at "valid" webtraffic metrics, webnovel is about comparable to royalroad in usage (maybe 10% more). Obviously, there are some benefits to webnovel, but honestly its more of a sea of mediocrity than unlimited content. I've even stopped going there to try to find anything to read because of that fact. Factor in that their audience is comprised of far fewer westerners, and it's more understandable why people shill out money, pay-for-use is far more common in the east.

I'll reiterate my point that if I look at their valid traffic, and simply compare it to the number of views that get racked up on any given month, people must be reading literally thousands of chapters every time they visit the site for the numbers to make sense. Look, if people want to take Chinese money, that's fine, I don't have qualms with it, and they'll pay people to produce fairly mediocre content en masse. However, what they are probably trying to do is shoulder out western companies so they can manipulate public opinions. They, just like every company that is owned in China, are required to have a representative of the CCP in the company. China will gladly shill out millions a month in order to direct propaganda as "public opinion".

There is a reason that Chinese Tik-Tok is very different from US tik-tok and like 10% of our youth are barely functioning members of society when they graduate thanks to that brainrot. The CCP has plans that they've had in place for over a decade, with payoffs expected decades from now to become the world's leading superpower. Even if it costs them lots of money (and thus labor), they'll gladly do it to try to take over the entertainment industry.

Most people dont have high standards, as long as the story has self fulfillment done fine, even if the grammar is bad, people will read it and the author will earn a couple thousands a month. Now multiply this by hundreds or thousands of more authors.

You could probably go read any of my novels and find theyre utter garbage by your standards but they still sell anyways.
Royal Road barely makes any money and is no competitor of Webnovel, even less Scribblehub. So Webnovel is obviously dominating the market.

As always there is people that just cant believe Webnovel is doing this good and wants to believe its just Tencent investing endlessly while getting nothing in return, which it isn't the case lmao.

But sure man, believe whatever you want. Facts are facts and whatever fantasy you make yourself believe, as long as it makes you sleep well at night, is fine.

 

[Bluebery]

Fck. Idk if other sites do this, but they have this habit of dividing chapters. A 10,000 word count chapter would be divided into 3 chapters, so you have to pay more just to read something that would have cost less.
I haven't really seen this kind of practice in Korean novel translators but tbf, maybe I just missed it.

chapter prices are based on word count any way. It's one coin per 200 words so divide or not doesn't really matter. It's just that higher chapter count attracts more readers (since they cannot see the word count, only the amount of chapters in the front page), and also more suitable for webnovel format. For WN, anything more than 2000 words is just too long for a chapter.

Most people dont have high standards, as long as the story has self fulfillment done fine, even if the grammar is bad, people will read it and the author will earn a couple thousands a month. Now multiply this by hundreds or thousands of more authors.

You could probably go read any of my novels and find theyre utter garbage by your standards but they still sell anyways.
Royal Road barely makes any money and is no competitor of Webnovel, even less Scribblehub. So Webnovel is obviously dominating the market.

As always there is people that just cant believe Webnovel is doing this good and wants to believe its just Tencent investing endlessly while getting nothing in return, which it isn't the case lmao.

But sure man, believe whatever you want. Facts are facts and whatever fantasy you make yourself believe, as long as it makes you sleep well at night, is fine.

Yup, unfortunately you are right :( as long as it's one of the tropes that trending, with a good cover and title, it will attract many readers even though the quality of writing is garbage. But that's also the case anywhere else. Readers in general are willing to consume bad stories, as long as the stories fall into the tags they are looking for.

On the flip side, Royal Road and SH has no monetization. As much as I love my readers on SH and RR, I have to go to WN since it's so hard to make money on those sites. Patreon just doesn't work for me.

 

[cabbag3]

chapter prices are based on word count any way. It's one coin per 200 words so divide or not doesn't really matter. It's just that higher chapter count attracts more readers (since they cannot see the word count, only the amount of chapters in the front page), and also more suitable for webnovel format. For WN, anything more than 2000 words is just too long for a chapter.

Oh. So that's how it works. Thank you!
I guess it's really my fault since I don't really buy locked chapters in WN. I just use the Free Passes if there's some romance TL novel that interested me. However some of those novels tend to reach 1K+ chapters so I'd rather read them at raw Chinese sites since usually the TL would stop later on due to lack of readers.

 

[Rezcore]

Webnovel is owned by Tencent, which is itself an arm of the CCPs propaganda department. Well not officially, but according to a source in the House Select Committee on Intelligence (a serious misnomer) their propaganda arm is responsible for the choices made. Apparently the staff selected for the office of political compliance, comes from the Publicity Department. Similar in fact to Tiktok. Their objective is what is known as "Soft Propaganda" which means the try to shape your perception of issues via media in a very subtle way. Learning about how it's done push me right of Attila the Hun, because the issues the support align unnervingly to close to the Democratic Party.

And that's as political as I'll get.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

I never heard of them, therefore not popular.
Problem solved.

 

[Anonjohn20]

I never heard of them, therefore not popular.
Problem solved.

They are stealing all the smuthub authors!

 

[JayMark]

I heard if you contract with WN they own everything you write, ever. And they own you too. I heard they put writers in a hot warehouse at a tiny desk with cheap laptops, shackle them to the chair and provide poor quality internet access while forcing them to write 18 hours a day and if their word count drops below a hundred words per minute their shock collars start going off.

 

[Lysander_Works]

I'm glad I didn't join them for tea and cookies

 

[Anonjohn20]

I heard if you contract with WN they own everything you write, ever. And they own you too. I heard they put writers in a hot warehouse at a tiny desk with cheap laptops, shackle them to the chair and provide poor quality internet access while forcing them to write 18 hours a day and if their word count drops below a hundred words per minute their shock collars start going off.

Thats just a lot of jobs in China.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

I 100% understand that Webnovel is predatory, but I'm still considering writing for them. I just have to view them as a money making scheme, just like how I know they would see me. From what research I've done, the biggest risks from signing on with them are that 1. they own your story until 50 years after the day you die so you'll never be able to post or publish it anywhere else, and 2. if you don't meet their production goals, they'll give your story to someone else to write and force you to repay them whatever money you've made off of them. These are absolutely scummy business practices, no argument about that, but it's still possible to take advantage of them. If I can write an adequately lengthy story in a genre that does well, and finish writing the story before I begin publishing, I should have nothing to worry about. It's not like I'm going to fall behind on a story I've already written to completion. And as for their exclusivity deal, I have plenty of other stories that I can post on other sites, and nothing in Webnovel's contact says that own everything you've ever and will ever write.

Will it be a book I'm particularly proud of? Probably not, but if don't like it I could always use a pen name so nobody connects it with my other works. I used to be heavily against writing purely for profit and thought that writing should be done purely for passion and a love of the art, but that was before I moved out of my parents' house, had bills to pay, and found out just how screwed up the job market is these days. Now I figure if there's a way I can boost my income even a little by doing something I love, that can only be a good thing.

 

[Bluebery]

2. if you don't meet their production goals, they'll give your story to someone else to write and force you to repay them whatever money you've made off of them.

2) This is very not true. People just interpret the contract that way and scare off other authors from WN. I've never seen anything like that happen. In fact, if your novel doesn't do well, there isn't any reason for them to even consider hiring somebody else to write it, it just doesn't make sense.
And no, the only time you are required to pay back the money they paid you is when you breach the contract in the first place (posting premium content elsewhere for example).

The only thing authors need to be aware of before stepping into WN place is how to survive in that hell. WN authors write like crazy and the competition is so fierce that unless you can write 1-2 chapters everyday and your novel have hundreds of chapters, you won't be able to success in the long run. Also need to research the market beforehand. Books with themes like Extra, Cultivation, System, smut.... are much likely to succeed than the ones without.

 

[Ruti]

chapter prices are based on word count any way. It's one coin per 200 words so divide or not doesn't really matter. It's just that higher chapter count attracts more readers (since they cannot see the word count, only the amount of chapters in the front page), and also more suitable for webnovel format. For WN, anything more than 2000 words is just too long for a chapter.

There is still the fact they go and translate manhwa (dunno if they still do) and then split said chapters up, still for the same price, when I could just go elsewhere that also translates its themselves, but without the price tag of 3 chapters for 1.

Not 100% sure if its accurate, but Webnovel has 270 chapters on the manhwa for solo leveling, but there's 179 chapters of the manhwa (according to Google)

in otherwords, they basically added an extra 100 chapters for profit

so while chapter splitting isn't really an issue for novels, its definitely a greedy play for their translated manhwa/manhuas (I don't ever recall them translating a manga, though last I used it was back during when it was a good, non greedy site that gave 3 universal passes a day and 2 genre passes)

also oops accidental Necro, I don't look at dates posted