What is your opinion of Webnovel.com?

[unknownking]

well, webnovel… a writing platform with the biggest reader base with which I have a hate and love relationship. I started my writing journey there and they generally offer two kinds of contracts. Exclusive and a Nonexclusive one, with which one could still make money if one wanted to.

But as one might expect, WN pushes their own contracted books more often than then uncontracted ones since they can make money out of them. (getting features as an uncontracted book is still possible but less likely)
(Also their charts regarding which books are trending is automatically set to only featuring contracted works. Well, one can change it to showing all books (contracted and uncontracted) but one can't change it to only showing uncontracted works) sight

Typically, one gets the biggest exposure there due to features and the least exposure due to uploading a chapter and ending up in the new section, since nobody is looking through the steamy hot garbage, kek, which makes it harder for us uncontracted writers.
Generally, one starts with either participating in various WPCs (writing competitions) or in WSA (the big writing competition) where one can gain traction way faster.

TLDR: Just upload your work and don't think more about it.

 

[JenLeifire]

I also just heard bad stuff about webnovel and someone said you can't use italics and bold in there, not sure if thats rly true. But that is enough reason for me not to go there as it destroys how you should depict thoughts in novels (italics and no quotation marks)

 

[AnonUnlimited]

I also just heard bad stuff about webnovel and someone said you can't use italics and bold in there, not sure if thats rly true. But that is enough reason for me not to go there as it destroys how you should depict thoughts in novels (italics and no quotation marks)

Nope you can’t. The person who tried to steal my writing realized that after ??

 

[JenLeifire]

Nope you can’t. The person who tried to steal my writing realized that after ??

omg someone tried to steal your work? :O scary

 

[AnonUnlimited]

omg someone tried to steal your work? :O scary

It was a fan fiction so I didn’t mind. i use a unique writing format. I also don’t care to profit from these specific works I post online since I consider it writing practice for when I’m ready to publish on Amazon. But webnovel has a lot of plagiarized works.

 

[JenLeifire]

It was a fan fiction so I didn’t mind. i use a unique writing format. I also don’t care to profit from these specific works I post online since I consider it writing practice for when I’m ready to publish on Amazon. But webnovel has a lot of plagiarized works.

omg thats even more reason to not go to webnovel. thx for that insight.

 

[Vladarius]

well, the staff are mostly comprised of a bunch of dumbasses, the voting polls for new translations are always rigged, and if you post a novel the views get artificially inflated by around 5x or 10x. It has it's pros and cons, but in the end its still a site that mostly searches for profit, ever since 2018 the site had around 5 to 6 changes, but all that happened because of money, and they monetized the shit out of it so hard.

 

[MareoKen]

I posted there for exposure but all I got were fake views and I think 0 actual reads. Decided it wasn't worth it and stopped posting chapters there.

 

[Kitsura]

I posted there for exposure but all I got were fake views and I think 0 actual reads. Decided it wasn't worth it and stopped posting chapters there.

The fake views are bots scrapers

 

[Actionhero]

So, I've been hearing that Webnovel is a pretty bad place for your novel, there's also the constant plagiarism going on there from what I hear. The question is do you like Webnovel yes or no? If so Why?

For me personally I have no beef with this website. Yet. It's just that they seemed to have generated fake views when you posted a chapter, that makes me kind of sad, and I feel like they lied to to me?

Woow
Woow
Woow
Woow

 

[ModernGold7ne]

I tried posting my story there once, until I realised they don't have any editing tools, nor do they support office format.
It's basically a featureless notepad that anybody can read.
If you use colours, tables, special fonts, art, etc, then webnovel wasn't designed for you.

 

[Unregistered]

I can definitely relate that Webnovel does have some questionable conspiracies afoot. But I do find ScribbleHub to a bit more organized. It's author friendly, and has a lot more features than Webnovel. Not being picky, but both seem to have their own perks. Webnovel for exposure and ScribbleHub for a more reliable community.

 

[SamTolan]

I never got into Webnovel (due to my tastes, the conspiracies, the contracts, the author and reader differences, experiences from friends) so I would say I have a neutral to negative outlook to it.

Anything that gates off content into female/male gender/preferences ticks me off anyway.

Then again, I just escaped Royal Road so I know all too well about zaniness and tomfoolery of bigger platforms.

 

[MansonFD7]

The Webnovel app alone has had over 10 million installs on the playstore, so there's definitely a massive audience there. I don't think that much of it is faked, either, like some people like to believe without any evidence. However, while there is a giant audience there for exposure, the problem is how valuable that audience is if you're trying to build a reputation/fanbase. Similar to how Reddit users are the most worthless (literally) users among any social media website in the sense that they produce significantly less revenue than users of every other platform (Instagram users being the most valuable), Webnovel readers are significantly less valuable than RR readers and SH readers. You might get a lot of them, but they're there strictly for your story. They don't care about you, the author. They are less likely to follow you to your Patreon. They are less likely to read your other stories just because you wrote them. They probably won't follow you to Amazon if you publish there and not many will join your Discord server or sign up for a newsletter or anything. The webnovel audience is very much quantity over quality, so anybody who is trying to post to Webnovel for more exposure would be better off spending that time posting to other platforms where the users are more likely to actually have interest in the author.

Of course, that's all looking at it from the perspective that people usually mean when they're trying to build up an audience and get exposure. If you just want to share your story with as many people as possible and don't care about those things, then go for it. It's worth it. But if somebody is trying to get exposure to build up their potential career as an author or anything like that, it's one of the worst sites for that. This is speaking from personal experience and the experience of other authors with successful Patreons and the like that I know. You would honestly be better off trying to build a Twitter/Instagram/Facebook presence.

And while I'm on the topic, RR readers are the most valuable as they are the most willing to pledge to things like Patreon, buy your book from Amazon, and follow your social media and whatnot, while SH is between the two.

My major problem with Webnovel as an Author is how they're always over-prioritize on some story that's deemed to be "Marketable". They don't care about a good story with a healthy amount of update, because they prefer cheap copycat CRSH (Cultivation, Reincarnation, System, and Harem) with constant updates.

Even I've encountered several good novels on there that don't have any contract.

Because there is favoritism on that website. Although my novels were still on the screening process for the contract, it takes longer than I've expected from the rest. Because they only favoring quantity over quality with something that's easy to make and easy to read (like that CRSH I've mentioned before).

Unfortunately, these are just pushing a lazy writing and lazy reading narrative, where they don't want to working their brain to digesting the world building of the good novel that's providing the good writing quality.

Despite that, I've heard that Webnovel is getting stricter with the contract process, where they will terminate the contract if the contracted novel story quality is deteriorating. But I don't know any further, because it's just a rumor. And all I can do is just keep writing and get gud.

 

[___Rielle___]

Late to the party, but as a reader, I hate webnovels.
1) The worst search engine I've ever seen. Especially for more niche genres.
2) Forced app. For example, it is impossible to buy chapters through a browser. (it was possible about 4-5 years ago)
3) Very few people write long meaningful reviews.
4) Crazy prices... It's one thing when you start reading from the very beginning, and therefore the expenses stretch over the years, it will be almost the same as patreon. But when the work already has 1000+ chapters and their total price is $200+, the desire to read somehow disappears.

 

[Valmond]

I never got into Webnovel (due to my tastes, the conspiracies, the contracts, the author and reader differences, experiences from friends) so I would say I have a neutral to negative outlook to it.

Anything that gates off content into female/male gender/preferences ticks me off anyway.

Then again, I just escaped Royal Road so I know all too well about zaniness and tomfoolery of bigger platforms.

I forgot about the whole male/female preference thing. Though yeah, this kinda makes it sorta bad for exposure reasons.

By limiting to male/female, you run an increased risk of not getting to your target audience. It just turns into a mess.

I remember someone who said how depending on the character, it would be locked into one or the other. That or the type of genre.

Male/Female isn’t something a rational person thinks about when trying to reach as many as they can.

I started off posting on Webnovel.com, and I can tell you that they treat the average author pretty poorly.

I entered one of their writing prompt contests, and my novel was the #1 voted for the contest. They offered me a gold contract, but as soon as I rejected it, they told me that I was disqualified from the winner's list. Despite that not being a requirement for winning, they apparently don't care about you if you aren't going to make them some money.

Huh, that is so dumb. Any reasonable platform knows, that to make money. You also need the ones who put out their stuff for free.

You need to draw in users, who would then take a look around the platform. Which as a result, increases the chance of them engaging with the paid content.

 

[SurfAngel_1031]

Disregarding all the usual "bad Chinese company is bad and unethical" stuff that somebody else will probably cover:

As a reader, as far as I know, the only reason to really dislike it is the pay-to-unlock system where you basically end up paying per chapter. But honestly, it's just a more micro version of locking chapters in bulk behind Patreon walls which far fewer people complain about. Though, some readers might be put off by the hundreds upon hundreds of "reviews" that are 5 stars with copy-pasted text that literally reads like "Fdshgghrfesdhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." You can't really trust any numbers on there to be legitimate.

As an author, they are manipulative, unresponsive, and absolute utter shit. First off, if you post your stories to their platform and then want to delete them, there's no way to do it. If you email them and ask them to please remove your stories, they will lie to you in your face and say that they can't. That they literally can not delete the stories (despite somehow doing it whenever DMCA'ed). I had to upload gay porn to my cover and spam copyrighted material into my stories for 3 months in order to get Webnovel to finally realize I was breaking the rules and to delete my stories. Then there's all the controversy regarding their contract which is basically putting you into slave labor while taking complete ownership of your series away from you for less pay than you would make pursuing the normal Patreon -> Amazon route. Then there's not being able to use italicized/bolded/underlined text which is all extremely simple but not possible at all there, which is pretty silly. That being said, to try and be fair here, they have an excellent portal for authors with tons of stat tracking. Their author portal is honestly the best one out of all web serial platforms I know of.

So, it's alright for readers but shit for authors unless they're desperate, clueless, or just don't care about being taken advantage of.

You have successfully scared the living crap or of me. I'm blocking the site from my Stargate dialing program as we speak.
Thank you. That just boggles the mind.