Web Novels: The Heart Stopping High Price Of Webnovels

Accessing new and captivating stories has never been easier, thanks to platforms like tapas.io and WebNovel.com. However, this convenience comes at a high price.

Cost Disparity:

While traditional books seldom exceed $30 in price, delving into the world of web novels can quickly drain your wallet. A typical web novel spans hundreds of chapters, others over a thousand chapters. During translations, these hundreds or thousands of chapters are often divided into numerous parts, sometimes as many as thirteen parts for a single chapter. Consequently, the expense of enjoying a fully translated chapter can be more than just buying a physical book copy. For those committed to ongoing translations, the cumulative cost can surpass $300.

Quality Concerns:

Webnovel.com boasts a vast audience on their platform. Because of this some creators prioritize quantity over quality in order to make an easy profit. They use machine translations (MTL) to churn out numerous translations of inferior quality. The platform has become flooded with an influx of poorly translated content undermines the reading experience. Genuine high quality translations take much longer, so these groups are unable to compete with the share volume of subpar MTL outputs.

Diverse Content Selection:

Webnovel.com offers more than Chinese web novel translations. The platform hosts numerous well written original works by English speaking authors, enhancing its appeal beyond Chinese web novel translations.

Reader Perspective:

Being a reader myself, I don’t bother with platforms or sites like webnovel.com and tapas.io anymore. The high price to read a complete or ongoing work is too costly.

Alternative Reading Resources:

I Utilize platforms such as novelupdates.com and mangaupdates.com. While these platforms are primarily databases for tracking translations, their extensive libraries of novels and comics from various origins, not limited to China, provide links to the sites of translators and translation groups who’s content is usually free or for far less than the burdensome financial costs associated with webnovel.com.

Still though, I once relished using webnovel.com daily because I found so many of my favorite stories on the platform.