How much do web novel authors earn on Qidian and how to support them
support your favorite authors ! so they can write more and better books.
Most of the Chinese web novels, and many manhua based on them, comes from www.qidian.com. many authors publish their works on it and for lucky ones, their novel will get to VIP status and start earning them money through subscription and royalties.
These are just my rough calculation, please use only as a guideline:
TL;DR: Reward for the author (minimum 1 cent (USD) for one VIP chapters at 2000 words per chapter per subscriber)
To Support the author, either sign up on Qidian and use PayPal to buy the chapters, or add their books to your bookshelf and give them free daily votes.
See this Post here on how to Sign up in under 2 minutes:
https://www.chaosdrifter.cc/how-to-register-on-qidian-and-reward-your-favorite-author/
Now Details:
Author earnings:
The authors earn no money when they first start their work. Typically they'll write about twenty thousands words and depending on the reading stats (like how many readers added it to their shelf, how many user comments it gets, etc. etc.), the QiDian editors will walk with the author to "Get it on the shelf", meaning making the rest of the chapters VIP. This is where the author can start to earn money.
They get half the revenue from the subscription, and 1 cent per 1000 word as Royalties. So at the minimum, the author would get 14 cent (RMB) per subscriber for a chapter with 4000 words. Of course with established authors and continuous updates, the authors would earn a lot more (double or triple, or more) the revenue.
There are also other income streams like licensing for manhua/movie/TV adaptation, and there are also rewards for consistently publishing everyday for a month. But most author rely on subscription as their main income.
most of the information comes from this answer on qidian.com:
https://www.qidian.com/ask/qamkgjdtuiq
How to Support your favorite Authors:
The best way to support your favorite authors is to get on qidian.com and buy their chapters. this can be done with your phone number and PayPal.
See here on how to do that. (with pictures)
Pricing: (about $1.23 USD for 100 chapters at 2000 words per chapter)
It costs about 5 cent of RMB for 1000 Chinese characters, each chapter is typically 2-3 thousands characters, so it would cost about 10-15 cent RMB (which is about 2-3 cent USD) per chapter. Typical book could have 500-1000 or more chapters, and the first 50-100 chapters are typically free, so if you bought all the paid chapters, it would be around 40 RMB for a book with 1 million words, or about $6.15 USD. (assuming 1 USD is 6.5 RMB)
Other ways to support:
Of course, if you don't have the money, then simple register and add the book to your bookshelf, and cast your daily Recommendation Votes for the book is also a great way to support the author as it promotes the book and help it to show up in Qidian's official recommendation list which can be a big boon to the author.
Other benefits for reading on qidian.com:
Another benefits of reading on qidian.com are the in-line comments for the novel, these typically include pictures for the items and characters been discussed, and user comments that might explain things or are just funny meme s. Sometime they are more fun to read than the actual chapter......