Discussion Paid Preview Service - Blessing or Curse?

[syx]

Here you can discuss about the pro and con regarding the paid preview service.

For those unaware of this service: Naver introduced a paid service where you can get spoilers/full raws of the next upcoming chapters. So far, this service is available for Noblesse and Tower of God. Other series will probably follow.

• What do think about this paid service?
• Do you prefer reading full raws beforehand?

Share you thoughts!

 

[Davy Clyde]

Sadly, I don't know anyone who could provide us with a translation. We are depended on outside sources which I check from time to time. Of course I will post them when found.

Spoilers are fun and all, but I for one don't like spoilers which describe the whole chapter. And here we have the full raws. I generally refrain - as much as I can, since I have to check the content of the posts as a mod - from raws or complete chapter summaries, thus don't comment on them. Don't know how the ToG community feels about it.

I find this feature to be a terrible idea. I understand it's purpose is to further support the creators of these webtoons, but this is overdoing it. To have three completed, unreleased chapters available as a paid service is ridiculous. It's especially unfortunate for people who don't even know their language, because they don't really have accessibility to it. It's counterproductive in a sense, that any reader who has gained access to one of these preview chapters is not going to be stopped from pirating it somewhere online. This negatively affects the earnings of their creator's works, because people who have read these preview chapters wouldn't need to read it officially, if they had to chose. They further showed their inconsideration by having forced their webtoon creators, to rush future ideas and now focus on creating and planning more ideas three weeks in advance for their webcomics. As was the case for SIU when he posted in his blog post,(for chapter 196) about how he worried a lot about the quality of his content for the preview chapters.

I don't understand why they couldn't just have requested for unreleased parts or scenes of upcoming chapters. This surely would have been a much more grounded idea, since it would actually bring about positive interest of what's to come though subtlety expressing the next chapters.

 

[strixflash]

I find this feature to be a terrible idea. I understand it's purpose is to further support the creators of these webtoons, but this is overdoing it. To have three completed, unreleased chapters available as a paid service is ridiculous. It's especially unfortunate for people who don't even know their language, because they don't really have accessibility to it. It's counterproductive in a sense, that any reader who has gained access to one of these preview chapters is not going to be stopped from pirating it somewhere online. This negatively affects the earnings of their creator's works, because people who have read these preview chapters wouldn't need to read it officially, if they had to chose. They further showed their inconsideration by having forced their webtoon creators, to rush future ideas and now focus on creating and planning more ideas three weeks in advance for their webcomics. As was the case for SIU when he posted in his blog post,(for chapter 196) about how he worried a lot about the quality of his content for the preview chapters.

I don't understand why they couldn't just have requested for unreleased parts or scenes of upcoming chapters. This surely would have been a much more grounded idea, since it would actually bring about positive interest of what's to come though subtlety expressing the next chapters.

Believe it or not but these paid previews really help authors. They charge a small fee and there are more than 10K+ subscription for paid previews. Compared to the loss they suffer from piracy it's almost negligible. Even if they loss 10K views on regular releases they earn more the amount from paid subscriptions so you get the idea.

Besides from what a Korean friend told me most of authors started trying to create future chapters when they were on break. She told me that most of authors took break for healrh or other reasons so that they can prepare chapters in advance for this function.

 

[Davy Clyde]

Believe it or not but these paid previews really help authors. They charge a small fee and there are more than 10K+ subscription for paid previews. Compared to the loss they suffer from piracy it's almost negligible. Even if they loss 10K views on regular releases they earn more the amount from paid subscriptions so you get the idea.

Besides from what a Korean friend told me most of authors started trying to create future chapters when they were on break. She told me that most of authors took break for healrh or other reasons so that they can prepare chapters in advance for this function.

Unless there's a statistic proving your counterargument then how do you know if preview chapters help authors?
Some other person from another forum was just talking about how the amount of views for ToG decreased by a lot:

"my main intention was to share this "information" with other lovers of this fabulous series , so I decided to make this decision if in the coming weeks noticed a significant reduction in the number of readings in naver tower of god , I will refrain from publishing follow spoiler and chapters that ?? , Simple, my intention is not to ruin or hurt both SIU as the series in general and if I've done it negatively influences , for the sake of the series and all your readers will not continue sharing this information ."

 

[Jammin]

I suspect they do help authors or at least were meant to. After all people paying them money is better than people not paying them money right?

The problem is that I believe this service will just hurt creators and series more than they help. There are 4 big problems that I see on that front.

Problem #1

It fragments the audience. Instead of everybody getting chapters at the same time. You have one section of your fanbase getting chapters at one point in time and another getting it later. That creates problems with spoilers and fractures the fan base in a way that results in less discussion about each chapter.

Problem #2

It makes the series less reactive. By that, I mean, imagine a scenario where an author puts something in a story and the audience hates it enough that the backlash makes him want to change direction, which is a fairly common thing. Under this preview system if they are steering their series onto the proverbial rocks there just isn't anything they can do to change coarse for 2-3 chapters.

Problem #3 (and this only applies to fans who read through translation)

It separates the art and text in way that deludes the reading experience. It creates a situation where fans might see what happens in multiple chapters ahead before they can read what a chapter actually says. In that situation it's only natural for fans to form opinions about what's going on without really knowing what's going on. On top of that plot twists are hamstrung because you see them without giving the author any opportunity to build up to them.

Problem #4

It encourages piracy. Look the problem with the subscription model for low file size items like webomics is that it will get out there outside of the subscription service. That means a significant number of fans who would have read it on Naver Webtoon will now go to non-affiliated sites. Reading series in a place that doesn't actually support the series or creator in any way. The free Webtoon reader might not be as profitable for authors as a subscription preview member might be but with the ease of access of the free Webtoon chapters you get nearly the entire audience.

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I don't really know what a webtoon authors financial situation is so I can't know how the money the paid preview system compares to the amount they got for the old way of doing things. And how much sense that makes for them.

What I do know is that there are a lot of ways to make money. And, frankly, this one seems like something that is going to be a short term gain for a long term loss.

They could travel to NY or San Diego Comic Con(or whatever the South Korean equivalent is) and make an ass load of money just signing posters all day. Or selling artbooks, T-Shirts, plushies, or whatever. Or just get Webtoon.com to put up a store. I'm not sure how much I'd pay for a signed Rak or Androssi poster(and I'm warming to the idea of Xia Xia plushie) but I'm telling your right now... it's a lot.

 

[mup]

I suspect they do help authors or at least were meant to. After all people paying them money is better than people not paying them money right?

The problem is that I believe this service will just hurt creators and series more than they help. There are 4 big problems that I see on that front.

Problem #1

It fragments the audience. Instead of everybody getting chapters at the same time. You have one section of your fanbase getting chapters at one point in time and another getting it later. That creates problems with spoilers and fractures the fan base in a way that results in less discussion about each chapter.

Problem #2

It makes the series less reactive. By that, I mean, imagine a scenario where an author puts something in a story and the audience hates it enough that the backlash makes him want to change direction, which is a fairly common thing. Under this preview system if they are steering their series onto the proverbial rocks there just isn't anything they can do to change coarse for 2-3 chapters.

Problem #3 (and this only applies to fans who read through translation)

It separates the art and text in way that deludes the reading experience. It creates a situation where fans might see what happens in multiple chapters ahead before they can read what a chapter actually says. In that situation it's only natural for fans to form opinions about what's going on without really knowing what's going on. On top of that plot twists are hamstrung because you see them without giving the author any opportunity to build up to them.

Problem #4

It encourages piracy. Look the problem with the subscription model for low file size items like webomics is that it will get out there outside of the subscription service. That means a significant number of fans who would have read it on Naver Webtoon will now go to non-affiliated sites. Reading series in a place that doesn't actually support the series or creator in any way. The free Webtoon reader might not be as profitable for authors as a subscription preview member might be but with the ease of access of the free Webtoon chapters you get nearly the entire audience.

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I don't really know what a webtoon authors financial situation is so I can't know how the money the paid preview system compares to the amount they got for the old way of doing things. And how much sense that makes for them.

What I do know is that there are a lot of ways to make money. And, frankly, this one seems like something that is going to be a short term gain for a long term loss.

They could travel to NY or San Diego Comic Con(or whatever the South Korean equivalent is) and make an ass load of money just signing posters all day. Or selling artbooks, T-Shirts, plushies, or whatever. Or just get Webtoon.com to put up a store. I'm not sure how much I'd pay for a signed Rak or Androssi poster(and I'm warming to the idea of Xia Xia plushie) but I'm telling your right now... it's a lot.

it depend really now but it sure does have a effect on the author even if they are getting payed that the main bit that is concerning
i see your point story wise
not sure what the actual term is but when a author forget miner thing because their focus on what next that they forget key element
that could also be pressure from story editor if any

but yes i disagree and hopefully Naver release the payed service outside of Korea