Webnovel becomes the next Wattpad for the Chinese Novel Community

Webnovel becomes the next Wattpad for the Chinese Novel Community

Cher Wang, Writer

The opening logo as you enter the Webnovel app both found on Google Play and Apple Store

Throughout the past few years, many people have started to write stories online just for fun or because they want to share their stories for the public to read. Wattpad has been one of the many websites that promote reading and writing stories for the general community and has contributed to successes like Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and the Girl on the Train. Many of these books have become a platform for many minor authors to come to light and reveal new talent.

But that’s not all, The Chinese web novel community has hit the writing community hard worldwide. The Chinese web novel community first started off as a few groups of people coming together online just to translate Chinese web novels to share with the world about how good Chinese web novels are. They wanted to bring Chinese web novels mainstream like how Wattpad has helped many authors gain recognition with their writing.

Well, when many people started to get interested in the world of Chinese web novels, Wuxiaworld became popular and later on, Webnovel was created. Webnovel was created on January 17, 2016 however, many people started raving about it in early 2017. Webnovel is a branch of the Chinese Qidian website where the original Chinese web novels are hosted. Webnovel is a website to accommodate the international community that is steadily increasing even today.

Webnovel started off as a Chinese web novel website where most of their translations would be put up for free, but now there would be premium chapters after a set number chapter of free chapters. It has prompted more readers to be more active in participating for supporting the original authors. And following that thought, later in 2018, Webnovel has opened their website for everyone of all ages to start writing on and promote those who have the talent to be able to get a job as a writer on their website. Though there are a lot of original novels that members of Webnovel have created, but out of the thousands of originals, more than a hundred get contracted due to their high ratings and good writing.

Authors such as silentscarlettt, a Wattpad author that also became a Webnovel author,who’s 15 years old and lives in Texas. Her most read book, Ultimate Goddess System, just recently contracted with Webnovel in November of 2018and  was recorded on her Discord server. We interviewed her on how Webnovel is like a newer version of Wattpad and her thoughts regarding it.

“Wattpad has given the people variety of genres that bring everyone together, however, Webnovel has given their readers and authors a sense of uniformity in their community also with the mix of both Eastern and Western types of novels.” She states.

Anime, webnovels, and light novels have also helped attract more people onto Webnovel but moreso Chinese anime. We talked to pen name Rukuto, a 22-year-old man, about how he got into Webnovel.

“Well, Webnovel owns many copyrights of authors as Webnovel is taken from the Chinese Qidian website but just in English. It looks like Webnovel does protect many people of their works and using it, there are many benefits people will have as they have many varieties of books that either are free or premium according to the reader’s palettes. Even though Premium may look unfair, there are ways to slowly unlock Premium chapters that you can read along the way. Many readers are very willing to buy things on Webnovel so I would caution people to be prepared for prices for unlocking premium chapters. Many authors have created ko-fi accounts or Patreon accounts exclusively for those who read their books so this option can directly motivate authors to write more and directly connect their fans together.”

Webnovel is still improving and we can expect that it will get better from now on.