WebNovel's Exclusive Contract, Explained: What Authors Actually Give Up

Every few weeks, a new web fiction author posts in r/ProgressionFantasy or the Royal Road forums with the same question: "I just got offered a WebNovel contract. Should I sign it?" The answers are always a mix of horror stories, cautious optimism, and secondhand information. What is missing from every one of those threads is a clear, clause-by-clause breakdown of what the contract actually says and what those terms mean for your future as a writer.

I spent a week reading the WebNovel contract analysis published by Writer Beware in January 2023, cross-referencing it with Royal Road forum threads, Quora discussions, Tapas community posts, and WebNovel's own author benefits pages. I also read the accounts of authors who signed and regretted it, authors who signed and were happy, and authors who chose the non-exclusive route instead. What I found is that the contract is not a scam in the traditional sense. WebNovel does pay authors. But the rights you surrender in exchange for that payment are significant, and most authors asking about the contract on forums do not fully understand what they are giving up.

This article breaks down the WebNovel exclusive contract clause by clause, explains what each term means in plain language, and compares it to alternatives. If you want context on how WebNovel's earnings compare to other platforms, I wrote a separate breakdown of how much web novel authors actually make on Royal Road, WebNovel, Wattpad, and Tapas. If you are still choosing a platform, I also wrote a guide on where to post your web novel based on genre.

What the WebNovel Contract Actually Says

The contract that Writer Beware analyzed is the "Royalty Contract," which is WebNovel's exclusive agreement. This is distinct from the non-exclusive contract that WebNovel also offers, and distinct from the contracts offered by third-party recruiters like A&D Entertainment, which Writer Beware describes as even worse. I am focusing on the exclusive Royalty Contract because that is the one most authors are offered and the one that carries the most serious rights implications.

The Grant of Rights: Exclusive, Perpetual, Irrevocable

Clause 2 of the contract grants WebNovel a "worldwide, exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, freely transferable and sublicensable license of the entire copyright subsisting in the Work." Let me unpack each word because they all matter.

"Exclusive" means you cannot publish the same work anywhere else. Not on Royal Road, not on your personal blog, not on NovelDay. The story belongs to WebNovel's platform alone for the duration of the contract.

"Perpetual and irrevocable" means the grant does not expire and cannot be cancelled by the author. There is no sunset clause. There is no "after three years, rights revert to the author" provision. The rights stay with WebNovel indefinitely.

"Freely transferable and sublicensable" means WebNovel can pass those rights to other companies, subsidiaries, or partners without asking you. They can license your work to a film studio, a translation service, or a merchandising company, and you do not get a say in who gets it.

The author retains copyright ownership. This is important. You are not selling your copyright. But the distinction between owning copyright and having no control over how it is used is a thin one. You own the copyright, but WebNovel has an exclusive, permanent, transferable license to do essentially anything with it.

Life of Copyright Plus 50 Years

The contract is governed by Hong Kong law, where copyright lasts for the author's life plus 50 years. In the US and most of Europe, copyright lasts for life plus 70 years. The contract binds your work for the entire duration of copyright under Hong Kong law, which means the exclusive grant extends 50 years beyond your death. Your heirs cannot reclaim the rights. Your estate cannot renegotiate. The contract outlives you by half a century.

Writer Beware notes that this is a common feature of serialized fiction app contracts. It is not unique to WebNovel. But common does not mean harmless. If you sign this contract at age 25 and live to 80, WebNovel controls your work for 105 years.

No Author Termination

This is the clause that generates the most anger in forum threads. There is no provision for the author to terminate the contract at will. You cannot cancel it because you changed your mind. You cannot cancel it because you want to publish elsewhere. You cannot cancel it because you are unhappy with your earnings.

The only circumstance under which the author can terminate is if WebNovel breaches the contract. Specifically, if WebNovel fails to pay author income for more than 30 days, or if WebNovel breaches its other obligations under the agreement. Even then, you would need to invoke Clause 8.2 and likely involve legal counsel.

Multiple Royal Road forum threads and Reddit posts describe authors who signed, became unhappy, and discovered they had no way out. One Royal Road thread from June 2023 has an author writing: "I'd stay away as far as possible from Webnovel. They have had exclusive contracts that are basically lifetime." Another Reddit post in r/Webnovel states plainly: "Once you sign an exclusive contract, you basically give up the rights to the story to WebNovel."

Subsidiary Rights: Everything You Can Think Of

The contract does not just cover the right to publish your work on the WebNovel platform. It covers the entire range of subsidiary rights under copyright: electronic, audio, print, film, television, broadcast, translation, and merchandising. If someone wants to adapt your web novel into an anime, a podcast, an audiobook, or a line of merchandise, WebNovel controls that negotiation. You do not.

There is also something called "Fan Works Rights" in Clause 2.1. This allows for the creation of derivative works based on your story, presumably by users of the WebNovel platform. WebNovel would own the copyright to those derivative works and could commercially develop them. You would receive a royalty on any monetization of Fan Works, but at a much-reduced rate of 10%, compared to the 50% rate for other uses.

Think about what this means. Someone could write a fan fiction based on your novel, WebNovel could monetize it, and you would get 10% of the net revenue from that monetization. You would have no control over what derivative works are created, how they are marketed, or whether they compete with your original work.

What You Get Paid (And What "Net Revenue" Actually Means)

The contract specifies a 50% royalty on "Net Revenue" for all use or licensing of the rights granted. That sounds generous. Half of all revenue from your work goes to you. But "Net Revenue" in this contract actually means net profit, not gross revenue.

WebNovel deducts a host of "expenses and costs" from revenue before calculating your royalty. Writer Beware notes that these expenses are neither itemized nor priced in the contract. You do not know what costs will be deducted. You do not know how much they will be. You cannot verify whether the deductions are reasonable. You simply receive 50% of whatever is left after WebNovel takes out its expenses.

In practice, this means 50% of net could be significantly less than 50% of gross. If your story generates $1,000 in revenue and WebNovel deducts $600 in expenses, your 50% is $200, not $500. Without transparency on what expenses are being deducted, you have no way to verify whether you are being paid fairly.

The $200 Payment Threshold

Clause 6.2 specifies a payment threshold of $200. WebNovel does not have to remit payment unless more than $200 is owed to you. If your monthly earnings are $50, you will not see a payout until you accumulate $200, which could take four months or more. If your story underperforms and never reaches $200 in accumulated earnings, you may never receive a payout at all.

This is not unusual in publishing contracts. Many platforms have payment thresholds. But combined with the net revenue calculation and the lack of transparency on expenses, the threshold creates a situation where authors with moderately performing stories may wait months for their first payment, or never receive one.

Monthly Base Payment: $60 to $200

WebNovel's own author benefits page lists monthly income ranging from $60 to $200 for exclusive contracted works, with additional revenue from reader tips and coin unlocks. A Royal Road forum thread from June 2023 confirms that WebNovel offered one author $200 per month as a base, with requirements to publish a minimum number of chapters per week.

This base payment is not an advance. It is a guaranteed minimum, and it comes with strings attached. You must meet publication requirements (chapter count, word count, update frequency) to receive it. If you fail to meet those requirements, the payment can be withheld. And remember, you cannot terminate the contract if you are unhappy with the arrangement.

No Advance

Unlike traditional publishing contracts, which typically offer an advance against royalties, WebNovel offers no advance. You start earning from day one, but only if your story generates revenue. There is no upfront payment for signing.

The Gag Clauses: What You Cannot Say

Two clauses in the contract restrict what you can say about WebNovel and your experience there. These are the clauses that forum authors most frequently overlook, according to Writer Beware.

Clause 3.1.6 forbids the author from making "any inappropriate statements" or "any statements that may have any adverse effect on the distribution, promotion, and exploitation of the Works." The word "inappropriate" is not defined. It is subjective. WebNovel gets to decide what counts as inappropriate.

Clause 3.3 prohibits "slander and competition" in sweeping terms. Writer Beware notes that the second sentence of this clause could be interpreted to forbid you from promoting other work you have published on similar platforms. If you have a story on Royal Road and a story on WebNovel, promoting your Royal Road story could potentially violate this clause.

Violation of these clauses is considered breach by the author. The penalties for breach are severe, which I will cover next.

Financial Penalties for Breach

If you breach the contract, the financial consequences are significant. For breach of the Confidentiality clause (Clause 7), the author must pay "compensation in full for all direct and indirect losses suffered" by WebNovel, including "travel expenses, litigation fees and all other reasonable expenses."

For other breaches, including violations of the slander clauses, warranty breaches, or failing to meet publication requirements, the author must return "100% of all income received from WebNovel from the performance of this Agreement" and compensate WebNovel for all losses suffered from the breach, including attorney fees and travel fees.

Read that again. If you breach the contract, you must return every dollar you have ever earned from WebNovel, plus pay for their legal costs. For an author who has been on the platform for two years and earned $5,000, a breach could mean repaying $5,000 plus WebNovel's attorney fees. This is a powerful disincentive against speaking out about your experience, even if that experience is negative.

Confidentiality Clause

Section 7 of the contract defines "confidential information" as pretty much anything and everything to do with the agreement and WebNovel's use of your work. You are barred from disclosing any of it for the full term of the agreement. Given that the term is the life of copyright plus 50 years, this means you can never publicly discuss the terms of your contract, your earnings, or WebNovel's treatment of your work.

This is why you do not find many detailed public accounts from current WebNovel contracted authors. The contract itself prevents them from talking about it. The accounts you do find are mostly from authors who signed non-exclusive contracts, authors who left before signing, or authors who are willing to risk the penalties.

Right of First Refusal on Future Works

Clause 9 gives WebNovel the "right of priority" on all new literary works you create within one year of completing the Work under the contract. This is essentially a right of first refusal. If you write a new novel within that year, you must offer it to WebNovel first. If they pass, you can publish elsewhere.

If you do not create any new works within that one-year period, WebNovel claims the same right over the first new work you create after the period ends. So even if you take a break from writing for a year, your next novel is still subject to WebNovel's right of first refusal.

Writer Beware notes that this is less greedy than some other app contracts (Goodnovel, for example, claims right of first refusal on all future work by the author). But it still means your next project is not entirely yours to place where you want.

Disputes: Binding Arbitration in Hong Kong

Clause 11 specifies that disputes must be resolved by binding arbitration in Hong Kong, where WebNovel's parent company Cloudary Holdings Limited is based. This is not a small detail. If you live in the US, Canada, Europe, or anywhere outside Hong Kong, pursuing arbitration there involves significant travel costs, legal fees, and logistical challenges.

WebNovel's own Terms of Service page states: "YOU AGREE TO GIVE UP YOUR RIGHT TO GO TO COURT to assert or defend any claims." This means you cannot sue WebNovel in your local court. You cannot join a class action. You must go through arbitration in Hong Kong, under Hong Kong law, and the result is binding.

For most authors, this makes challenging WebNovel effectively impossible. The cost of pursuing arbitration in Hong Kong would exceed any realistic amount you might recover. This is the practical effect of the clause: it removes your ability to seek legal recourse without extraordinary expense.

The Non-Exclusive Alternative

WebNovel also offers a non-exclusive contract. Multiple Quora threads and Reddit posts discuss this option. The non-exclusive contract allows you to publish your work on other platforms simultaneously. You retain more rights. You can leave more easily.

But the non-exclusive contract pays less. WebNovel's author benefits page shows lower monthly income for non-exclusive works compared to exclusive works. You also do not get the same level of promotional support. WebNovel's algorithm favors exclusive contracted works in discovery and recommendation.

Several authors on Reddit and Quora recommend starting with the non-exclusive contract to test the platform before committing to an exclusive deal. This is reasonable advice. If you are unsure about WebNovel, the non-exclusive route lets you experience the platform without surrendering your rights. You can always upgrade to exclusive later if you are happy with the arrangement. You cannot downgrade from exclusive to non-exclusive.

What Other Platforms Offer

Royal Road: No Contract Required

Royal Road does not require any contract. You publish your work, readers read it, and you keep all your rights. Monetization happens off-platform through Patreon, Kindle, or other channels. The trade-off is that Royal Road does not pay you directly. You have to build your own audience and your own monetization pipeline. I cover this in detail in my earnings breakdown article.

Wattpad: Invitation-Only Monetization

Wattpad's monetization programs (Wattpad Originals, Paid Stories) are invitation-only. You cannot apply. Wattpad selects authors based on engagement metrics. If you are selected, the terms are different from WebNovel's but still involve giving up some exclusivity. Most Wattpad authors publish for free and never enter a paid program.

NovelDay: No Contract, No Exclusivity

If you want to publish web fiction without signing away your rights, you can start writing on NovelDay for free. There is no contract. There is no exclusivity requirement. You retain all rights to your work. You can publish on NovelDay and Royal Road and your personal blog simultaneously. You can leave at any time. There is no payment threshold, no gag clause, and no arbitration requirement.

The trade-off is that NovelDay is a newer platform with a smaller audience than WebNovel or Royal Road. You will not get the promotional boost that comes with a WebNovel exclusive contract. But you will also not spend the next 50 years after your death bound by a contract you signed in your twenties.

You can browse the NovelDay library to see what authors are publishing there, and check out our platform comparison guides for more context on which platform fits your goals.

Is the WebNovel Contract Worth It?

This is the question every author asks, and the honest answer is: it depends on your goals.

If your goal is maximum exposure on the largest serialized fiction platform, and you do not care about controlling your rights, the exclusive contract may be worth it. WebNovel has a massive reader base. Their promotional algorithm can put your work in front of readers you would never reach on a smaller platform. The $60 to $200 monthly base payment, plus reader revenue, can add up if your story performs well.

If your goal is to build a career as an author with control over your intellectual property, the exclusive contract is a bad deal. You are trading permanent, irrevocable rights for a modest monthly payment and platform promotion. If your story becomes popular enough to merit adaptation into an audiobook, a film, or a translation, you will not control those deals. WebNovel will. And you will receive 50% of net revenue, which after expenses could be much less than you expect.

If you are somewhere in between, consider the non-exclusive contract. It lets you access WebNovel's audience without surrendering your rights permanently. You can publish on multiple platforms, build your audience across sites, and keep your options open. The pay is lower, but the risk is minimal.

The decision I see most often in forum threads is authors signing the exclusive contract without fully understanding the rights implications. They focus on the monthly payment and the promotional boost. They do not think about what happens if they want to publish elsewhere, adapt their work, or simply walk away. By the time they realize what they signed, they cannot undo it.

Read the contract. Understand the clauses. Talk to a publishing attorney if you can afford one. And think about where you want to be in five years, not just next month.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the WebNovel contract a scam?

No, the WebNovel contract is not a scam in the legal sense. WebNovel does pay authors, and the contract terms are disclosed before signing. However, the contract grants WebNovel exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable rights to your work for the life of copyright plus 50 years, with no author termination provision. Multiple authors on Royal Road and Reddit forums describe it as a "slave contract" because of these terms. Whether it is a bad deal depends on your goals as an author. It is a legitimate contract with serious rights implications that many authors do not fully understand before signing.

Can I cancel a WebNovel exclusive contract?

No. The WebNovel exclusive contract has no provision for the author to terminate at will. The only circumstance under which the author can terminate is if WebNovel breaches the contract, specifically by failing to pay author income for more than 30 days. Even then, invoking the termination clause would likely require legal counsel. Multiple forum threads describe authors who wanted to leave but discovered they had no mechanism to do so. This is why understanding the contract before signing is critical.

How much does a WebNovel contracted author make?

WebNovel's author benefits page lists monthly income of $60 to $200 for exclusive contracted works, plus additional revenue from reader tips and coin unlocks. The exact amount depends on your story's performance, update frequency, and reader engagement. The 50% royalty is calculated on "Net Revenue," which means net profit after WebNovel deducts unspecified expenses and costs. There is a $200 payment threshold, meaning you will not receive a payout until $200 has accumulated in your account. For a detailed comparison of earnings across platforms, see my article on how much web novel authors actually make.

What is the difference between WebNovel exclusive and non-exclusive contracts?

The exclusive contract grants WebNovel permanent, irrevocable rights to your work and prevents you from publishing it anywhere else. It offers higher monthly income and better promotional support. The non-exclusive contract allows you to publish on other platforms simultaneously and retains more of your rights, but pays less and offers less promotional visibility. Most forum authors recommend starting with the non-exclusive contract to test the platform before committing to an exclusive deal. You can upgrade from non-exclusive to exclusive later, but you cannot downgrade from exclusive to non-exclusive.

What should I look for before signing a web fiction contract?

Look for four things. First, the grant of rights: is it exclusive or non-exclusive, and how long does it last? Second, the termination clause: can you cancel the contract, and under what conditions? Third, the payment terms: is the royalty based on gross or net revenue, what expenses are deducted, and is there a payment threshold? Fourth, the dispute resolution clause: where are disputes resolved, and can you afford to pursue them there? If any of these terms are unclear, do not sign until you understand them. A publishing attorney can review a contract for a few hundred dollars, which is a small investment compared to the cost of being locked into a bad deal for decades.

Bottom Line

The WebNovel exclusive contract is not a scam. It is a real contract that pays real money to real authors. But it is also a contract that grants WebNovel permanent, irrevocable, exclusive rights to your work for the duration of copyright plus 50 years, with no way for you to terminate, gag clauses that prevent you from discussing your experience, financial penalties that require you to repay all earnings if you breach, and binding arbitration in Hong Kong if anything goes wrong.

For some authors, the trade-off is worth it. The platform's reach and promotional power are real. The monthly income, while modest, is guaranteed if you meet publication requirements. If you are a new author who wants exposure and does not have long-term plans for your intellectual property, the contract may work for you.

For authors who want to build a career with control over their work, the contract is a trap. You cannot leave. You cannot adapt your work. You cannot publish elsewhere. You cannot even talk about your experience without risking financial penalties. And if something goes wrong, you have to fight it in Hong Kong.

My recommendation is simple. Read the contract. Understand every clause. Think about where you want your writing career to be in five, ten, and twenty years. Then decide.

If you want to publish web fiction without signing away your rights, you can start writing on NovelDay for free. No contract, no exclusivity, no gag clause. You own your work, and you can leave whenever you want. Browse the library to see what other authors are publishing, and read our chapter length guide if you are ready to start writing.

I am not a lawyer. This article analyzes publicly available information about WebNovel's contract terms, including the Writer Beware blog analysis from January 2023, Royal Road forum discussions, and WebNovel's own author benefits pages. Nothing here constitutes legal advice. If you are offered a contract, read it yourself and consult a publishing attorney before signing.

Last reviewed: September 2026.