(1/2) Been sitting on this for the whole evening but I figured it would be important to get an account of the issues with Yonder beyond microtransactions, and even some of the statements in this post by pirateaba. I am an editor at a Big Five imprint who has been reading webfiction for over a decade.
Firstly, if your "legal team" been trying for over twelve months to get ahold of a professional to acquire rights to their work and they're not responding, it is extremely unlikely that it is because they're not aware of it. It is likely that the rights are not their's to sell, whereupon they'd normally point you in the direction of the correct person, or they're not interested and aren't in the business of replying to every single person who asks (much like how a literary agent won't respond to every rejected author.) Given Laura Shigihara's body of work, I'd say that is the latter.
I lead with this because it's the big issue I have with this post, and it's something (well, one of the somethings) that unites this post and ErraticErrata's posts about Yonder It is, essentially, a demonstration of a lack of business sense and a lack of knowledge of the traditional publishing industry despite desiring a way to enter it. It is the exact combination of traits that lead someone to be exploited by one or more bad faith actors.
Because this is such a wide topic with a host of interconnected facts, it is difficult to sum up (or even organize under sub-headings!) So, this discussion will be quick and somewhat rough. The first, I suppose, is to talk about the other that thing that connects PracGuide and Gravesong/The Wandering Inn: the agent.
Given that this person appears to have had a relationship or otherwise with pirateaba for some time, I will not belabor this point. Suffice it to say, if you acquaint yourself with a list of disreputable literary agent practices and compare them to this individual, you'll find that there's a few red flags. Given this, it should not be surprising that the agent failed to sell to Tor and "all the big publishing houses." Since becoming aware of their involvement with Practical Guide, I have heard some concerning things about this individual and Yonder and am working to acquire hard proof, although they may just be rumors. But if your goal is to get published by a reputable publisher, such as a Big Five or one of their imprints, then you need to find an agent who actually has sold to them, who knows the wheels to grease, and the people to wine and dine.
As for Yonder...
First, it is unlikely that Yonder will be launched in the EU as it appears that they contravene the EU's laws on data retention. Now, for the rest: Yonder is the first in a long string of apps that prey on authors and their hope of finding a wider audience. Yonder is not Amazon and cannot compete with them. In fact, Yonder's readership seems pretty thin (perhaps 2000-4000 readers) and that's assuming the views aren't fake (which Webtoon/Naver has been accused of in the past, and you can easily juice views by rapidly refreshing particular pages.) My own experimentations with it seem to indicate that views are decreasing for some serials on a week-by-week basis.
Much like EE, the best bet for any further growth would be to hit Amazon hard. Make use of your energetic, pre-existing fanbase and work the algorithm to your benefit and get a feedback loop going. Yes, this will take work to get the millions of words into ebook format. But, to be blunt, pirateaba, you make more money in a month than most authors will ever see from anything they release. You can afford to pay someone to help you out with that, and the dividends will be worth it. You don't need to put your work on multiple platforms because Amazon consists of 80% percent or so of the entire ebook market. That, and isn't The Wandering Inn already on Amazon?
Now, back to Yonder: the readership, while thin, also appears to mostly be pre-existing fans of pre-existing works coming to read them on the new platform. If there's cross-pollenation, it's seemingly only in the romance/erotica genres. Many, many releases on that platform are seeing maybe single-digit views per day, if that. If a work had many readers prior to Yonder, it's got many readers on the platform, and you can view the comments to see that they tend to be pre-existing fans. These readers do not appear to be branching out and, additionally, you can look at the Patreons of writers on the platform to note that they are not seeing any increase that'd correlate with getting new eyes on their work. An important aside here is that some of Yonder's early agreements apparently made their advance offer contingent on the author shutting down their Patreon. This clause was apparently removed, but it should tell you the how and why of Yonder's negotiations.
Any contract that someone cannot discuss tends to be a predatory one, and any claim of the terms being "good" relies upon the person involved to -- in this case -- have an understanding of literary contracts, the relative pitfalls of those contracts, the various clauses and tricks you need to look for, the ones you can bargain for, the ones you can't, and so on. Much like ErraticErrata, I get the vibe that pirateaba doesn't have a good idea of what was signed or how the process was handled. In order to negotiate something like this, one needs to know what they're signing, their agent needs to know what to watch for, and they should ideally get it screened by independent legal counsel familiar with the field even if they trust and respect their agent.
I'm highlighting this paragraph because it is a big red flag: "There are countless predatory companies who require you to walk around with a legal expert because their contracts are terrible. Either predatory—or just unfair. Some traditional publishing firms are not fun to work with if you want to get paid."
Traditional publishing is not fun to work with, no. It's a dying industry stuck between squeezing oil out of rocks and trying to guide new artistic horizons. For someone in Aba's position, I'll even be as blunt as I can: traditional publishing can't offer you anything. Chasing that song will dash you upon the rocks. But traditional publishing has legitimacy and reputation and, while predatory in its own way, is remarkably less of a risk than something like Yonder/Webtoon/Naver. The fact this paragraph implies Yonder is not a "countless predator company" that doesn't require a "legal expert" should give anyone pause.
Here's a list of things that companies like Yonder (eg. other online fiction app/platforms) have snuck into contracts that've snared authors.
I'd like to stress that I have not seen a Yonder contract, although I'm trying to get my hands on one. But I have seen contracts from a variety of other such apps in the past. It appears that Yonder's contract includes, at least, some sort of NDA/morality clause given that neither aba nor EE can discuss it beyond that the terms are "good." Webtoon has, historically, prevented artists from discussing how they get paid. As of writing this post, I have seen no indication as to how authors earn money from Yonder beyond whatever advance they get (which, to be fair, does appear to be considerable.) But if Yonder is paying these big advances, it is unlikely they're doing anything out of the kindness of their heart. Remember, they opened negotiations by big payments contingent on Patreons being shut down.