I see a lot of people talking about support on patreon/ko-fi/etc, but in my experience as an author, asking readers to pay based on the honor system doesn't actually...work?
I have said that if someone feels my work should be rewarded, they can send me a ko-fi or a tip or whatever. After I had been publishing chapters of this web serial for a year, I worked out how much money I made: 0.007 cents a word. Industry rates even for the most basic clickbait non-fiction article writing is still a penny a word (2-3 cents a word is more normal, and 5-6 cents a word is more like a living wage.) That's two orders of magnitude more than I am making for original, heavily researched fiction by an expert writer with over 20 years of writing experience.
Saying that you would just drop the novel rather than support the author is heartbreaking. Your chances to directly support someone's work come through making them feel like their work has value in patreon, ko-fi, etc. If an author signed with webnovel, it's because webnovel was promising them money that entitled readers weren't giving them for their work.
At the end of the day, you're not getting paid if you're not getting paid. Of course, if you give out your work for free most will want to read it for free. Relying on patreon? Well of course there's risks. There's risks in everything and everywhere, and no amount of experience can change that. It's up to the author to find out which method makes them the most money, and has the least risks. You can adjust your methods depending on your preferences, but asking the
reader to step up and make you money because staying with the book feels like an obligation to them, seems borderline irresponsible and most likely, (most likely. I ain't a professional) incredibly inefficient. The reader came there to entertain themselves and not everyone is going to step past the "reading for free" stage. If you want to shorten your readerbase, and in turn make a living off writing, that's fine. If you want to do the opposite that's fine too.
Honestly, I don't really understand my point in writing this because I neither have professional experience nor average level intelligence.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, a reader not supporting the author once they charge money for their work, is not a point of inadequacy on the readers part, it a business decision on the authors part.
Ah I know! I wrote this because I got butthurt about what you said because I never pay to read things. 
