Never one to sit still for long or leave any stone unturned (particularly when it comes to books), Amazon has introduced a new program called Kindle Vella:
In essence, it’s a new publishing platform wherein authors – instead of releasing an entire book at once – publish their work in “episodes” of 600 – 5000 words each. The first three episodes are free to readers, but all episodes that follow have to be purchased in order to be “unlocked.” Moreover, episodes aren’t bought with cash; instead, they are acquired with tokens, which in turn have to be bought. At present, the cost is estimated to be 1 token per hundred words. So a 700-word episode will cost a reader 7 tokens; 4200 words will set you back 42 tokens.
As to the price of the tokens themselves, that seems to be somewhat in flux. However, it does appear that they will be sold in lots or bundles, with discounts based on volume. For instance, current pricing shows 200 tokens for sale at $1.99, but you can get 1700 for $14.99.
With respect to how authors will get paid, that’s based on a formula, which Amazon explains as follows:
- (Number of Tokens to unlock episode) * (Tokens bundle price/# Tokens in bundle – taxes and fees) * (50% rev share) = Earnings per episode
For example, here’s how we calculate earnings for a 3,025 word episode (30 Tokens) when the Tokens are purchased on the web in a 200 Tokens bundle versus an 1,100 Tokens bundle. In this example, we are assuming no taxes or fees.
- Episode purchased with 200 Tokens bundle: 30 Tokens * ($1.99/200 Tokens – 0) * 50% = $0.1493
- Episode purchased with 1,100 Tokens bundle: 30 Tokens * ($9.99/1100 Tokens – 0) * 50% = $0.1362
Vella’s not yet available to readers (and probably won’t be for a couple of months), but authors are currently free to start uploading episodes. Personally, I’m not sure I’ll participate in this. It really doesn’t fit my business model in that the published material can’t have appeared anywhere else and can’t be released in any other form. In other words, the material must be exclusive, and you can’t publish paperback or audio versions. (Not to mention that if you published it anywhere else for even a minute, you can’t release it on Vella.) That said, anything you publish on Vella can be unpublished and then released in the normal fashion/formats, although I’m not sure what the effect is on a reader who paid to have all the episodes unlocked.
In truth, my impression is that Vella really isn’t intended for the average indie author who publishes on KDP. It’s a lure for the episodic writer who already publishes in that format on a platform like Wattpad and perhaps isn’t getting paid for their work. Now they can do what they’ve been doing all along, but get a check for it. And if they have a following on another platform that they can bring with them, all the better. In fact, I believe that’s the point.
Basically, this area of web serials and the like is fairly popular, but it represents a part of the reading world where Amazon doesn’t yet have dominance. Vella is seemingly a way for Amazon to establish a toehold and start building market share – and they’re obviously willing to pay to do it. For many authors, it’s probably worth a roll of the dice. At the moment, however, I’m not sure I’ll be one of them.
While I think the idea might be good for those authors, entrenched or aspiring, who might want to get paid while they work, sort of like they already can with Patreon. I am also a little wary of this. We have already seen programs similar to this from Chinese companies such as Tencent with their overseas platforms as well as their more English based platform WebNovel. Costs per chapter seem to vary wildly and don’t always seem worth it. That’s largely because the cost per chapter is based on word count (and sometimes I think popularity of a novel driving it up rather than down) but the authors churn out a lot of filler chapter complete with recaps of the previous chapter. I don’t mean this as an occasional criticism, it is rampant. I have read webnovels or web serials, whichever manner you wish to call them wherein I read a chapter, moved to the very next chapter and the first half of the chapter was a recap of the second half of the previous chapter. Moved on to a third chapter and the first half of it was a recap, practically a rewrite using synonyms and slightly different phrasing of the latter half of the second chapter. Being expected to shell out tokens that hold a demonstrable cash value in that you have to purchase them only to find out that I’m essentially paying for half a chapter at a time while the claim is a full chapter is rapidly disillusioning.
While I would hope Amazon would have a process that would avoid issues like this, I don’t for one second believe they really do. Not after watching some of the shenanigans that occured with Kindle Unlimited and the blatant piracy of certain titles utilizing the self-publishing aspect of their platform. The lack of transparency in many of their practices to protect so-called proprietary corporate information or more specifically algorithms leads me to believe that this service will experience widespread abuse sooner rather than later which will in turn lead all but the most desperate authors to eschew it in favor of going back to their current platforms with options like Patreon to fund their writing.
I’m aware that some of the ‘evidence’ I believe in may be skewed by the narrator of such or my own personal views or lack of external sources. That being said, inside 3-5 years I think it will be little different than I have outlined in terms of abuse. Full of genuine but desperate authors hoping to make a career but being out shadowed by the bad actors utilizing mediocre to somewhat decent plots but predatory behavior in their writing/release of individual chapters to maximize earnings.