So a few weeks ago, Amazon made what they call the “difficult decision” to get rid of Kindle Vella. For those who may not know, Kindle Vella was is (for now, anyway) Amazon’s platform for episodic writing. I previously posted about it – specifically, why I initially wasn’t a fan, and then why I changed my mind and decided to publish on Vella.
When I got the email about Amazon dumping the platform, the subject line said something like “Vella Announcement.” At the time, I jokingly said to myself, “They’re probably shutting it down.” And then I opened the email… Honestly, I was a little surprised. Amazon doesn’t control the entire publishing pie, but they seem set on getting a taste of every slice. That seemed to be the whole impetus behind launching Vella in the first place: to get a toehold in an area where they didn’t yet have dominance. That being the case, I didn’t think they’d throw in the towel so soon. Clearly Vella wasn’t the runaway success they were hoping for, but I think Amazon hobbled itself in a couple of ways.
First, I believe their system for reading episodes was cumbersome. The first few episodes of a story were free, but after that readers needed tokens (which they had to buy) to unlock additional episodes. I think they would have had more success if they’d simply done something like link Vella to Kindle Unlimited and let KU subscribers read for free.To me, that made a lot more sense – a lot like asking, “You want fries with that?” when someone orders a burger at McDonald’s. Then (assuming it worked out) they could always have introduced the token system later.
In addition, there was no way to advertise – at least not on Amazon. You had to take to Facebook, TikTok and so on, in order to promote your Kindle Vella stories. (That’s not to say you couldn’t find success via social media promotion, but it struck me as odd that Amazon didn’t have a process for that.) Also, the payout system was kind of a black box; an author could have more episodes read/unlocked this month that last, and still make less money. In short, with respect to payment, you never knew what you were going to get.
It should be noted, though, that Kindle Vella did have some positives. For starters, there were authors suddenly getting paid who hadn’t been able to make any money from their writing previously. As Bill Gates famously noted, content is king, and Amazon realized that they needed content on Vella to attract readers, so authors could get paid simply for uploading episodes. Thus, if you had a trunk novel lying around, you could put it on Vella in episodic form and start earning. My own Vella story Glimmerblade was just such a trunk novel.
Speaking of Glimmerblade, I’ve got figure out what to do with it now. In the process of getting it ready for Vella, the storyline shifted a bit from what I had originally intended. (That happens – as I’ve said before, the first Kid Sensation book veered completely away from what I had in mind when I started writing it.) Basically, my thoughts about Glimmerblade are now much more epic in scope. Anyone interested can check it out at the link above, but once Vella goes away I’ll probably just post it somewhere publicly. Amazon rules say I can’t post more than 10% of a story or it’s ineligible for participation in KDP Select, but I may just bite the bullet on that one.
That said, I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment, so – even if I were to post Glimmerblade somewhere else – I have no idea when I’d finish it. Right now Kid Sensation #10 is a higher priority (and for those interested, I’m still working on it, but can’t put a timetable on completion). However, I typically work on other stuff when I need a break from my current WIP, so there would be an opportunity to regularly add to Glimmerblade. We shall see…