Forum: Author Hangout

New Kindle Vella Service

Crumbly Writer 🚫

Amazon just released a new publication service, Kindle Vella, that allows you to release stories by chapter, much as we do here on SOL. (They announced it a week or two earlier, but just listed the specifics today.) According to their blurb:

Kindle Vella is a new storytelling option from Kindle Direct Publishing to self-publish serialized stories, one short episode at a time. Readers will access Kindle Vella stories in the Kindle iOS app and on Amazon.com.

Readers can check out any story by reading the first three episodes for free. After that, they'll purchase Tokens and redeem them to unlock episodes. Episodes can range from 600—5,000 words and the number of Tokens needed to unlock an episode is determined by the episode's word count.

Obviously the 5,000 word chapter limit is fairly arbitrary, and eliminates most SOL submissions, it's yet another outlet for generating income from stories.

Earning are based on reader-purchased "Tokens", with authors earning only 50% of what readers spend for each episode (which is cheap, even for Amazon!) and expect them to continue obscuring the reports on income generated so you won't know how much you're actually supposed to be getting in any particular pay period.

The service won't launch for another several months, but I'm curious what everyone thinks? Is anyone here remotely interested? Do you even consider publishing to Amazon anymore? Or are the limitations overly restrictive to be meaningful?

Replies: StarFleet Carl Grey Wolf Aiden Clover Quasirandom Switch Blayde Ernest Bywater awnlee jawking

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

Episodes can range from 600—5,000 words

That's a hard pass from me. My first book on here had chapters that short (under 5,000 words). 74 of them. I'm currently working on Chapter 23 of Book 3 - and averaging 13,000 or so words per chapter.

Replies: Grey Wolf awnlee_jawking

Grey Wolf 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

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awnlee_jawking 🚫

@StarFleet Carl

13,000 or so words per chapter.

That's not a chapter, that's a novelette!

AJ

Replies: StarFleet Carl

StarFleet Carl 🚫

@awnlee_jawking

That's not a chapter, that's a novelette!

That's not a moon ... :)

I may be too wordy at times, but I'm doing okay, I think.

Grey Wolf 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

Fits my chapter length just fine - I have relatively few over 5k, and could split if necessary - but I doubt I'd try to publish on Amazon. Could happen, but seems unlikely.

Tokens make sense, since this is a microtransaction. A 600-5000 word 'chapter' can't cost very much.

Replies: Crumbly Writer

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Grey Wolf

Tokens make sense, since this is a microtransaction. A 600-5000 word 'chapter' can't cost very much.

No, but how many token do you imagine a 70,000 word story of 700 word chapters would require? The key is that readers don't just subscribe to a story, they specifically purchase each separate micro-chapter (presumably, since they aren't really releasing the details (TOS) yet.

Replies: Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

'How many tokens' is meaningless without knowing the token value. However, my working assumption is that your 70,000 word story is probably a $3-$5 book (or less, but that's about what things are going for, and word count is almost not a factor, as long as it's 'novel length'). So, 100 posts divided by $5 and each chapter is $0.05.

You can't charge $0.05 economically, but you can sell 100 tokens for $5 and let people pay a token per chapter. And, to the reader, they're just paying 5 cents - what a bargain!

I have to imagine they'll at least have a model where you subscribe (but can cancel at any time), or you're simply charged the token when you move to the next chapter (maybe with a single 'pay' tap). Having to actually take a payment action on each chapter would get old fast.

Aiden Clover 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

That's a hard pass from me. I could probably make the size thing work, but I want to avoid Amazon if at all possible. Amazon takes a HUGE chunk of money from sales. I'd rather find another avenue to release my stuff.

Replies: Crumbly Writer

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Aiden Clover

That's a hard pass from me. I could probably make the size thing work, but I want to avoid Amazon if at all possible. Amazon takes a HUGE chunk of money from sales. I'd rather find another avenue to release my stuff.

Actually, Bookapy currently has the best ratios of any distributor I've found yet, and they're not that far off (percentage-wise) from Amazon's (70% vs. 75%). However, as I've pointed out, Amazon tends to play fast and loose with both their terms of the basis of their renumeration.

On the other hand, Amazon has a much farther reach than any other distributor, which means more potential new readers, each of which may purchase the rest of your stories. Some sites off reliable readers, some offer specific genre fans, and others serve to introduce you to new readers who've never heard of you before.

However, how reliable, trustworthy and/or moral those outlets are is another question entirely.

Quasirandom 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

Interesting that the token model is similar to Webnovel and other Chinese owned or inspired serial platforms.

Switch Blayde 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

Do you even consider publishing to Amazon anymore?

My novels are still on KDP, but no longer on KU.

The model you described is what I believe wattpad and others have done. It's not for me.

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

The people running the Amazon book stores are thieves, so I don't deal with them. Some time back we had a bunch of cases where people were stealing stories from SoL and selling them on Amazon. I had a lot of troubles getting them to take down my books they were selling. To do that I had to prove I was the copyright owner. They had royalties from the sales they did not pass on to the thief, and when I asked for those royalties they refused to give them to me. They still advertise some books of mine for sale that they were told to remove years ago, despite you not being able to place orders for the books via their site.

Their terms of service are also crooked.

Amazon = crooks, so I don't deal with them.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

Amazon just released a new publication service, Kindle Vella, that allows you to release stories by chapter, much as we do here on SOL.

From that description it seems to be targeted against the likes of Patreon.

AJ

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Forum: Author Hangout

New Kindle Vella Service

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