Note carefully that I didn’t use the word “Shakedown.” That hasn’t yet been determined, but as this could well be a horror story for some authors, it seems to fit right in here. As not everyone is a participant in the Vella program, let me give a brief overview before I launch my rant.
Kindle Vella is an Amazon program on which independent authors can self-publish. The thrust of it is that stories can be published in serialized form with the author adding a scene or episode every few days, and readers following along. The way it has always operated is that readers can read the first three episodes for free then, if they like the story, can use Tokens to purchase more of it. Tokens have been thus far sold in $5.00 increments, 100 Tokens for a dollar. One Token then unlocks 100 words of story.
But this past Monday, we Vella authors, and there are a couple who contribute to this blog, received a notice that the program was being changed to where the first ten episodes would be free, and ten Tokens would unlock each episode, regardless of length. No date was present on the e-mail I received, but I’m a member of a Vella group on Facebook and am seeing March 11th listed as the rollout date. Don’t know where they got that, but they’re usually pretty savvy.
Now to my impressions. My first, gut feeling upon seeing this was that they are trying to make it more attractive to novelists and purveyors of longer works, and less so to short story artists. I’ve been reading the posts and comments in said group, and am already seeing the short-form writers scrambling. Their responses are mostly taking one of two forms. First are those who are trying to collect their heretofore separate stories into anthology formats to make them more like novels, and the second group is simply fleeing to platforms like WattPad and the like. This is understandable as most authors came to Vella to make money. But if you post a story with twelve scenes, for example, you’ll do better financially by hiking the roadside looking for cans and bottles to recycle.
This didn’t put me off as I have a novel in the works, and one on there already. I also have a few shorter works that I’m going to have to make some decisions about, but I’m going to take a wait-and-see attitude until some hard figures come in. But here is the completed novel that I currently have available on Vella:
A click on the cover will take you to the novel which I would, of course, love for you to read the first three scenes that are free as of this writing. But once you get there, you’re in Vella, and can search around for things that grab your particular interest. I believe that even with the changes it will remain a good program for authors, and of course it always has been for readers who can sample the work of unfamiliar writers without investing tons of money in books whose only attraction may have been the cover.
So that’s my take on the new Vella. Not much of a rant when you get to the end of it, is it? Are you a Vella user, reader or writer? What do you think of the upcoming changes? If not, will you take a look now that I’ve provided a simple one-click gateway? I’d love to hear your comments on the issue, and of course, I’d really love to see some new readers on my book’s dashboard. Any takers?
Threads that Bind 
2 responses to “The Great Vella Shakeout”
I never got involved with Vella. That writing method doesn’t work for me, because I often need to change things as I write and I don’t want my ideas to be constrained by something I wrote last week that I now must adhere to forever. But I’m not surprised to hear that things are changing with Vella; in fact, I expected they would sooner or later. This latest development is simply typical of the Amazon Way. It seems like they can’t help but take Good Things and make them worse. You know, like ACX/Audible royalties starting out at 90% and declining to 40% (or 20% if you do a royalty split with a narrator), forcing us out of the Kindle Lending Library and into Kindle Unlimited, changing the royalty structure from per book to per page read, KU page read rates gradually but steadily declining due to their inability or lack of desire to rein in the scammers, making us pay for AMS auction ads instead of promoting our books the way they used to once upon a time, and so on. I know all this dismays a lot of indie authors who thought Amazon was their friend – but the fact is, it’s just a corporation whose main concern is its bottom line, and despite its origins Amazon doesn’t just sell books anymore. Amazon is only a friend to itself, and the rest of us can like it or leave it.
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You are, of course, absolutely right, bringing example after irrefutable example. Taken at face value, this is just another way for them to keep more of the money that our work generates. Of course, whenever I start thinking bad about the Zon, I have to remember that without their programs, no one but my wife and three coworkers would have ever read anything I’ve written.
I was, long ago, a member of Goodreads. My first published work, <i>Beyond the Rails,</i> was launched with a free promotion there. Then Amazon bought GR, and the free promotion became a thing of the past; the cost became more than an average indie book could be expected to make during its lifespan. The only way it was worth doing was if you were a writer of such stature that you didn’t need it.
I’m no longer a member there, but how many places can you leave in protest and still be viable? Everybody wants your money, but nobody wants to do anything for it. Welcome to end-game capitalism, folks, where greed talks and decency walks.
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