I put 7 stories on Kindle Vella. KV featured three of them, but most of my readers were on the platform. It was like pushing a boulder uphill to get organic reads.
I made several of ads on Canva and placed them on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok without great success. I joined groups all over Facebook. For a while, I got reads. The Cave Witch had thousands of reads with 75% of them paid some months. It varied. By the time I joined, Amazon was no longer paying us when people used their free tokens.
Authors pretty much agreed with us about the platform. Amazon didn’t advertise. Social media users were on the platforms to socialize, not to read.
After a while, Kindle Vella writers were stealing work from the WattPad authors. It was horrible. Amazon waited for people to notice instead of checking for plagiarism. Some writers left the platform.
I got out early as I said in a recent post on my Substack. In the beginning it was fun to post, and I looked forward to getting paid. I was making $9 for every dollar I invested, but I was constantly promoting the work. In the end, it wasn’t sustainable.
Ellen, thank you for sharing your experience. I think you worked hard at it and did much better than so many other authors. I cannot believe that plagiarism was going on when Amazon had all the tools to check for that. I think they did a disservice to authors when they could have made it a much better platform. I am sure you can be equally successful on any other serial platform or whatever you choose to write.
I have always liked the idea of serial writing, although I have not as yet tried my hand at it. I was briefly tempted to try Vella, and I am profoundly grateful to the people who discouraged me.
Quite a few pundits warned that everything about Vella "seemed wrong"; they "smelled a rat" (if I may quote Patrick Henry), and their suspicions have now indeed been realized. It's too bad, since as @Kay Freeman notes, it could have been wonderful...
I started my very first serial story on Kindle Vella back in August. It's not finished, and now I have to scramble to finish it before December 4th. Which means the later episodes won't be as nicely edited. Thank you for the recommendation for Radish. I'm trying to decide where I want to move my story over to next year. I'm also considering Dreame or Readict. I'm already a reader for both of those. Dreame advertises very well on facebook (from a readers perspective). But at the same time, 2 authors I follow (and found on those apps) have shared that both apps are trying to phase out U.S. authors.
Such a shame about Vella. The upside of serial fiction is that I learned so much about pacing my story. I enjoyed the experience and if I ever get fed up with the book publishing thing, I'm going back to Radish.
I liked Radish but who knows how it is now. It's been three years since I've been on there. The pressure to finish the story is a drag, but you'll have something to move and work on a bit more and take somewhere else. If you decide to move to Radish, you could apply now, it might take a while to get approved if they still do it that way. It would be good to find a place that advertises and has a good fan base, that's for sure. I wonder why the two places you mentioned no longer desire US authors. Good luck Chelsey with finding a home for your stories.
I put 7 stories on Kindle Vella. KV featured three of them, but most of my readers were on the platform. It was like pushing a boulder uphill to get organic reads.
I made several of ads on Canva and placed them on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok without great success. I joined groups all over Facebook. For a while, I got reads. The Cave Witch had thousands of reads with 75% of them paid some months. It varied. By the time I joined, Amazon was no longer paying us when people used their free tokens.
Authors pretty much agreed with us about the platform. Amazon didn’t advertise. Social media users were on the platforms to socialize, not to read.
After a while, Kindle Vella writers were stealing work from the WattPad authors. It was horrible. Amazon waited for people to notice instead of checking for plagiarism. Some writers left the platform.
I got out early as I said in a recent post on my Substack. In the beginning it was fun to post, and I looked forward to getting paid. I was making $9 for every dollar I invested, but I was constantly promoting the work. In the end, it wasn’t sustainable.
Ellen, thank you for sharing your experience. I think you worked hard at it and did much better than so many other authors. I cannot believe that plagiarism was going on when Amazon had all the tools to check for that. I think they did a disservice to authors when they could have made it a much better platform. I am sure you can be equally successful on any other serial platform or whatever you choose to write.
Thank you, Kay.
I have always liked the idea of serial writing, although I have not as yet tried my hand at it. I was briefly tempted to try Vella, and I am profoundly grateful to the people who discouraged me.
Quite a few pundits warned that everything about Vella "seemed wrong"; they "smelled a rat" (if I may quote Patrick Henry), and their suspicions have now indeed been realized. It's too bad, since as @Kay Freeman notes, it could have been wonderful...
I started my very first serial story on Kindle Vella back in August. It's not finished, and now I have to scramble to finish it before December 4th. Which means the later episodes won't be as nicely edited. Thank you for the recommendation for Radish. I'm trying to decide where I want to move my story over to next year. I'm also considering Dreame or Readict. I'm already a reader for both of those. Dreame advertises very well on facebook (from a readers perspective). But at the same time, 2 authors I follow (and found on those apps) have shared that both apps are trying to phase out U.S. authors.
Such a shame about Vella. The upside of serial fiction is that I learned so much about pacing my story. I enjoyed the experience and if I ever get fed up with the book publishing thing, I'm going back to Radish.
I liked Radish but who knows how it is now. It's been three years since I've been on there. The pressure to finish the story is a drag, but you'll have something to move and work on a bit more and take somewhere else. If you decide to move to Radish, you could apply now, it might take a while to get approved if they still do it that way. It would be good to find a place that advertises and has a good fan base, that's for sure. I wonder why the two places you mentioned no longer desire US authors. Good luck Chelsey with finding a home for your stories.