Kindle Vella, Radish, and all things Serial...

I've known of Radish for a few years. It's very big in the wide circles. The folks saying Amazon is copying them are ignorant because Radish isn't even the first reading app. There were reading apps before Radish. Anyway, I was invited to submit to Radish and wasn't interested. Glad I didn't because they have since changed their pay rate to more like KU, which means they are just screwing authors.

I thought I might try out Vella until I saw the so-called pay scale, which is pathetic. I believe you'd make 1.00 off say a 20,000 word piece unless I am incorrect. That's IF someone unlocks your stories. I suspect a lot of authors will be sitting on Vella without any tokens or whatever. Again, I thought I might try it later but that's too much work for that little bit of money. I can't see why established authors would be interested in this, newbies, yep. But if you have a platform and an audience, you don't need Vella. Especially when Amazon isn't even promoting the stories. I'm sure they will promote the rock stars but not everyone so you will just have another thing you gotta promote. Once I factored in the hard work (and it's hard posting chapters every week), the promotion you have to do to get people to unlock your work, and all the other jazz, I changed my mind. At least now. Maybe when it opens up I might try it but I was going to until I did more digging. Not worth it to me. I plan to just release some serials the regular way.

Anyway, we know what happens when Amazon comes to town so I am sure Radish, Kiss, Dreame and all these other platforms will be going bye-bye soon. Sorry, but once Amazon gets into a specific medium, most of the other competitors can't compete. I don't feel sorry for Radish or Kiss either because they have been screwing authors with bad contracts and low pay. Especially Radish.

But, yeah if I were the other reading apps, I'd be terrified. Like them or not, no one can compete with the Zon. They've proven that over and over. I suspect they might even buy Radish or one of the other apps. And Radish would sell if they feel they can no longer compete. Plus, many authors and readers have never heard of Radish (you are an example K.) which already puts Radish at a disadvantage because who doesn't know Amazon? And if an author wants to do this, what will they choose? A platform like Radish with a lower readerbase and limited reach where folks gotta read on certain types of devices or Amazon where they will immediately be exposed to millions of readers without lifting a finger? Amazon's brand is probably the most powerful brand in the world and they already got legion of readers including OWNING U.S. readers. So yeah, how in the heck will Radish and the others compete? Is Radish going to go back to paying fairly? Are the other apps gonna up their pay because that might be the only thing that will give them a slight chance to get more authors or to convince the ones there to stay. And many Radish authors left when they changed the payrate. Radish thought they were big stuff because they were the most popular app, so they pulled the rug from under authors by changing their pay because they thought they could do it because there wasn't big competition and BOOM...here comes Vella. Don't feel sorry for Radish a bit. 

So...yeah. I hope it works out because I always support positive changes for authors but since this is Amazon, I'm not holding my breath. I see so many jumping on the train but not forgetting the issues that might come up. Like people mentioned, I hate to think of all the gaming, scamming and stealing that's going to go on. Folks stealing people's work and posting it on Vella as their own, people using Vella as a way to scout out popular ideas so they will see someone else's story and rush to publish the same type of story on Kindle to get the glory, other authors posting comments on other authors' stories to hurt their ratings, people filling the platform with ghostwritten work so they can get more stories out faster than others and beat the competition, etc. And don't think scammers won't have a field day with this. Once they get a hold of it...yeah. It'll be another KU or worse.

About popularity, most of the apps in the states are focused on romance so it leaves a lot of authors out. That's another advantage for Vella. They will attract authors of other genres. But, still I suspect the romance authors will take it over because again, romance is the most popular genre and I don't know if readers of other genres even use reading apps. Romance readers are use to reading apps, shorts and serials. I can't imagine too many fantasy or sci-fi readers wanting to read some 100,000 story cut up into episodes. I am betting Vella will be like another Radish, made up of mostly romance and erotica because there are just so many more readers in those genres. If the romance authors market this well, it will be a moneymaker for the genre. So I do think romance authors will shine on Vella and that's another knock to Radish and maybe other genre authors who are hoping Vella will open the serial door for them. Mysteries could do well because serials are popular in mystery and suspense as well but I don't know about Sci-fi, Fantasy. Maybe Vella could give horror the boost it needs. Who knows? This could be something that makes horror popular again in books. Horror serials could do well. I don't even know if historical romance would do well or not because not sure their audience likes the serial format. They surely don't like shorts it seems. But erotica, erotic romance, steamy romance, contemporary romance, oh, yeah this could be huge.

But for veteran authors, it just doesn't seem to make any sense when you can sell your own serial on Amazon anyway and make way more than you would on Vella.

The more I think about it, the less benefit I see to Vella. It might help newbies who just want to help their brand or to get eyes on their work but again, can't see why a vet would be interested in this unless just to try it out. Also, Amazon's readers are the cheapest of all retailers. Let's be honest. I am not sure most of them are going to want to pay money to read chapters. Why would they do that when they can read free books or books in KU for example? I don't know. Kindle Vella might end up like Kindle Worlds. We'll see. I really don't see how this will catch on with the majority of folks who shop at the Zon. I know they'll get the first three episodes free but still...

LOL! Trust me, Amazon is not going to make you pay with everything with the tokens. They wouldn't legally be able to do that. It would be against federal law, regulations, etc. Private business or not there are limits. They can't do something like this for the entire store.  They can create programs that are optional where people can opt into and agree to these terms but Amazon can't change the way people are paid or currency for the entire store. That's government's territory. Private companies are still held in check by certain laws. Also, Amazon wouldn't do it if they could because no one would sell anything there if they did. No one would agree to be paid royalties or whatever in tokens. They'd lose mostly all their content providers, business partners, etc. Not to mention they'd lose millions upon millions of customers who would not want to use a token system. Amazon is greedy and want to control the world but not stupid. 

I hope you're right! You seem reasonable and knowledgeable, so you probably are.

I got an email yesterday from D2D that said they were instituting some sort of coin system that we'll use to pay for changes we want made to our books. I haven't looked into it very closely yet. But I thought it was weird, and interesting timing.

Someone started a subreddit for Vella, and they've got a thread with easy to find TOS info for the program. They've got some really weird rules. You can't advertise your serials, you can't have your serials listed on your amazon author page, you get paid 50% of the purchase value of each token, which means how much you get per episode will vary on the price of the token package the reader bought. And if they ever decide to give tokens away for free, you won't be paid anything, ala audible. But since they're forcing you to give away the first 3 episodes free, they're less likely to have free token packages. But you never know.

Here's the subreddit for it: www.reddit.com/r/KindleVella/comments/mrg4a1/what_is_kindle_vella_megathread/

I also am confused about how Amazon insists you gotta publish new stuff with Vella and no old books that have been published, etc. But you can still publish Vella serials on other serial apps? What sense does that make?

I don't know that anyone wants chunks of 100k (though some WattPad is virtually this and does ok), but something written as a serial could be different. Science fiction and related fantasy really got going as shorts in the first place. Before the mags disappeared. 

I understand it's the type of model that's very successful in China, and the Manga model's not do different either. 

Not that anything like Vella would ever interest me - far too controlled by publisher.

I've had a quick look and seen the interest. afaics, much of it is from newer authors who find the thought of writing in shorter segments less intimidating. To be fair, many writers started like that in ancient days. And it suits many readers too.

Wow. Haven't heard Lisa's name in a while. I suspect she has an in with Amazon. Maybe she is someone they let try out the product before they unveiled it. A beta tester for example. But, this seems like Hugh. Sounds like Amazon has all these author-spies they might be using to garner interest. Like you said, why write a book about Vella before it starts and WHY would Lisa Shea care about people using Vella??? What is it to her? The average author would NOT go through writing a book or whatever to pitch an Amazon program to other authors if she isn't getting some incentives for it. I know she, Hugh and who knows how many others are getting some super rewards for doing Amazon's dirty work. 

It's so obvious. 

Then again my imagination could just be overly vivid and she's trying to rush out a Vella book to cash in on the upcoming train of "How to Succeed with Vella" books we're sure to see in the next few months. But, something tells me I was right the first time. 

I read an interesting speculation post on reddit. The poster says they believe that both Radish and Vella plan on eventually selling to Netflix, or Disney to turn the serials on their platforms into streaming series. But they won't be sharing the extra money with their authors. I don't know if this is accurate, or not, but it was an interesting read.

https://www.reddit.com/r/eroticauthors/comments/ng8nbb/are_you_thinking_of_moving_your_writing_to_radish/gys0i4v/

Yeah, unless Disney starts an adults only channel. *haha*

Amazon never knows what it's doing. Each department is a self-contained room with barely-trained newbies willing to work for peanuts, and the few people who do know what they're doing never bother checking in.

The only thing that surprises me are all the authors signing up for it and actually hoping to make money off it. There's so much FOMO flowing that no one is thinking logically about this.

Well not no one. Which means some people are able to see Vella for the scam it is, like the few special ones who post on here. *titters*

Jeff Tanyard That's totally your choice, and who knows - maybe I'll be proven wrong and you and all the other early adopters will become kindle coin kajillionaires.

I saw on Tim's board that they seem to have announced a date for the program to go live. I don't remember what they said it was though. As a skeptic I'm still interested in seeing how it goes.

I think some authors are hoping it'll be like KU1, instead of worse than KU2. KU1 actually did create millionaires, and it allowed a bunch of people to support themselves for the first time.

Of course, that was totally unsustainable, and we ended up with KU2, which can still be okay, for some people, but is nowhere near the glory of the gold rush days.

I think Vella will start out worse than KU2 because amazon is going to be giving out as many free tokens as possible to try and get people to actually use the app, and since authors are paid off the amount amazon gets from those tokens - there will be an awful lot of zippo/zilch months.

I'm also predicting the program will be defunct within a year or two. I think there will be a few break out serials that fans are actually willing to pay for, but the majority of the time, you'll get readers for the free ones, or reads from free tokens, and then after that all your readers will drop off because there are so many other free stories they can read.