Why I am pushing Kindle Vella? I have gotten emails from my favorite people, my readers, who have said: I don’t live in the USA or I don’t read Kindle Vella. So why I am promoting Amazon Kindle Vella? It is because they are throwing money at it. I am not rich. And I am trying to keep writing full time. And I am doing my best to figure out how to do that.
FREE MONEY–Why I am pushing Kindle Vella?
No authors will say this, but Amazon is giving money away to authors who will publish on Kindle Vella. Is this greed? But I have three children and as much as I want to be an idealist, my children like to eat. I have published most of my ebooks wide, meaning everywhere, but most of my readers are on Amazon. So now I have pulled most of my books away from other platforms and published mostly on amazon.
I never thought I could be a writer. Why I am pushing Kindle Vella?
I am a musician. For years I was a singer songwriter, and I started several bands. But I could never make a living playing or writing music. Or maybe I never figured out how to do it right or maybe my music sucked. But the sad thing was being creative but I couldn’t afford to do to full time. After countless meaningless day jobs, I got laid off during the Covid thing. I watched a webinar by Ty Cohen. He basically talked about building a publishing career by hiring ghost writers and building an email list. So I bought in. I invested my last $1000 in his course.
Full disclosure. Why I am pushing Kindle Vella?
I tried hiring ghost writers to write books, but they got horrible reviews. While I hired ghost writers for the experiment, I wrote Brothers of Chaos Part One, by myself.
And my book that I actually wrote got great reviews. But the ghost writers got bad reviews, then I actually read their books. They were crap! So I continued writing and pulled all the ghost writer books. Full disclosure of all my published books, I wrote myself. None of the ghost writer crap is available now. I pulled it all.
But even though I didn’t get rich because of Ty Cohen’s course, he inspired me to publish my own books and subsequently become a writer.
Why would I sell out? Why I am pushing Kindle Vella?
I put the original ebooks out because I wanted so badly to provide a better life for my family. But my experience as singer songwriter made me believe in a work ethic of writing daily. Actually writing books is easier than writing music. But let me be clear: I love writing. I love writing Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
I challenge anyone to question that. Back to Kindle Vella and Amazon in general. What I found was 90% of my readers or on Amazon. If the choice is not being able to buy my daughter a happy meal at McDonald’s or not publishing exclusively on Amazon. I chose the happy meal. I am not a fan of Amazon’s monopoly ebooks or audiobooks.
Why I am not a fan of Amazon? Why I am pushing Kindle Vella?
Amazon is a media conglomerate that only cares about profit. Jeff Bezos doesn’t care about the workers. It’s clear. I have tried hard and will continue to try to make my writing available to everyone. Even those who hate Amazon. But the main thing is to make sure I can keep writing. Amazon is a monopoly. But I do not have a monopoly on writing Sci-Fi or Epic Fantasy. Currently, my ebooks on Kindle unlimited alone, produce more pizza money and happy meal money than my other books on iBooks, Kobo and Barnes & Noble dot com. So am I making a deal with the devil to buy food for my kids? Yes.
Kindle Vella. Why I am pushing Kindle Vella?
Currently, Kindle Vella is only in the USA, but my Kindle Vella bonus is far more than my monthly ebook royalties on all platforms. So if you get an email about Kindle Vella, and you don’t read Kindle Vella, please just disregard it especially if it is not in your country yet. But Amazon is bribing authors to write and publish on Kindle Vella, but I know they can take that away. To me, you are more important than Amazon. That is why I answer all your emails personally. F–k Amazon. But, without getting the mark of the beast 666, I want to feed my kids and put a roof over their heads. The best I can say to the Amazon haters is I am with you. BUt I want to feed my 6-year-old.
For the Amazon haters. Why I am pushing Kindle Vella?
If you are a genuine Amazon objector, sign up to my Advanced Reader Copy team. You get the books 2 weeks before the release. All I ask is to give each book you read an honest review and post that in your review. Click This Link to Join The ARC team and get every book for free 2 weeks before I released it.
Thanks for your piece. I fully understand your position and if you can make better money feeding the beast to better feed your family no one should argue with that until the beast goes from just a bunch of greedy bastards to ones that are stepping over other lines.
Full disclosure, I no longer read Vella. Amazon doesn’t care. Their responses to my inquiries and recommendations didn’t even bring out crickets. Here’s my thoughts/comments.
1. It “feels wrong” to me. I don’t know what I’m buying. I don’t know what it will cost. With actual books, I have the ability to read reviews ahead of time. And not just on Amazon. So in most cases I have a very good feeling for what the story is and how well it is written. Even among my favorite authors, there are sometimes their work is “Meh” rather than their usual stuff.
2. I know what my buying costs. I haven’t looked at a Vella story for some time, but when I did, there was nothing telling me just how many credits of how much will need to be paid to get the entire product. I have a limited budget to spend on niceties like books or other hobby materials. So total costs inform my decisions.
3. I think most authors, especially established ones, will still be writing their story just like they would a book. I nibbled on a Vella that was an author unknown to me but whose story idea sounded interesting, and his free introduction did a good job at laying the foundation. as additional sections came out and I purchased them, it seemed that the writing was weaker, and the story diluted with extra verbiage that was on topic but seemed to be superfluous fluff just to make the story longer to milk out at least one and likely more than one additional “buy” in needed to get the story to progress.
4. This may not match other readers, but when I want to read, I want to read. I don’t want to wait even until tomorrow for the next piece of the total if the book has my interest. Books, not TV, is my primary entertainment. When I’ve sunk my teeth into a great read, I dislike putting it down even it it means less sleep that night. But having the artificial structure of Vella requires me to buy into a format that forces me to repeatedly is annoying to begin with.
5. All of this drives me to greater use of the public library, not a bad thing in any event. I take advantage of “Book Fairs” and “Cross Author Promotions” for their free offerings, and that in turn has led me to finding new authors, some of which I’ll buy if I find on sale, and a few who I’ll purchase at full price. Even the free books I read get solid objective reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and BookBub. They are written to both inform prospective readers why they should find the read interesting (or not) and credit the author for their craft. Or not. Most have been four or five stars but I’m also one who will warn readers off the truly bad reads. I have posted a very few one or two stars which the books deserved. I hope the net effect is to guide additional readers to that work and that author though I have no metric by which to know.
So there you have it, for whatever it was worth.
Thanks John your opinion matters.
They are changing Vella, giving 10 free episodes to each Vella and a set price of 10 tokens per episode. But like you, I like to read a full completed book. Vella is like an appetizer and a book is the main course. It’s okay to still eat an appetizer sometime if you feel like it. Sometimes I don’t want to order an appetizer because I don’t have room for it.
It is a weird thing because the bonuses are causing authors to write them. BUt I usually will turn a Vella into a book or book series later, anyway. Often a Vella has first draft ideas that may get altered when the novel comes out.