Two years ago in the month of July, Amazon launched the Kindle Vella Platform. The premise was simple: writers of any ilk – established or new – could upload “episodes” of fiction or non-fiction they were penning, then readers would read the episodes, and, based on word count, they would pay tokens for the honor of doing so. The author would get a portion of the tokens as payment.
I got in on the ground floor of the platform. You might ask why, if I was already an established author, I wanted to try something new like this and not just publish my work the old-fashioned way. A legit question.
Before I ever wrote a word of romance I was obsessed with serial killers, grisly murder stories, and FBI profilers and had written quite a few short stories and full-length books about them. No editors wanted to buy them and I couldn’t get an agent to save my life. So, those stories sat on my computer for years.
When VELLA came along I decided to publish them thru that venue because… why not? I had nothing to lose, after all. I already had a romance following and I didn’t think they’d take too kindly to the genre shift, so I was hopeful to get new readers here.
And I did.
Many new readers.
So many, in fact, that in year one I entered a new tax bracket. Year two my husband complained – tongue in cheek – that we had to pay a little more to the IRS than we usually did because my income went through the roof.
There have been multiple successful uploads for new and established authors on the platform and some of those authors are making more money than they ever have before. But more importantly, they are finally getting their words in front of readers. At 2 years old, the platform continues to grow daily with new authors uploading new content hourly. There ae some sections that are a little glutted right now, but my stories are still going strong – thankfully!
One of the books I uploaded to Vella made its way into physical print this year. I decided to publish DEATH BETWEEN THE PAGES as a short story collection and again, it did surprisingly well. Some of my romance readers were surprised at how different the stories were from my usual fare, but stated they enjoyed them nonetheless.
I even put up a middle school story about a bunch of kids back in the 80s who solve a crime. That one I did under my pen name of Pearl Hunter.
You can find all my Vella books here:
If you’d like to try the platform as a reader, you simply go to your Amazon account and type in KINDLE VELLA. Click on the link and it will bring you to the main vell page. You can scroll around and find the categories of stories you like, then if you see any you want to read, click on them. The first 3 episodes are always free to read. After that, you need to purchase tokens from amazon to read any further. Have fun, kids. And if you’re curious – read some of mine!
Peggy Jaeger, Author 