The life of a writer can be a lonely one. You’re wrapped up and caught in a world of your own which you intend to reveal to others. The time it takes to accomplish that can be long. Months or years can drag along as the process takes place. During that time, you conduct other aspects of your life and battle with the negativity that, sometimes, accompanies you on this road of story-telling that you have chosen.
What if you didn’t have to wait until publication to share your creation with interested parties? That’s what attracted me to Amazon’s new Vella platform. If you’re like me, you look for encouragement along the way. That is sometimes hard to find. This new platform allows you to share your story, in serial format, with readers. The first three episodes are free to read. Just like test-driving a vehicle, they can take your story for a spin to see if they like it. No commitment, no questions asked. Stories are browsed by genre and their popularity is evidenced by ‘thumbs up’ which are given by readers.
Readers, who are new to the Vella experience, are also given two hundred ‘tokens’ to unlock episodes after the first three. At this point, they still haven’t spent any money. It’s only after they exhaust the free tokens that anything is spent out-of-pocket. They may choose to ‘follow’ a story if it’s enjoyable enough for them to continue. Instead of waiting months to get satisfaction and encouragement from readers, I’m feeding off of the excitement of people reading my episodes and giving thumbs up.
If I’m already writing chapters of my story and keeping them until the story is complete, why wouldn’t I wish to bring my treasures out one by one and get encouragement from the response? One chapter equates to one episode. That isn’t a requirement. That just makes perfect sense to me. My word count varies from 1300 to 2200 words per chapter/episode. I believe that is also the reason this new platform appeals to readers. The average person is too busy to invest a lot of time in an activity. But almost anyone has ten or fifteen minutes – one episode. Something else that I like is that they read directly from a window that pops up off the Amazon page. No download is necessary.
On your Kindle help page, the Vella Connection is with the Hardcover option on the left side of the screen. You’ve probably seen it even if you haven’t checked into it. I’m glad I did. Once you get started, you simply “Create Story” and as you add episodes, you “Manage Your Story”. Uploading is more simplified than with normal ebooks because you aren’t concerned with pricing. The reports allow you to monitor how many people are reading your episodes.
It’s normal to have more people read the first three and then fewer people to continue with the story. They aren’t spending tokens until they surpass episode three. That’s okay. It still serves as encouragement – something that I desperately need. The biggest, most unexpected blessing that I’ve received from this experience is the bonus that was issued for September AND October. I was completely blown away by that. Most of you sell far more books than I do. A bonus never entered my mind. I’m still riding high over that.
My story, “Thinking Inside The Box” is approximately sixty percent complete. After the last episode is published to the Vella platform and I’m satisfied that all interested persons have enjoyed it, I simply remove it from the platform. It must be off the platform for sixty days before it can be published in the normal fashion. Guess what! Sixty days is what I’ll need to do another round of edits and make changes in the story. It’s a perfect fit in every way. If you can avail yourself of its use, I can't encourage you enough to do so. I can’t express how pleased I am with the experience. I’ll use it for each new story.
I’ll mention one last thing. At sixty percent completion, none of my readers have spent a cent. The next episode (fourteen) will reveal if anyone decides to spend. Their tokens are nearly exhausted. But they’ve read more than half of the story. And we all do giveaways in some form or another. I could go on and on but I think you can see how pleased I am. Happy writing.
