Kindle Vella - Episodic Content Incoming

Last week, Amazon announced a new feature coming to Kindle Direct Publishing. It's called Kindle Vella.

What's different about this compared to what they already offer?

Instead of the more traditional book path, such as novels, Kindle Vella is designed to offer up a story in bite-size chunks of episodic content. This content will range from 600 - 5,000 words long or a few minutes to around 25 minutes to read, if you want to break it up to a timeframe.

Some other unique features about Kindle Vella are:

The first three episodes of any story are automatically free
After episode three, readers pay for the episodes with pre-purchased tokens
Episode cost is based on the length of the story and will not cost more than 50 tokens
An optional "Author Notes" section is available for the author to speak directly to the reader
Episodes a reader likes can be give a Thumbs Up
Once a week, readers can mark an episode as a "Fave". The most faved stories will be featured in the Kindle Vella store.
Currently, you'll only be able to access it at Amazon.com and the Kindle app on iOS

Of course, I've dabbled in episodic writing in the past. It's how the Miscorrection trilogy started. And The Permanent Man followed that format even more closely.

So when I heard about Kindle Vella, you better believe the wheels started turning in my head. I already had a few stories bouncing around my brain and now one of them is happening. I'm hoping to have four to five episodes ready to go by the time the service launches. More details to come in a future blog post for that.

I think this is a great idea, especially in society today where most of us are pressed for time and many just don't read like they use to. I can't wait to see what stories come from other writers on Kindle Vella. I imagine we'll get some creative and fun narratives. I'm really looking forward to it.

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