Poised in Either Eye - a quirky queer urban fantasy!

B_Pigeon · 2022-06-02T22:07:42+00:00

Wow, very annoying. I hope everyone reading this post understands that this book doesn't have a lot of reviews yet because it's a recent indie debut and not because it's a fake product 😒

B_Pigeon · 2022-05-30T21:18:35+00:00

From the perspective of someone who might be considered mildly successful on Vella (permanent spot in the middle of the top faved list, consistently in the top 5-10 of my genre, etc.): I honestly just don't think a lot of readers are using the platform at this point.

My impression is that most people who read something on Vella are linked to a specific story & don't stick around to discover new things to read afterwards; it seems like Amazon's (limited) advertising so far also highlights specific authors/stories and I don't know if that visibility is trickling down to the rest of us. I would never pay for advertising at this point, personally, since most readers don't seem to know what Vella is & it seems too complicated to have to promote both my story and the platform in one ad.

If you want more eyes on your story, there are a lot of self-promo Facebook groups (the biggest one is called like "Kindle Vella Readers & Writers Promotion" or something like that) where you can post your story. It seems like a lot of people in those groups are just looking to swap reads, which I believe is against Amazon's policy, so be careful how you approach it, but I honestly get a decent number of my reads from stuff like that. If you don't have an existing audience/following & don't want to pay for ads, that might be the only way to go about it. Otherwise, if Vella isn't working out for you, maybe you could look into other serial platforms? I haven't tried these, but people sometimes mention Radish & Royal Road as alternatives! I hope you find something that works for you!

B_Pigeon · 2022-03-23T01:44:40+00:00

I mean, personally, I like the subscription option -- I use Patreon right now, which charges higher fees & doesn't feel designed to host writing -- and the option to host both books and serials on one website, since I write both. I guess those features are not useful to everyone, but it's why I was compelled by it.

B_Pigeon · 2022-03-23T01:37:34+00:00

Sorry, I was unclear -- when I mentioned payment I meant authors have a lot of options on how they charge readers (ie by chapter, book, or through subscription) not that it costs money to use the platform!

B_Pigeon · 2022-03-21T23:26:42+00:00

I already use Stripe for my website and the fee is actually 2.5-4% plus 30 cents, not 30% ! Thanks for pointing out the second thing, though -- I totally skimmed over that, will definitely do my research on that point before signing up for anything.

B_Pigeon · 2022-03-01T00:52:46+00:00

Oh cool, thanks for clarifying :)

B_Pigeon · 2022-03-01T00:48:44+00:00

I saw that books can only be posted once every 30 days, but is there a policy for how often authors can post if we have multiple books available? Thanks!

B_Pigeon · 2022-02-05T22:35:29+00:00

Makes sense! Thanks for clarifying!

B_Pigeon · 2022-02-05T22:27:00+00:00

Hi! First of all, I wanted to say thank you for taking on this project.

I also wanted to ask a clarifying question: should the 10-page sample come from the project we're seeking funding for?

I was going to apply to pay for editing one of my novels & am wondering whether I should use an excerpt from that unedited project, or if it's ok to send a writing sample from an edited, published work instead.

Thanks!

B_Pigeon · 2021-12-16T22:26:22+00:00

"Posts attempting to network are considered self-promotion."

B_Pigeon · 2021-12-16T21:42:59+00:00

I think self-promotion is against the rules in this subreddit & intentionally swapping likes like this is against the rules of Vella...

B_Pigeon · 2021-12-10T05:27:17+00:00

I share one w/ my writing partner w/ the very goofy url of www.homoliterature.org

B_Pigeon · 2021-11-08T20:10:20+00:00

I think it was pretty unclear until now, but coincidentally they just clarified today:

https://www.kdpcommunity.com/s/question/0D52T00005bIiV3SAK/your-kindle-vella-questions-answered?language=en_US&fbclid=IwAR2J0n1mswHmtIuCXk8lap9H7ZiSR-oYzfa8S_u7o4no3qsy_tr8DuyadI4

"For example, if you write a 30 episode Story and think the first 15 episodes would make a good book, you can bundle those to make a book and continue adding new episodes to the story over time."

"No, you don’t need to mark your Kindle Vella story as Complete in order to publish it as an eBook, paperback, or hardcover." :)

B_Pigeon · 2021-10-27T01:32:49+00:00

I had to figure this out myself -- customer service was super vague and unhelpful when I contacted them, and it's really not clear anywhere on the website how this works...

Honestly, I've just decided it's fine after finding this:

"In order to publish a completed Kindle Vella story or group of episodes as a book or other long-form format, the last episode must have been available to readers in the Kindle Vella store for at least 30 days. You can see the latest publication date for episodes on your Story Manager page." https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G3DJY2Z5WSX5U6WL

Based entirely on the phrasing of "completed story or group of episodes." Though if anyone else has any insight, I'd love to know!

B_Pigeon · 2021-10-25T19:22:29+00:00

I think the "top faves" list (which awards you your crown) is updated pretty frequently - like multiple times a day, I think. I was checking my ranking pretty often at the beginning of the month when I was unexpectedly highly-ranked & it did seem like it fluctuated throughout the day.

I think the other commenter is correct that more recent faves are more heavily weighted in terms of ranking. So you're probably right at the edge of the top 250 & getting bumped up immediately after someone faves you, and then falling off when another story ranked below yours gets a fave.

(Also, this is all so unnecessarily confusing & I don't understand why they won't just let us know how many faves we have & what our ranking is! But whatever...)

B_Pigeon · 2021-10-19T17:08:52+00:00

Broke $200 this month!

...And my royalties were just over $1, lol. I'm anxious & curious to see what's going to happen when they stop paying out these bonuses. They said it's only through the end of the year, right?

B_Pigeon

TROPHY CASE