Did Amazon Just Kill Vella?
The shocking rollercoaster ride that has been Amazon’s adventure into serial publishing.
I got on the Amazon Vella boat a little late compared to so many others.
I’d been looking into finding a place to post serial content. You see, my coauthor and I had stories made up of scenes dating back over 20 years. We just wanted a place to put it that would force us to edit everything into an entertaining work that we could later call a novel.
Seeing some places, like Wattpad for instance, we were curious to find the next best place. Especially since, in that time frame, there was a security issue being talked about in the Wattpad community. Enter Kindle Vella.
The platform opened as a beta to writers and the public in April 2021. I posted my first episode in February 2022. It was only available in the United States, but they promised it would go worldwide after the beta.
I loved the format and the security of it. I loved people could make comments. I loved it forced me to handle at least a chapter per week or more. I loved we could remove the content and publish directly into Amazon when we were ready. And we did. We also created a reader magnet from our work there.
