I was supposed to write this yesterday. But, as I opened up the blog post, I felt completely uninspired. As numbers don’t increase, I’m beginning to feel less and less enthused about Kindle Vella. It isn’t the programs fault. I feel it has to do with Amazon and the way they’ve done zero publicity for this thing. Also, that Kindle Vella operates within kindle instead of having its own app for users to find the product is another downfall of the system.
Without an app, Amazon is expecting writers to do ALL of their own self promotion via social media. Obviously, this is the norm. Even published writers have to do this. However, relying on other social media platforms to drive traffic isn’t the most reliable thing.
As we saw yesterday with Facebook’s outage, the internet can be unstable. Best not to have all of your eggs in one basket. Which isn’t to say that Amazon creating an app separately for Kindle Vella would solve everything. But it certainly would drive a lot more traffic to the stories.
In comparison, Stary Publishing LTD who runs the app I write for has both an app, Dreame, and a website version. All of their readers find their content through both of those platforms. Also, they have an app made specifically for their writers to check their income, their story stats, and post their content. They’ve only existed for about three years and are out of Signapore. So, if they can create a functioning platform for writers to monetize serial fiction, Amazon should definitely be able to.
Not only that Stary has different platforms based on different genres allowing writers to find their niche and gain popularity based on it.
Amazon has the means and resources to make Kindle Vella into the kind of monetize giant it should be for writers. Yet its introduction has been lackluster. We’re in October, the year is winding down, and here is to hoping that the remaining months and following year will encourage Amazon to give Kindle Vella the justice it deserves.
