Category Kindle

Jul 14 2021

Kindle Vella is Now Live!

KINDLE VELLA

Amazon just launched the new Kindle Vella.

What is Vella? Stories that are told one episode at a time. It has to be new content (not content that has been made available previously), so there shouldn’t be material that you’re familiar with from the past that gets repackaged in Vella. There should only be fresh new content.

There are a few points regarding Vella that appeal to me:

  • Customers can read the first 3 episodes for free. This is basically equivalent of the Look Inside for a book. For Vella, the free sample has been standardized.
  • Customers can buy the story one episode at a time. Normally, you read the description, Look Inside, and reviews, then decide whether to buy an entire book. With Vella, you just buy one episode at a time. It’s a smaller investment. If you don’t end up liking the story, you don’t end up wasting a lot of money. I like this feature. It’s customer friendly.
  • The platform rewards authors for writing engaging content. Each episode needs to be good enough to make the reader want the next episode. Engaging content can do well (provided that it gets noticed; right now is the best chance for exposure, since content will only grow from this point forward).
  • The royalties appear to be fairly author friendly, but only if the content is engaging enough that most readers finish the story.
  • I like that the price is standardized (see below for info about prices and royalties). Of course, Vella is optional. You can choose to publish Kindle eBooks and paperbacks instead of using Vella.
  • The formatting couldn’t be easier. Vella is for stories that have pure text with no special symbols or special formatting. You upload a square image for the cover (1600 pixels by 1600 pixels), and this will be cropped to a circle. You don’t even have to put text on the cover because it will be displayed next to the cover. For the story, the only formatting options are bold, underline, and italics. Everything is left aligned (ragged right), no indents, with space between paragraphs. This is probably so that the formatting looks fine on cell phones. The idea is for the episodes to be phone friendly. For customers who like to read on small screens, this seems like a good idea.

Vella episodes are purchased using tokens:

  • You can currently get 200 free tokens from Amazon. This encourages customers to check out Vella and start reading episodes.
  • You can purchase 200 to 1700 tokens at a time. Tokens cost slightly less than 1 penny per token. For example, 1700 tokens currently costs $14.99 (this is the best value), while 200 tokens costs $1.99.
  • Authors earn 50% of what customers spend on the tokens that they use to redeem the episodes. (It appears that episodes read with the 200 free tokens will not earn royalties, since 50% of free is nothing. But those free tokens are Amazon’s marketing tool to encourage customers to get hooked on Vella stories.) So on average authors will earn about half a penny per 100 words. It’s interesting to compare this rate to Kindle Unlimited, which usually pays half a penny per normalized page. How many words are on a page that has pure text? Half a penny per 100 words is better than what Kindle Unlimited pays (for books with text only). If you write 100,000 words, Vella pays $5 when readers read the entire story.

Once you purchase tokens (the free ones don’t count for this), you can Fave one story for that week. This helps Amazon determine which stories are popular each week, and the most popular stories receive added exposure.

You can also Follow stories. At the bottom of each episode, you can click a Thumbs Up (to Like the episode). Authors, remind your readers to choose a Fave every week, to Follow your story, and to click Thumbs Up for each episode. These stats will only help you.

Vella stories stand out in search results because they all show in circles. If you type text in the search bar, you see Sponsored Products and sometimes see other results that aren’t Vella stories. The fact that all Vella stories have circular covers makes it easy to tell which search results are Vella stories and which aren’t.

I currently have three stories in Vella (I started out by publishing 5 episodes, and plan to release new episodes weekly, if not more frequently):

  • Romancing the Novel. This is unlike any romance that you’ve ever read, and it’s unlike most of my writing (since I normally write math and science workbooks). Melissa Stevens designed this wonderful cover for me years ago, and until Vella came out, I hadn’t found the courage to publish it. This was a fun story to write.
  • Monkeys Discover Inertia. I wrote these monkey stories to help inspire interest in physics concepts. There are no prerequisites; anybody can enjoy these stories. When I teach physics, I draw monkeys on the board and use monkeys in the examples and problems. For Vella, I had the idea to write stories with the idea that the stories would be fun and engaging and happen to teach a few physics concepts along the way.
  • Math Word Problems with Answers. I normally write math and science workbooks, so I wanted to have something on Vella that is more aligned with what I usually write.

For the first week, my Fave is The Adventures of Sandy the Cat, which are cool stories (written for kids, especially those who love cats, but even adults may enjoy them) written by Julie Harper. I know Julie Harper personally; she has some interesting handwriting workbooks (both printing and cursive).

I plan to start my first sci-fi novel in the coming months, and I’m leaning towards publishing it on Vella.

Readers can find Kindle Vella stories on the web (at Amazon) by first choosing the Kindle Store (just click the Search button with an empty search after selecting the Kindle Store category). They are also available on the Kindle for iOS app. (Unfortunately, I tried finding Vella stories on my Paperwhite, but didn’t find them there, even though it is Kindle Vella. The main target seems to be smart phones, but I was able to read them on a Mac or PC.) When I browse my digital orders, it will let me deliver Vella episodes to some of my Fire devices and to my phone (and as I mentioned, you can read them on a Mac or PC, for example).

Authors can publish stories on Kindle Vella through KDP. To see royalties for Vella, use the beta report feature (not the usual reports). There is also a special category for Vella in the KDP community help forum.

I tried searching Vella for some authors I know whose books I have read in the past, but unfortunately didn’t find any matches. If you’re a Vella author, you’re welcome to mention your author name and the title of your story in the comments for this post.

If you’re a Vella reader, you’re encouraged to share your Vella reading experience in the comments.

P.S. I was really happy to find the Classic Editor here at WordPress when I wrote this article today. Thank you, WordPress!

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks

May 17 2021

Intrigued by Amazon’s Vella

Vella is coming soon.

Writers will publish stories in episodes. A single episode may be anywhere from 600 words to 5000 words.

Readers will read stories one episode at a time.

One neat feature that I like is that the author can include optional notes at the end of each episode. An author might share insights into how the story came about or share a personal note. There are many ways that authors can use this space.

Ordinarily, when you read a novel, such notes don’t appear between the chapters, and would seem to break up the momentum of the story. But with Vella, readers aren’t buying the entire book at once, but are reading one episode at a time. I might like some of the tidbits that get included here. Another possible use of author notes is to generate interest in the next episode.

Author notes are capped at 200 words per episode, so a single note won’t be too long. But after reading several episodes, there is a lot of potential for readers to learn more about the characters or the author.

Covers are simplified. It isn’t necessary to include any text on the cover itself. You just need to make a 1600 by 1600 square image (less than 2 MB) to generate interest in your story. Amazon automatically places the title and author name below the image.

Formatting the story is incredibly simplified. Every story will appear in block paragraphs with no indents, with spacing between the paragraphs. This is done automatically. You type, paste, or upload a story with paragraphs and that’s how it will come out.

There are no pictures to worry about in the content file. There are no bullet points, no subscripts or superscripts, no headings, no subheadings, no drop caps, or any of the kinds of things that complicate formatting.

Since Vella is designed for sharing stories, it is designed for plain text.

It is also phone friendly. For the phone, it makes sense not to indent paragraphs, but to instead put space between them. You can type with indented paragraphs with no space between them, and when you upload the file for each episode, it will automatically be converted to block paragraphs with no indents, with space between paragraphs.

The description is limited to 500 characters, which forces you to be concise. Most readers don’t read beyond the Read More point at Amazon, especially for fiction. It pays to learn how to be concise here, and to generate interest without spoiling the story.

The first three episodes are free. This basically serves as the Look Inside. The first three episodes need to be good enough to make the reader to want more.

For me, the most challenging part is to come up with the tags. I think this will be easier once Vella gets underway and we can explore the different tags in use.

The category choices are currently very limited. There are basically no subcategories. You’ll need to use a couple of tags to function as your subcategories.

The pricing is interesting. Readers buy tokens in bulk. The examples suggest that a token will cost about a penny. The exact cost depends on how large a quantity of tokens the customer buys. They can buy more and save a little per token.

The token idea makes sense because you can’t charge small dollar amounts on a credit card; the fees would make it impractical. But you can charge for hundreds of tokens on a credit card and let readers use tokens to buy low-cost episodes.

It looks like Amazon is taking prices out of the hands of the author. It looks like one token will unlock 100 words. For example, if an episode has 753 words, a customer will need to use 7 tokens to unlock the episode. If an episode has 799 words and you add one word to it, a customer will need to use 8 tokens instead of 7.

It looks like the author earns 50% of the customer’s cost of the tokens. So if customers spend approximately 1 penny per token, an author earns about half a penny per token spent. In this example, an author is earning about half a penny per 100 words read.

It’s interesting to compare this with Kindle Unlimited, where authors in KDP Select earn a little under half a penny per KENP page read. A KENP page read typically has well more than 100 words, right? So half a penny per 100 words in Vella seems to be a much improved rate compared to Kindle Unlimited.

Here’s another way to look at it. Suppose that you write a 100,000 word novel and break it up into episodes for Kindle Vella. (Before you get any ideas, you’re not allowed to publish currently or previously available books on Kindle Vella.)

At 100 words per episode, a 100,000 word novel would require spending 1000 tokens, which is a lot of tokens. If a customer spends 1 penny per token, it will cost the customer $10 to buy every episode of your novel (well, the first three episodes are free), and you would earn about $5 in royalties for the novel. So the royalty rate, if it stays this way, appears to be favorable for authors, much better than Kindle Unlimited, even better than sales of novels.

Seriously, most indie authors don’t price a 100,000 word novel at $9.99 and proceed to sell it like hot cakes.

But the novel was just to get an idea of the royalty rate, not to suggest that a novel is a good fit for Vella.

Vella is designed for stories that can be told one episode at a time.

Another important consideration is that customers will buy the story one episode at a time.

The customer isn’t paying the price for the book and buying the entire book.

The customer will read the first three episodes for free. If they are good enough, the customer may buy the first episode. The sequence of episodes needs to hold the reader’s interest, otherwise, the reader will just spend a small number of tokens and abandon the book.

If the reader only reads 10% of the book, the author only earns royalties for the tokens spent to unlock 10% of the book. If the book is good enough for most customers to read all of it, then the author earns the maximum possible royalty for the book. So just having 100,000 boring words won’t be earning authors $5 per book. But 100,000 captivating, spellbinding, marvelously crafted words can bring a favorable royalty per customer.

The pricing appears to reward reader engagement. Personally, I like this, whether as a reader or as an author.

Vella has appeal to me both as a reader and as an author.

As a reader, I look forward to Author Notes. For me, it’s like a bonus feature. You sometimes get these things in front matter or back matter. But with Vella, when they are available, we’ll get them in tidbits between episodes. I like the potential.

As an author, until now I’ve only written nonfiction, mostly math and science workbooks. I’ve considered writing stories for several years, but until Vella was introduced, had never attempted it. But now, I’m planning to write some stories. I may publish some or all of them under a pen name. We’ll see.

I’ll definitely be registering the copyrights for my work though.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks

Feb 15 2020

How Much Did Kindle Unlimited Pay in January, 2020?

The Kindle Unlimited Per-Page Rate for January, 2020

$0.004411 is the per-page rate for KENP read for Kindle Unlimited in January, 2020. It’s down from December’s rate of $0.004664, which was also down from November. It takes a dip around this time almost every year, probably an effect characteristic of the holidays. Fortunately, even after the dip, it’s still significantly above $0.004 per page.

The KDP Select Global Fund rose to a record high of $28.2 million for January, 2020.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

Jan 16 2020

Kindle Unlimited for December, 2019

The December, 2019, Kindle Unlimited Per Page Rate

The Kindle Unlimited per-page rate was 0.004664 in December, 2019. It’s down from December, perhaps from holiday Kindle sales, but close to what it had been in October.

The KDP Select Global Fund rose to a new high of $26.2 million for December, 2019.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

Nov 16 2019

Kindle Unlimited, October, 2019

The Kindle Unlimited Per-Page Rate for October, 2019

$0.0047 is the Kindle Unlimited (KENP) per-page rate for October, 2019.

It’s nearly identical to the rate for September, 2019. (You need more decimal places to see a difference.)

September and October were about 7% better than July and August.

The KDP Select Global Fund reached a new high of $26 million.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

Aug 16 2019

Kindle Unlimited: What was the KENP rate for July, 2019?

KINDLE UNLIMITED PAGES READ FOR JULY, 2019

The KENP rate for pages read in Kindle Unlimited in July, 2019 was $0.00439.

It’s a small drop (roughly 5%) compared to June’s rate of $0.00464.

However, Amazon actually paid out more royalties overall in July than in June.

That’s because the KDP Select Global Fund rose from $24.9 million to a record $25.6 million.

Perhaps Amazon Prime Day had a small impact. If, for example, Amazon sold many Kindle ereaders, there may be new customers using their free month of Kindle Unlimited.

Whatever the reason, the per-page rate does tend to vary a bit, although it has been relatively stable for much of 2019.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

Jun 14 2019

Kindle Unlimited Pages Read Rate for May, 2019

MAY, 2019 KINDLE UNLIMITED PER PAGE RATE

For May, 2019, the KENP per-page rate for pages read through Kindle Unlimited was $0.00466.

This is nearly identical to what it was in April, and is a small improvement over March.

In May, the KDP Select Global fund climbed up to $24.6 million.

The Global fund was $24.1 in April and $24.0 million in March.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

May 15 2019

April 2019’s KENP per-page-read rate for Kindle Unlimited

KINDLE UNLIMITED: APRIL 2019’S PER-PAGE RATE

$0.004665 was the per-page rate for pages read through Kindle Unlimited in April of 2019.

This is an improvement over March’s rate of $0.00451.

$24.1 million was the KDP Select Global fund for April of 2019.

This was nearly identical to March’s figure of $24 million.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

Mar 23 2019

Kindle Now Has Scrolling Options

 

NOW YOU CAN READ A KINDLE EBOOK BY SCROLLING DOWNWARD

Some formatters used to say that a Kindle eBook is scrollable like a webpage.

But until now, that wasn’t quite right. You used to paginate your way through a Kindle eBook by advancing onto the next “page.”

But Kindle eBooks also weren’t like print books. When you changed the font size, line spacing, or read the book on a different device, the “pages” became significantly different.

However, now on supported devices it is possible to scroll down through a Kindle eBook just like you scroll through an article on a website online.

In the settings, look for the Continuous Scrolling option, shown below for my Kindle Fire.

If you’d rather paginate your way through the eBook, just disable the Continuous Scrolling option and it will function just like it always has.

This new feature is important to authors and publishers who use KDP for a couple of reasons.

Some readers will now scroll through your eBook, whether you like it or not.

So let’s give a little thought to how this may impact eBook design.

  • You want to add Space After to the last paragraph of a chapter (or section) that ordinarily precedes a page break. The page break is removed in Continuous Scrolling, so if you want to have space between the last paragraph of your chapter and the chapter heading that follows, you want to add Space Before to the last paragraph. Ideally, you should do this through paragraph styles or HTML. In HTML, create and apply a style definition that adds a bottom margin to the paragraph. If you’re using Word, create a body text paragraph that adds space after. I use a variety of paragraph styles that add space after: One is like the normal body paragraphs, one is for non-indented paragraphs, one is for the last point of a list, and another is for centered paragraphs. (By the way, since the Look Inside scrolls like a webpage, this is a handy tip to help create a little vertical separation in your Look Inside.)
  • With ordinary pagination, you could control page breaks and prevent information from showing on a screen sooner than you’d like (although some devices like Kindle for PC allow two pages to show on the screen at once). Suppose, for example, that you have an eTextbook with problems followed by answers or solutions. Ordinarily, you could place the answer or solution on the next “page” so that students could try it first, then check their work. However, if they scroll through the eBook now, they may stumble into the answers before reading the problems. Of course, once the student gets used to this, they can scroll more carefully if they don’t wish for this to happen. But it is something to consider as an author or publisher.
  • On the other hand, you can’t design your eBook with the assumption that everybody will scroll through it. Some readers will still be paginating like always.

Can you think of any other ways that this new scrolling feature may impact Kindle eBook design?

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

Jan 16 2019

December, 2018 Kindle Unlimited Royalty for Pages Read

WHAT DID KINDLE UNLIMITED PAY PER PAGE FOR DECEMBER, 2018?

2018 closed out at $0.00487 per page with December’s Kindle Unlimited per page rate (KENP read).

This returns it to the values it had for September ($0.00488) and October ($0.00484).

Although it is a drop from November ($0.0052), the Kindle Unlimited per-page rate seldom clears half a penny per page. Based on its behavior for the past few years, the November amount is more of a sweet bonus than an expectation.

The per-page rate is still in the $0.0048’s, and has been at least at that level for 4 consecutive months, which is a relative high.

The KDP Select Global Fund for December, 2018 was $23.7 million. (It was $23.6 million for November and $23.5 million for October.)

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides