Going To Hell...Who's Coming With Me?

I have grown so used to posting off-the-cuff comments on Twitter that I don't remember how to do this journaling thing.

That said, let me vent for a moment.

I have had 73 total episodes read on Kindle Vella, across two stories, and 43 of those have been locked (ie, paid) episodes, yet I have made a whopping 16 cents. Apparently, my only episode reads are coming via the free tokens Amazon gives out for trying the service.

Now, normally I would say it's just because my writing is crap and nobody with paid coins is willing to go past the free chapters, because I am incredibly insecure about my writing. BUT. One of the stories is also an ebook in Kindle Unlimited, where I've had over 37,000 page reads. So I've either had 37,000 people read one page and bounce, or 150ish people read the whole thing. Last I checked, I had 25 ratings with only a couple 2 and 3 stars; my average is something like 4.3. I won't say the book is great, and being mpreg it's definitely niche, but clearly it's not THAT BAD.

(As a side note, I hate myself a little for going back to Amazon exclusivity, and I also hate how KU is a game of "wait and find out how much we're actually paying you", but this book has made $60 in sales and an estimated $135 in page reads, and I'm not willing to argue with money.)

I know people who make actual living-wage money self publishing, and they can't figure out the Vella formula, either. Including people who have done well on Radish, another serialized-fiction platform.

I don't even really have a point, except that it seems incredibly difficult to get any sort of traction on Vella if you aren't one of the handful of already-successful Vella authors Amazon keeps pushing. And as long as that's the case, I don't see how Vella is ever going to be a viable platform for authors, or widely adopted enough to be profitable for Amazon. And we all know Amazon only cares about profit.