What Kindle Vella Means For Independent Authors

Hey there, Igniter! Monica Leonelle from theworldneedsyourbook.com. You are listening to The Productive Novelist, and today I'm talking about what Kindle Vella's entrance into the serialized fiction space means for independent authors. And so this is going to be relevant to you whether or not you end up writing in the serialized fiction platform that Amazon is offering. So I also want to say just before I go into this that I'm doing a series about Kindle Vella on my podcast and on my YouTube channel. So please check out some of the other episodes to give yourself a background on what this is and some of the things that I'm sharing. I talk about in other episodes as well. So make sure you check some of those out so that you have the full background if this is of interest to you. So where do we want to start with this? There are so many things. So first, I'll just say, for those of you who don't know, Amazon just launched a new writer program called Kindle Vella, and it's for serialized fiction. Basically, serialized fiction is just episodic content, so not a book, but more like— so it's kind of, you know, the way a movie and a television show are different. It's the same thing for the publishing world. So the movie would correlate to the book, the television show would correlate to this serialized or episodic fiction. And so Amazon's platform for this, Kindle Vella, it's new. It's not available to readers yet. It is available to independent authors right now. So we're going to find out how it does. We, we don't know when it's launching. There's still a lot of stuff up in the air as I am recording this. So I did want to talk though about why it points to a lot of larger trends in the marketplace, and these are things that are likely to affect the independent author space as a whole. So kind of makes sense, Amazon can't really do a major thing in the publishing space that isn't going to affect independent authors in the long term.. And so I'm going to talk about what some of those things are. So the first one, fiction to audio to major franchise. So what do I mean by this? Basically, I mean that what companies are looking for, including Amazon, including Apple, these companies that have their own media content arms, of their, you know, so they're, they're making original content and looking for those franchises that they can then build off of. They're looking in the fiction space now, they're looking at authors and what authors are doing. Now, this has always been true. Most of what Hollywood creates, especially in more recent years, has been proven in the book space first. So typically what happens is books are published and then whatever does well, if it gets popular, then the rights are purchased and then it actually becomes a television show years later. And so you see that with, you know, tons of different, tons of different series. And, you know, there's a lot of timing that's involved. It's true in the nonfiction space as well. What ends up on the New York Times bestseller list of the nonfiction space is what becomes a prominent conversation in this, in the various countries. And so I know I'm giving like some US-centric examples. I'm sorry, I'm from the US. I am trying to be better about that. The New York Times bestseller list is very US-centric, so I apologize for that example. All right, so lots of companies looking for what the next big franchise is. That's where the big money is made, uh, and I think a big part of this is going to be seeing how it does in audio. And so I've talked about this a lot, how audio is just so important to independent authors right now. Um, you know, it's still kind of in its infancy, but audiobooks are growing as a segment of the book industry, and they are chipping away at some of the other formats like print and ebook. So they become very important. They're even fueled more in importance by some other trends in devices and in big tech. So a lot of e-commerce is shifting toward, uh, in-home and in-car devices, as well as cell phones. So lots of mobile devices, but it's not— e-commerce is not happening as much on a desktop and from the website. A lot of it's happening from mobile, and some of it is starting to happen through voice command. And so audio is going to be just more and more important as the world evolves. There's, you know, now that the voice recognition software has gotten very, very good, now that text-to-speech has gotten good, all of those things are fueling this trend of audio being important. So for fiction authors, you really need to think about how your content is going to play out in audio. And this is important for serialized— it's important for novelists as well, but it's going to be especially important for serialized fiction. And I think the reason is because other, um, small, you know, small-to-consume content, short content, short-form content, I guess— trying to look for the actual term for this. I think it's short-term content. So other short-term content is really gaining in prominence. TikTok is a great example. YouTube is also still a good example, still very short-form compared to you know, television shows. Um, some other examples, you know, I think episodic fiction is one of those examples. And the reason that a lot of, um, a lot of readers have gravitated towards serialized fiction is because it's short form, because it takes, you know, 5, 7, 10 minutes to consume an episode. And that is appropriate for, you know, their whatever, their morning commute between college classes or between high school classes, their time after work, whatever it is. It's an appropriate length for the amount of time that they have. So this trend has really started in text, so it's like a textually based thing. But it's also— I think it's actually going to start to move to audio because just in general, a lot of things that we used to do textually are moving to audio. And I think, you know, what I'm picturing is telling Alexa to play the next episode of whatever your serialized fiction story is that you're listening to that week. And you're playing that while you're making breakfast or while you're grabbing coffee in the morning, on your morning commute, driving somewhere, going jogging, exercising. And so I think that that's why audio is important is because people are learning to multitask a lot more with their entertainment and fiction is part of that. Fiction transitioning to audio is part of that. These companies, I think, and Amazon could be one of them, I think they're going to be looking to turn some of the serialized fiction into audio, into audio first, and then eventually taking the best-performing audio and turning it into major franchises. And it's going to be an opportunity for authors for sure. There are lots of questions about it as well, like is the audio going to be narrated by a human? Is it going to be more like an AI read audio? And how is the copyright going to work on all of that? So, you know, Google or Amazon or Apple, they have the technology now to create AI read audiobooks from all the content in their library. The only thing that is keeping them from doing that is copyright law because they don't own the copyright to those works. So this could change. This could be, this could be something where Kindle Vella, you know, there is, there's some question as to whether they might do this in the future. Right now they're saying that it's okay to turn your serialized fiction into audiobooks, but they might have in the future, they might see that as an opportunity and they might be trying to create more of like that audio experience from fiction, similar to podcasts, similar to music. So another thing is the abstraction away from country currencies. So this one makes me nervous on a personal level. I know lots of independent authors, especially if you're in Kindle Unlimited, you get paid based on page reads. And page reads are interesting because the value of a page read fluctuates by about 20% from month to month. And that's a big, that's a big deal. So if you're primarily making your money from the Kindle Unlimited program and that, that value of a page read is changing 20%, that means your income, your royalties are changing 20% month to month. So to some extent, independent authors are already getting paid through a different currency in some way that is then getting converted to dollars or pounds or whatever their country currency is. But with these serialized fiction apps, that is going to be, um, the case more and more. So Kindle Vella specifically uses coins. A lot of the other serialized fiction apps also use coins, and those coins seem to change in value, um, you know, from month to month in many cases, or, uh, the company changes the payment scheme, you know, the payment schedule for those different coins, um, and it changes the way that authors are paid. And so authors are going to get this more and more where they're getting paid differently based on a variety of factors that are out of their control. And, you know, it could be— it could be beneficial to authors. So serialized fiction tends to be more expensive for a single, you know, story than just if that story were published as a book. So it could be a good thing. It could also be you know, a concern. Like, there's a, there's a lot of concern, uh, about how that would get— how people— how authors are going to get paid. And typically with these programs, there's also like an opportunity to game the system. There's an opportunity for, for like high competition in these systems. And then there's also the opportunity from the company's side to change the rules and for, you know, authors to not really have much choice or not really be able to do much about it. So that's something to keep in mind. Another thing is the rights grabs. So I alluded to this in the first one, but basically rights grabs are just trying to pick up a lot of copyright for very little money. And the reason that this is important is that Big tech companies and tech startups. So big tech companies buy tech startups based on, you know, numbers. So based on like their user base, for example, or based on, uh, whatever their assets are. And numbers matter. So for example, if you could say, well, we have, you know, 500 different franchises as part of our app through these contracts that we've signed, or we have 1,000 stories that are exclusive to our app. Those things, whether the company ends up, whether those things actually have value or not doesn't matter in terms of them doing something with those rights, but just the numbers themselves can up the price of their acquisition. So if you are a serialized fiction company and you want to be purchased by Google, or you want to be purchased by Amazon, or whoever— and there are lots of really big companies in this space who are going to want to purchase a tech startup that is a serialized fiction app there. And I kind of explained that in one of my earlier episodes about this, so definitely check out some of my other episodes on Kindle Vella to understand this more. Basically, it's a very small or very like nascent space in terms of apps to buy, and there are lots and lots of buyers because this is just kind of a hot space right now in acquisition. So these, these apps are looking for essentially a rights grab in many cases, and it kind of makes sense because the rights are assets that they can then use to help them get acquired and help them get more money in their acquisitions. And so I would just be cautious because, um, your rights are really valuable. And I think a lot of authors, uh, they're not— they don't really realize that. And I— and the reason they don't realize that is because they're like, oh, well, I don't even sell that much, you know, sell that many copies of this, right? Like, I wasn't gonna use I wasn't going to do anything with this book anyway, or whatever it is. And so, you know, you kind of take like whatever, you're just like, oh great, like $500 extra bucks or $1,000 extra bucks. Often, often the payments are pretty small. So what's happening though is that these companies are getting your rights for a very low price and they're getting a bunch of that, and then they're selling to— they're using that to help them get acquired. And those rights will get tied up, um, and they can do— they can kind of do anything with them. They can go create a bunch of stuff with them, uh, that you may not— you know, you may not, uh, want them to create, or that you may get cut out of the deal. And so the people to, the place to learn more about this and the people to be following if this is of concern to you, and I'm not trying to scare anyone, I'm just pointing this out. So Christine Katherine Rusch, I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, Dean Wesley Smith, they are two industry veterans of the publishing space and they write a lot about this, about how valuable your copyright actually is, how valuable your intellectual property is. And how it's really like one of your greatest assets as an author over the long term, and how you should be really tending to those and tending to that IP and not just kind of letting it go willy-nilly to some of these companies. So you definitely wanna read your contracts more. You definitely want to study up on intellectual property. It's very, very important because there are a lot of rights grabs in these, contracts right now, um, that is like especially the ones that are coming out of these fictional fiction serialized apps. The reason is again because they can, uh, well there are a couple reasons. One is because some of these apps have been started in different countries that have different copyright law and so they're just not quite up to speed on how to get, um, US or UK or Canadian authors on board. But then the other You know, the other piece of it is just these rights are actually valuable to them because they can use it to like boost their numbers. So just keep that in mind. It's definitely going to change things for independent authors because you are really going to have to pay attention to that. You know, starting— starting— well, you should have always been paying attention to that. But if you weren't, there was nothing like really bad that could happen. But now it's like you're really you're really like, um, I think independent authors are at risk as a whole of getting cut out of these deals because, you know, if, if you're a big tech company, you, you don't want to have to pay a lot of money for these rights. You kind of want to buy them in bulk, you want to buy them cheap, and then you want to resell them. So just keep that in mind. So another thing is exclusivity. It's going to get very complicated very quickly. So a lot of the fiction apps have different exclusivity. Uh, with Kindle Vella coming out, um, they, they're kind of like exclusive to format, which is a very different thing in that you can't have your book in like really any other format. So they specifically talk about books as a format that you can't have it in. It's not really clear if that means ebooks or that means print books and audiobooks as well. And they're kind of— there's like a couple different answers coming from different people right now. And so that's kind of a concern to not define that. Like, they— they— I hope that they will define that at some point. Um, but you know, this is going to become more common that these terms are kind of loose on purpose because they want to be able to you know, set those rules. So for example, with the serialized, um, fiction stuff, you know, if you can't put that in print, if you can't put that in audio, well now, you know, people have to go to, um, this app to get it. And it also, it also just really limits your ability to make money off of your writing if you can't put it in different formats. Yeah, there, there, there are a lot of challenges here. And so then another thing is that, you know, like, for example, Radish, they have a 90-day requirement that you have to leave the serial up. I think it's 90 days from the last episode that you post, so you can't take it down for 90 days. And so every little app is going to have different rules, and those rules don't really play that nicely together with other apps. Every, you know, every time. So you're going to have— you have, you know, lots of people have like 100+ books in their catalog already. And now you're looking at different rights for all 100 of these books that you have to start keeping track of. And so this is— this isn't something you want to do from memory. Basically, you want to get serious about looking at this. And again, I'm just going to call them KKR and DWS. They have books about this. They actually talk about this quite a bit. So definitely look up there are books on this, and I will try to put a link below to direct you to the right spaces. But this is going to be important. So, um, just a couple more things. I want to keep going with this, uh, and just finish this. So another thing is, uh, graphics, comics, webtoons, and more. Um, these are going to become more important to independent authors. So before, you were trying to get maybe a graphic novel deal with somebody, or like you probably weren't even thinking about it. You probably weren't thinking about doing a graphic novel for your book. And especially, you know, certain genres, like if you write crime or mystery, you're probably not thinking about that. If you write romance, you know, you're maybe not thinking about that. So these different formats are going to get more important. And the reason is because these serial— these serialized fiction apps are not just doing, uh, textual fiction anymore. They're also doing Webtoons or doing graphic novels. They're doing all these other formats as well. And so you're going to want to explore some of that. And how do you create a story in comic format? How do you turn your book into a graphic novel? Or how do you turn your story into a graphic novel? These are important rights as well that you don't want to give away or like include in a bundle of rights that you give to somebody through exclusivity or just through outright purchase. So this is going to, you know, I think, I think a lot of fiction authors, they really just want to like write their stories and they don't want to get complex. They don't want to be complicated. And I think that time period is ending. So there was about a decade where you could do that. But now there's going to be all these other options, all these different rights to explore. And I think the good thing about this is that you're going to see being an independent author kind of, uh, you'll be able to create your own path in many ways. And so some of us are doing that already because we just like that. Like, I'm somebody who comes from the nonfiction space where everybody is, you know, creating their own path. There's no one way to do a business at this point, and there are so many opportunities that you can just kind of gravitate toward what resonates with you. And so for independent authors though, for a long time it's been like you're either in KU or you're not. Um, and that, you know, there's like these very specific strategies for how to make money. And it was because that, uh, being a fiction author has been such a simple business for so long if you compare it to nonfiction businesses. And that I think is changing with all these different exclusivity terms, with different contracts, with different funnel, you know, sales funnels, product funnels. I think a lot of this is going to change and fiction authors are getting more savvy. And, you know, you want to keep up with some of this stuff even if you're not planning on doing it because it, it can eat into the market share of ebooks. So I guess what I'm saying is like if your primary, you know, if your business is primarily based in ebooks, then you may want to be aware of the many different formats that are cutting into the ebook market right now. So you just want to like be aware of it. It doesn't mean you have to, you know, complicate your business or anything like that. It's just something to be aware of. And I think serialized fiction is going to be a driver for this along with audiobooks. So then the last thing is that there's certainly a lot of value in going wide at this point. And, um, the biggest reasons are, you know, the, the fiction space is becoming, um, less about, uh, publishing companies and much more about Big Tech, much more about e-commerce. So your fate as an independent author, it depends on which platforms win some of these market spaces. So For example, if you're exclusive with Amazon, you're kind of betting on Amazon to maintain its hold over the ebook market here in the US and in other English-speaking territories. You're hoping that, uh, serialized fiction doesn't eat away at the ebook format. You're hoping that audiobooks don't eat away at the ebook format. You're betting, uh, you're betting a lot on Amazon, basically. Um, you're betting that Amazon does well in some of these other countries where they have quite a bit more competition, um, with, you know, different various internet companies and that are, um, far savvier at this, at this moment in doing serialized fiction and doing mobile apps. So it's just something to think about if you You know, if you want to place a big bet on Amazon, that's fine. And you're probably safe to do that for a little bit longer. But 5 years from now, the marketplace may look a little different. I'm just looking at kind of what's happening right now. I expect serialized fiction to start to gain prominence in English-speaking countries. I also expect audiobooks to grow, and I would expect ebook and print to either hold or start to shrink. And it just, it just kind of makes sense based on what's happening in big tech, what's happening in e-commerce. This is not— it's like we are not really in the publishing world anymore in many ways. We are creators and entrepreneurs at the mercy of some of these big tech companies and what they decide to offer to writers, as well as how their market share changes. So that's my thoughts on this. You know, I think I'm certainly not— like, here's what I want to say to end this, is that I'm certainly not saying, you know, there's anything to fear. I think that all of these changes are actually a great thing. On a personal level, I'm extremely excited about a lot of this stuff. It really plays to my desire to like experiment with things and also my desire to just really forge my own path and like do something that other people are not doing. That this, this type of thing really excites me. So I'm excited about all of this stuff. However, I just, I wanted to bring it up because I think some people don't really see the significance of, you know, serialized fiction or of audiobooks and some of these other formats that are gaining prominence. And also don't— I think especially here in the US at least, I'm seeing a lot of independent authors that are based in the US saying stuff like, well, Amazon will never, you know, Amazon's huge, it's never going to fail. Like, and, and there's kind of this belief that like things are going to stay the same in the market, and these new formats coming into prominence is actually, um, a way for the market to completely shift. Um, so including the ebook market in that, and I'll give you an example. So like, you know, if other companies are are selling more audiobooks, which they are— Amazon holds, I think, 40% of the US market— that translates into them being able to also make gains in ebooks. So, you know, conventional wisdom is that Amazon holds 90% of the ebook space in the US, and with audiobooks, that can shift, and I think is shifting to some extent. There are a lot of companies that want to get into the serialized fiction space, and they are well-resourced to do so, and that can also shake things up. So I hope I've given you a lot of interesting things to think about, and I hope, you know, it's just been some fodder for where you want your career to go as an author. Uh, definitely let me know. I'd love to hear what you, um, what this inspired in you. Maybe if you're feeling any nervousness or anxiety, certainly I didn't mean to cause that, but if you're concerned about something or if you have questions about something, I'd love to hear that too. Uh, if you wanna, uh, so I'm gonna keep going with this Kindle Vella series. I have a couple more episodes to do, so if you want to stick with me. Make sure you subscribe. It's theworldneedsyourbook.com/youtube. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel for this, or theworldneedsyourbook.com/podcast. That will give you all the places that this podcast is listed. You can also search for The Productive Novelist Podcast, and it will most likely come up, or The World Needs Your Book on YouTube. Again, it'll most likely come up right away, and you can subscribe there. So definitely, uh, Stay tuned for new episodes and check out some of the other episodes that I've been doing on Kindle Vella because it's, it's a fun topic. I've been talking about it a lot. Thank you so much for watching and listening. I hope this has been helpful to you. Have a beautiful day.