Fear and Trying New Things

It's no secret that I've been looking at some alternative ways of spreading my stories. And I'm looking at some awesome possibilities that scare me to death.

Do I take the plunge? What happens if it doesn't work? What happens if it does? Can I maintain momentum?

I had a lot of problems with the one book a month Publishing Challenge. A lot of it was trying to sustain my pace of writing and editing when I couldn't get the fuck out of the apartment and away from my family just to think thanks to the fucking pandemic.

Then came a major move when we bought a house. The only saving grace was that the move was only across town.

But now, I'm roughly halfway through 2021. This was supposed to be a write-only month, but I still have a huge pile of prep work to finish for the paperbacks. (I have to pay the POD distributor extra to revise a paperback, so I really try to make sure they're right.) And I'm literally working on four novels at the same time.

So am I using the scut work to shy away from a new distribution idea? Yeah, I am.

Which is stupid. I should be jumping in with both feet. My fear makes it even more important that I try the new thing.

And I need to do it now.

Another Amazon Product - KDP Vella

This week, Amazon announced their new KDP Vella program. What is it? Well, it's a rip-off of the South Korean reading app Radish and the Candian reading website and app Wattpad. I'm going to stick with comparisons to Radish since it and Wattpad now have similiar structures, but Wattpad started mainly as a fanfic website.

For those who don't know what Radish is, it's a smartphone app that publishing serialized stories. It's a 21st version of the magazine and movie serialized tales going back to Charles Dickens and Buck Rogers. A reader buys tokens, and each episode costs X numbers of tokens. Writers get 50% of the pro-rated value of the cash value of all tokens bought in a particular month.

And Amazon has essentially copied all of Radish's terms. I know. I wasted the last two afternoons reading through and comparing them.

The thing is you can't just rip up a novel and publish it by chapters. Well, you can, but it may not be the best avenue for you. The episodes really do work a lot more like the old black & white Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials of the 30's and 40's.  There's a typical sequence: problem set-up, problem conplication, problem solution, and cliff-hanger intro for the next episode.

In fact, George Lucas followed the same basic set-up in the first two Star Wars trilogy. If you need a different genre, watch and break down Pretty Woman or the first season of Heroes TV show. Or check out any soap opera or telenovela.

Is KDP Vella worth it for writers? I don't know. I have a feeling income will be similar to KDP Unlimited. I think it will cost more for a reader in the long run. But Radish and Wattpad have made anticipation work for them.

Finally, I think it shows Amazon has reached maturity if they are following other companies now instead of leading the innovation. There were a lot of writers who used KDP Unlimited 1.0 as a serialized format when it started approximately seven years ago. However, Amazon intended KU to be a subscription service a la Scribed or the late Oyster. Amazon changed the terms a year later to KU 2.0, which paid per page read instead of per borrow. Otherwise, they would have created Vella six years ago.

Will I try it? I'm considering it, but the audience for the serialized phone stories are different than the audiences both Alter Ego and I currently have. I'd have to do subgenres neither names writes. If I change genres, I'm also considering a new pseudonym.

It'll be something I consider during the summer road trips to Texas to see Adorable Spawn.