If you’ve read my previous posts regarding Kindle Vella, you’ll know that I was pretty disappointed to find I hadn’t been given a bonus for uploading 3 episodes to Vella during the last week of June. The few people I know that are familiar with the platform all but assured me I would get at least $5.

Still, through most of July, I continued to upload episodes regularly to the story until it was complete – a full 10 episodes posted and waiting for readers. But, in order to get readers, you have to participate in “promo games.” I did this up until a day or two after the final episode went live, which was the 22nd of July.

I just got notified that I did, in fact, receive a bonus for the month of July of $16.56. This does not include the royalties for any paid episodes that were read during that time. How is this bonus calculated? I have no freaking clue, and it appears to be a highly classified secret that Amazon will keep close to its chest until the mega-corp is dismantled by its unhappy employees. What I can give you is a breakdown of the stats Amazon provides on my Vella and included episodes.

Published Episodes: 10
Total Reads: 226 (This only includes episodes that were read, not the entire story.)
Total Likes: 168
Total Follows: 11
Total Crowns: 0 (These are like favorites that readers can give to 1 story per week.)
Episode “Unlocks”: 13 (This is for episodes that require tokens; the first 3 episodes do not count in this total.)
Expected Royalties: $2.06

Of the 10 episodes I published, no one ever read past episode 5. Additionally, I can guarantee that I only got reads on those first 5 because of the promo games, because once I stopped doing them, my stats stopped changing and haven’t increased since.

I will say this, the bonus is MUCH more of an incentive to keep doing the promo games than the actual royalties are. And my non-Vella book sales have NEVER been as high in a single month as the bonus is since I started publishing on Amazon. In fact, the bonus alone is more than my other books have made in the last 8 months combined.

The problem is this: Kindle Vella’s discoverability is absolute GARBAGE. Trying to find anything that isn’t already on the absolute top tier list is near impossible, unless you know the exact title or author name you’re looking for. Even trying to search through the genres is a nightmare, because only the same 20 or so show up every time because they’ve already been liked and crowned and followed by hundreds (maybe thousands) of readers. You’d have to keep searching through page after page after page to find anything even remotely new.

It’s incredibly frustrating to get any readers on anything new without some EXTREME promo and marketing skills on the author’s end. (I think I got exactly 1 reader from a post on Twitter rather than from the Facebook promo games.) I had to enter into multiple Facebook groups (there are TONS and I’ve been told that not all are worth it), and from there check each one every day, sometimes multiple times a day, to see if there were any posts calling for author promos and the qualifications needed to provide your links.

All that being said, I’m still going to be moving forward with publishing my GPA novellas/novels on Vella first before turning them into books for sale on Amazon. It’s honestly the best way for me to make money in these rough times my family’s experiencing at the moment. Is it going to be easy? Probably not. But with the amount of money I could be getting based on these bonuses, it’s really hard to say no.

So, keep a look out. My 3rd Ruby book will NOT be on Vella, as I want to get that out as soon as possible to the people who’ve been asking after it for the past year. But, I’ve got 2 GPA novellas in progress at the moment that I’m trying to finish as quickly as I can (while still producing quality work). They’ll both be uploaded to Vella first, and if you’re curious, you’ll be able to read the first 3 episodes for free there to see if you’d like a taste. You can then either follow the stories to get new updates once or twice a week (as my schedule allows), or wait for the book releases that will follow about 30+ days after the last episode has been published.

I’ll probably post more on this the closer I get to finishing those books.

-K