Wednesday, April 14, 2021

The Business: Amazon Reinvents The Serial Magazine

Amazon announces a new aspect of its ebook publishing arm.

Quoting the video:

Kindle Direct Publishing is introducing a new storytelling option: Kindle Vella. With Kindle Vella, you can self-publish serialized stories, one short episode at a time. Episodes can range from 600 – 5,000 words. In the next few months, readers will be able to access all Kindle Vella stories in the Kindle iOS app and on Amazon.com.

This is Amazon attempting to replicate something aimed at mobile users that succeeded such as Webtoons and other serial publishing sites that are mobile-oriented, but with a different target audience of normie readers that are already invested in Amazon's walled garden. The PulpRev Discord is discussing this, as we've been looking for some way to put out a Pulp Magazine model, and this is geared for those who otherwise might hit up webnovel sites or something like them to publish serial fiction.

Right now, this is a US-only thing and confined to Apple's walled garden mobile infrastructure, but you can safely assume that there will be an Android app soon enough and some way to participate on your desktop.

For a longer video, by another working author with his own take on it, Derek Murphy's video is below; it's long, so you may want to bump playback speed to 1.5x so you can squeeze it out over a coffee break. The article version of Derek's take is here if you read faster than you watch.

This is a developing publishing situation, and there will be follow-ups as details emerge.

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