The Business: Kindle Vella, I'm Not Impressed

Oh look, Amazon cut a video pitching Vella.

I am not impressed.

I see nothing here that I cannot do with a properly structured Patreon account (or something like it), and I can add more value with something like Patreon for serialized stories that Vella does not offer. In addition, I can still collect the chapters together and publish it on Amazon as a stand-alone novel. I retain a commercially-viable presence outside of Amazon--a matter of increasing importance as Amazon's dominance grows--and I am immune to Amazon executing any legal schenanigans down the road.

All that Vella has to offer is incorporation into the Amazon infrastructure. I sense that the Vella team realizes that it is their biggest strength, so I expect them to lean hard on that in the future, but for now there is not enough there to make me want to further incorporate myself into the Borg that is Amazon. Not when I forsee that future conditions to be ones that favor author diversifying their offerings away from Amazon due to breakups in the global nature of the Internet (e.g. Russia changing its tech laws to favor Russian operations over foreign ones across the board, making it easier to sell books there via a Russian competitor to Amazon).

If you think I'm wrong, sell me on Vella.