What Is Kindle Vella, And How Does It Work?

Amazon's Kindle series has been the go-to for all digital bibliophiles alike. There is just an immense convenience in being able to carry thousands of novels in a device that's no bigger than an iPad — and one that lasts days on end once you figure out how to maximize your Kindle's battery life. Despite bringing in nearly 500 million sales in e-books every year, Amazon isn't done trying new ideas to find the next niche it could dominate. 

Kindle Vella was launched in mid-2021 and offered a new way for authors to publish their stories online. As opposed to how traditional e-books work, where customers buy a book outright, Kindle Vella introduces a serialized approach to sharing and reading stories online. While it might not have debuted as the number one book sharing platform as Amazon might have hoped, Kindle Vella is still interesting in many ways, and allows publishers to earn royalties on a per-episode basis. 

More importantly, as a reader, is it worth trying out this new platform? Here's pretty much everything you need to know about Kindle Vella. 

Designed to maximize engagement (and earnings) from readers, Kindle's Vella platform brings an episodic format to reading books. Think of it like an episodic podcast, but for books. The author breaks down their stories into smaller chunks and publishes them as episodes in a serial order. The readers can then pay to read new episodes when they roll out.

Kindle Vella can be downloaded as an app for Android and iOS, but is ironically not available on most of Amazon's Kindle e-book readers. Since its inception, the platform is also only available for authors and readers based in the U.S. For everyone else, perhaps Amazon hopes you to make your Kindle e-reader more useful with a few tricks. 

But if you are based in the U.S. and have access to the Vella section in the Kindle app, its serialized approach to storytelling might be worth giving a shot. Depending on whether you are a reader or an author keen to generate revenue, Kindle Vella has features accommodating everyone's requirements. 

As a reader, you can sign up for Kindle Vella free of cost, and start exploring the depths of what the service has to offer. Stories can be searched based on categories, tags, and even keywords that the book's contents might contain. Once you find a title that piques your interest, you can view details about the book such as its synopsis, chapter names, and the number of likes. The first ten episodes of every story can be unlocked without paying a dime, which hopefully amounts to enough words and plot points for you to decide if paying for subsequent episodes of the story is worth it. 

Once you do get hooked on to a story, you can purchase new episodes with tokens — which are Kindle Vella's in-app currency. You can purchase tokens using real money and often find bundles that offer better value. Kindle Vella will display the number of current episodes in a story, alongside an indicator that shows if new content for the book is underway. You can pay for each episode as you go, or purchase a few at once for uninterrupted reading.

Kindle Vella also features a few ways readers can interact with the stories they read. If you find a story exhilarating, you can choose to follow it and be notified of new content when it is published. Every time you purchase tokens, you get a weekly "Fave" that can be used on a story you've really enjoyed.

Kindle Vella aims to give the authors as much of a new experience as it does to the readers. As a storyteller, you can publish individual episodes for readers to enjoy. Each episode must be between 600 and 5,000 words, which gives good leeway for different genres of stories to exist on the platform. If the first 10 chapters of your book have managed to convince readers to pay for additional episodes, you earn 50% of the cost of the tokens spent by the users. This royalty-based earning may be supplemented with bonuses based on high user engagement or likes. 

You can glance over the dashboard that displays various metrics that stem from user interaction. If your story has received a good number of weekly faves, that may put it up in the list of the "Most Faved" section on the Kindle Vella store. Users can also choose to "Crown" your stories which will push it to the "Top Faved" section of the app, potentially bringing in more readers. 

Readers can leave comments under every episode and interact with the opinions of others. You can view these comments, like, or even reply to them. At the end of every episode, you can add a poll to maximize user engagement and gather inputs that can be used to improve upcoming episodes in your story. This is also where you can choose to add an author's note to keep readers excited for what's to come.

The token-based approach to Vella means you need to shell out money for every episode of a story you like. Each episode costs 10 tokens — but the cheapest bundle includes 100 tokens for $0.99. Higher bundles of 300, 900, and 2,000 tokens also exist for $2.79, $7.99, and $16.79 respectively. Note that payments will cost you slightly more if you choose to buy tokens directly from the Kindle app on iOS, so logging into your Amazon account and purchasing tokens on the web is the way to go if you're buying a bunch. 

Since every episode can have anywhere between a few hundred to 5,000 words, it's difficult to estimate exactly how many words your tokens can get you. Additionally, Prime Student is one of the few discounted Amazon Prime memberships that enjoys full and free access to Kindle Vella, so be sure to check if you're eligible for it. Overall, blending a dynamic style of reading with a flexible payment structure is something that makes Kindle Vella a unique offering in the landscape of e-reading services.