According to Amazon’s announcement, “Kindle Vella is a new storytelling option from Kindle Direct Publishing to self-publish serialized stories, one short episode at a time. Readers will access Kindle Vella stories in the Kindle iOS app and on Amazon.com.”

Authors can use it now to begin building an inventory of serialized stories. Amazon will launch it to readers this summer.

Kindle Villa from the experts’ perspective

When it comes to providing insights and advice, I’m a big believer in staying in your lane. This topic is outside mine, but it’s an important one that I don’t want to ignore.

Because of that, rather than researching this myself, I’m connecting you with Kindle Vella summaries provided by experts I trust.

Here’s a quick review of their articles on the subject and a link to the full text of each.

Reedsy, “What is Kindle Vella? And Should You Join as an Author?”

Read this first. It’s the most thorough explanation of how the program works and whether there’s income-generating potential for you.

Pay close attention to the section titled, “How do Vella authors get paid?” It offers specifics I haven’t seen in any other Vella analysis.

Kindlepreneur, “Kindle Vella: Description, Features, and Tips for Authors”

Kindlepreneur is great at breaking things down step-by-step, and this article is no exception.

Writer Jason Hamilton’s long article answers all of your questions before you know what they are. Bookmark this one for its nuts-and-bolts perspective.

CreativIndie, “How to publish serialized short fiction with Kindle’s new ‘Vella’ program”

Derek Murphy comes at this from the viewpoint of an author who plans to leverage it immediately.

Murphy is planning to write three serialized stories:

1. Epic fantasy
2. Hardcore thriller
3. Serial-killer suspense

He offers a good overview of Kindle Vella competitors — serialization sites that are already well-established with readers who like this format.

Is it for you?

Are you and what you write a good fit for this new Amazon platform? It’s worth exploring if you:

• Write fiction
• Create stories that can be serialized
• Write for a young audience
• Are comfortable using KDP’s publishing platform
• Have a following you can market to

It’s important to either be writing for young readers already, or be able to do it — not everyone can. For the most part, baby boomers aren’t reading serialized fiction on their phones so if that’s who you want to write for, move along. There’s nothing for you here.

Are you going to give this a try? Please tell us in a comment why you’ll explore this interesting new platform.

Teens have abandoned Facebook, partly because people like us are using it.

According to a Pew Research Center study, Facebook is the fourth social network of choice for teens ages 13 to 17, after YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. Only 10 percent of the teens surveyed say they use Facebook most often.

When it comes to engaging with others, Snapchat is the place to be for teens.

5 things you need to know about Snapchat

While owner Snap Inc. describes it quite simply as “a new kind of camera,” it’s a multimedia messaging app. One thing that makes it different from other options is that photos users create on the app are only available for a short time. After you open an image a friend sent, the image will disappear.

Will you find your readers there?

Here are five things you need to know about Snapchat.

1. It’s popular.

• The app claims more than 300 million monthly active users.
• There are 188 million daily active users.

2. Users are young.

• 47 percent of U.S. teens consider Snapchat their most important social network:
• 28 percent of U.S. millennials use it daily.
• 79 percent of U.S. teens use it.
• 71 percent of users are younger than 34.
• In the UK, more than 25 percent of all smartphone users also use it.
• 50 percent of Norwegian smartphone users are on Snapchat.
• For the older than 16 crowd, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden have the highest levels of use.

3. More females than males use it.

• The gender breakdown is 59 percent female, 41 percent male.

4. People use it frequently.

• 63 percent of users access the app daily.
• 71 percent of users between 18 and 24 use it several times a day.
• Active users open the app 25 times a day.

5. Users spend time on the app.

• People spend an average of 30 minutes on the app daily.
• Users younger than 25 use the app an average of 40 minutes a day.

Data sources:

https://www.omnicoreagency.com/snapchat-statistics/

https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/snapchat-statistics/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/326460/snapchat-global-gender-group/

Getting started

You’ll find a great deal of helpful information online but if you’d like to take an affordable course, I spent a little time checking out options on Udemy. I looked for courses that have been updated in 2018, reviewed course outlines, and played sample videos.

I selected “How to Use Snapchat for Marketing in 2018” from the handful of choices that seem to be current and appropriate. (That’s an affiliate link.)

You might find “A Guide to Snapchat for People Who Don’t Get Snapchat” offered by The New York Times helpful. “What is Snapchat, how does it work and what is it used for?” also provides good, basic information.

For author-specific information, read the articles “Snapchat for Authors” and “12 Simple Chatchat Post Ideas and Examples.”

I spent a chunk of time going through Snapchat books on Amazon and couldn’t find anything I felt confident recommending. Most are short, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but they also seem to be poorly written and lack reviews.

Do you use Snapchat? What advice can you offer other authors?

Do you Wattpad? 5 tips from a Wattpad writer

By Natalie Wright

“Tips about Wattpad? What the heck is a Wattpad?” you ask.

For those of you unfamiliar with Wattpad, it’s a social media site dedicated solely to writers and readers. Anyone can post his or her work on Wattpad. Readers can fan the writer, place the writer’s story or poem into their library, comment directly on each chapter if they wish, and interact with the writer through messaging.

With over two million registered users worldwide, and over seven million unique visitors each month, Wattpad may seem like a social media must for writers. But is it?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Experience-based tips

I’ve been using Wattpad, both as a reader and writer, for over a year now. Here I’ll share five tips I’ve learned from my experience with Wattpad:

1. Users of the site are predominately teenagers and young adults. If you write for teens, then Wattpad is a fantastic place to spend some of your social media time. My observation is that the stories that garner the most reads and votes include vampires, witches, science fiction, fantasy, comedy and teen angst. If you write literary fiction (for example), I don’t think that Wattpad would be a useful site to become involved in.

2. Wattpad is social. You can post a brilliant story on Wattpad, but if you don’t take the time to interact with others, it will receive very little or no attention. To get started, peruse the stories in your favorite genre. If you like something that you read, fan the author, leave a comment, vote and otherwise be a good apple. Most Wattpad users will reciprocate, generating attention to your title.

My first novel, Emily’s House, had about 3000 reads when I was approached by Wattpad to highlight Emily’s House as a “Featured Selection”. That was last July. Emily’s House has now had over 850,00 reads on Wattpad. In order to become a featured selection, someone must recommend your story to Wattpad or it needs to have enough votes and activity to catch the attention of Wattpad curators (one of my readers recommended it to Wattpad for featured status). If your goal is to build a fan base, then try to get your story “featured” status to boost reads.

3. Wattpad is a good place to spread the word, but not a great place to garner sales. My Wattpad readers occasionally ask where they can buy my books. But for every reader that asks to purchase, I get a comment along the lines of “Hey, why isn’t all of Book 2 posted?” Many Wattpad users are teenagers and international. They don’t have the ability to freely order. My experience is that lots of reads and votes on Wattpad will not necessarily translate into sales. If you write books for adults, you may experience more of a sales increase than teen fiction writers.

4. If you’re still reading this after I just told you that Wattpad wouldn’t help your sales, then you may be wondering why the heck anyone would bother with it. Good question. Answer? Free market research. Wattpad is an excellent place to obtain feedback on your works in progress. Wattpad users are, for the most part, kind people who leave either positive comments or constructive feedback. If you write for a teen audience or an adult science fiction or fantasy audience, you’ll find millions of potential readers on Wattpad. And, don’t forget to read their stories. What better way to get an idea of what teen readers want to read? Read what they write.

5. If you’re interested in obtaining a traditional publishing contract and you write for the teen or young adult audience, building a fan base on Wattpad may help you land a publishing contract. Everyone talks about platform. What is a platform if not a group of readers interested in your work? If you use Wattpad wisely and consistently, you may build a group of devoted fans. Publishers have offered lucrative publishing contracts to Wattpad writers based on their loyal following. See this story about Brittany Geragotelis, aka BrittTheBookSlayer, who got a three-book deal with a traditional publisher once her story, Life’s a Witch, reached 19,000,000 reads on Wattpad. If traditional publishing remains the Holy Grail, then Wattpad may be a new path that writers can take to achieve it.

 Do you Wattpad? If you do, share your thoughts on it with us here. And you can view my Wattpad profile here.