Quote:
Originally Posted by Camellia
As a reader, that looks like a terrible way to experience a story -- but they probably have market research proving me wrong.  |
I don't see this working well.
Yes, a lot of readers start serial stories. Fanfic has a massive amount of WIP (Works in Progress) posted. I'm sure Wattpad has a ton as well. Some people like having a story strung out over time, like a tv series.
But then a lot of people tend to get burned out on "over-long-never-finished" stories over time. I did early on, when I found that a huge percentage of fanfic never got finished. I found that many authors find it easy to write the characters into dramatic situations, but damned hard to actually get them out of it. So they just quit and move on, living the story in limbo.
And all that's put up with because it's for free. Nothing really lost but time, and some possible frustration, for the reader.
But buying tokens to read bits of a story? Yeah.... no. Not ever going there. I have enough frustration with other published authors doing cliffhangers to try to sell the next book. I hate that, and feel that it's a cheat if the story I bought isn't actually a complete story.
And I agree with another poster. This is just -begging- authors to pad their work to up the word count and the cost of the chapter.
And if the work is complete, can the author then offer it in full on regular Amazon? Will they charge the same for the complete work as buying it by chapter? That sounds messy.
[Edited... I see now that they can't publish it in complete book form. Once on Vella, I guess it stays on Vella only, or you have to remove the Vella copy all together.]