Kindle Vella

[0x6c616d70]

There are quite a few services that sell novels by chapters as the story is written. I hate it though, since I have to spend more to read it completely than purchasing a complete novel.

These things also tend to sacrifice quality for quantity as it may incentivize writers to keep profitable titles alive as long as possible.

[jhowell]

The latest update from Amazon on Kindle Vella:

Kindle Vella readers are coming soon!
July 07, 2021

Hello,

We're excited to share that, starting next week, readers will have access to Kindle Vella stories in the Kindle iOS app and on Amazon.com!

Once available, readers will be able to find and view your story in the Kindle Vella store; read the first few episodes of your story for free; use new features like Follow, Faves, and Thumbs Up to engage with your story; and purchase Tokens to unlock more episodes.

Make sure your stories are ready and waiting for your readers!

Stay tuned for future updates and click here to learn more about the reader experience.

-The Kindle Vella Team

[Deskisamess]

It sounds more and more and more like something aimed at kids.

Features like "Follow, Faves, and Thumbs Up to engage with your story; and purchase Tokens to unlock more episodes."

Sounds like an arcade or the latest candy crush game. All tied in with social media and drive by attention spans. Tokens? Unlock? What happened to dollars to buy? They must be bad words now.

(I've nothing against candy crush BTW, I play it myself, but never spend money on it)

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

It sounds more and more and more like something aimed at kids.

Features like "Follow, Faves, and Thumbs Up to engage with your story; and purchase Tokens to unlock more episodes."

Sounds like an arcade or the latest candy crush game. All tied in with social media and drive by attention spans. Tokens? Unlock? What happened to dollars to buy? They must be bad words now.

(I've nothing against candy crush BTW, I play it myself, but never spend money on it)

I'm not sure how, in 2021, you can associate Candy Crush, social media and short attention spans with "kids." Unless you consider a "kid" to be anyone under 35.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by ApK

I'm not sure how, in 2021, you can associate Candy Crush, social media and short attention spans with "kids." Unless you consider a "kid" to be anyone under 30.

Maybe my use of kids wasn't the best. Youth? Young adult? Greenhorns? Neophytes?

I'm 62, anyone under 30 IS a kid to me.

Good grief the picking apart of comments here is fatiguing.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Maybe my use of kids wasn't the best. Youth? Young adult? Greenhorns? Neophytes?

I'm 62, anyone under 30 IS a kid to me.

Good grief the picking apart of comments here is fatiguing.

While it's certainly not above me to pick apart a comment when the mood strikes, in this case I was merely directly disagreeing. I think the factors you mention signify they are targeting the large, hotly coveted, immensely profitable 18-35 demographic, not kids, particularly.

I'm 52. Is there a smiley or emoticon we can use to commiserate over how the younger generation is ruining the culture?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ApK

While it's certainly not above me to pick apart a comment when the mood strikes, in this case I was merely directly disagreeing. I think the factors you mention signify they are targeting the large, hotly coveted, immensely profitable 18-35 demographic, not kids, particularly.

I'm 52. Is there a smiley or emoticon we can use to commiserate over how the younger generation is ruining the culture?

I think that the target market is even younger than that--I'd be surprised if it reaches into the late 20's, even. Wattpad, et al., are directly targeted to Teen Culture, not even young adults (as *I* define them, say, 21-30).

FWIW. I'm sure that there are 90bajillion definitions out there that disagree with me. Just an observation.

Hitch

[jhowell]

Kindle Vella went live today: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella

You can get 200 tokens for free. Each token unlocks 100 words of a story.

[jhowell]

Content is divided into episodes of 600 to 5,000 words, each of which can contain a title (shown at the beginning in large text) and an author note (shown at the end in italics.)

In terms of formatting, Amazon intentionally dumbed it down. Only text is allowed with no special characters such as emoji. The only formatting supported is bold, italic, and underline. Some common e-book formatting features not allowed are indented paragraphs, centering or right alignment, lists, tables, fonts, text sizing, hyperlinks, and images.

Currently Vella is only available via the web and the Kindle iOS app with support in the Kindle Android app to follow. No mention is made of making it available on e-ink Kindle devices or the PC/Mac apps. I have seen no indications that Vella will ever be coming those platforms.

I did some investigation to determine the format and technology behind this new reading experience. The website (https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella) and the iOS app are implemented very differently.


Vella on iOS

The Vella experience in the Kindle iOS app treats each episode much like a Kindle e-book. It allows customization in font, size, justification, and other characteristics. However episodes are always displayed in scrolling mode. Paged viewing is not supported.

Episodes are stored on the device and can be viewed offline. Standard book reading features, such as dictionary lookup and annotations, are available. Reading position, highlights, and annotations sync between devices.

Episodes download in Amazon's proprietary KFX format with strong DRM.


Vella in a web browser

The implementation of Vella on the web is quite different. The Vella reading experience in a browser is not customizable. Font, size, justification, and line spacing cannot be changed by the consumer. Annotations and highlights made using the iOS app do not appear. Offline viewing is not supported.

The website delivers each episode as HTML text with no encryption other than that provided by HTTPS. It is rendered in a way that disables the simple copying of text from the web browser, but there is no other DRM involved. It is fairly easy to copy episode content using the debugging features built into browsers, such as Inspect in Chrome.

Locked episodes are only partially downloaded so it is not possible to use the Inspect trick to obtain unpaid content. However once a paid episode is unlocked it's full content is downloaded and becomes potentially copyable.

I find the lack of customization, DRM, and other reading features to be surprising. Amazon has already implemented a more flexible reading experience and strong DRM in their Kindle Cloud Reader. I suspect that the current web implementation of Vella was rushed and that a more full featured and locked down version will be coming eventually.

[jhowell]

Long before I ever heard of Kindle Vella I came across references to a new Kindle feature called Falkor. Now that Vella has launched it appears that Falkor is actually Amazon's code name for the micro-payment token system used to purchase and unlock Vella episodes.

This make me wonder whether Falkor is actually a separate project from Vella. It may be that Amazon intends to use these tokens for other types of inexpensive purchases in the future in order to reduce transaction fees.

Correction: After seeing the Falkor name more frequently I retract the above statement. As far as I can tell Falkor is the code name for Kindle Vella, not just the token payment system.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Long before I ever heard of Kindle Vella I came across references to a new Kindle feature called Falkor. Now that Vella has launched it appears that Falkor is actually Amazon's code name for the micro-payment token system used to purchase and unlock Vella episodes.

This make me wonder whether Falkor is actually a separate project from Vella. It may be that Amazon intends to use these tokens for other types of inexpensive purchases in the future in order to reduce transaction fees.

Ah-hah! That explains it. That's a good thought process--that they're seeking ways around transaction fees. I'm always shocked, at the end of my fiscal year, when I see what *I* pay in transaction fees and we're an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny company. Hell, I'd probably be thrilled to earn 1/10th-of-1% of what Amazon pays in trans fees alone!

(Falkor..I'd love to know the thought process behind that one...Luck Dragon, right?)

Hitch

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

(Falkor..I'd love to know the thought process behind that one...Luck Dragon, right?)

Amazon's code names can be strange. The code name for their KFX e-book format is YJ which is short for Yellow Jersey, from the Tour de France.

Perhaps someone at Amazon likes The Neverending Story.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Amazon's code names can be strange. The code name for their KFX e-book format is YJ which is short for Yellow Jersey, from the Tour de France.

Perhaps someone at Amazon likes The Neverending Story.

I can understand YJ better than Falkor, to be honest.

HItch

[jhowell]

A code name for a new Kindle feature having something to do with periodicals that I saw recently is "newtron". My best guess it that it's a mashup of "news" and "neutron".

[DNSB]

I've received 5 author newsletter pushing their Vella books so some authors seem to be seeing the value in it. One of them is apparently going to release a full length (300+ pages) novel in Vella sized chunks. A bit of quick calculation suggests that I would be better off buying a published in one chunk ebook instead.