Kindle Vella is Shutting Down. Looking for a New Serial Fiction Home? Consider Laterpress.
Vella's closure has serial authors looking for new homes. We hope to be that destination for you.
On Monday, October 28th, Amazon announced the end of their Kindle Vella serial fiction platform. New stories can no longer be created on the Vella platform. New episodes (their name for chapters) can be added to existing stories until December 4th. After that, readers cannot buy tokens to unlock episodes, and authors can’t add new content. The platform will become essentially “read only” until February 2025, at which time all Vella content will be unpublished and disappear from Amazon.
If you’re an author who self-published Kindle Vella stories and are impacted by this announcement, you have our condolences. Attracting readers is tough, and migrating them to a new platform can be even harder. We hope Vella’s end isn’t also the end of your time releasing fiction in a serialized format. That release structure is so motivating for me. I love the dopamine hit and sense of progress every chapter’s release provides. (And it’s always a good feeling when you end a chapter on a cliffhanger and readers are dying to know what happens next!)
With Kindle Vella closing down, where can serial fiction writers go with their stories, especially if they wish to monetize them? If you’re an indie author open to publishing outside Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) ecosystem, we hope you’ll consider publishing through Laterpress. Whether you publish with us or not, we wish you success with the next episode of your publishing journey.
Why consider publishing through Laterpress? Would you publish on a platform where you make 100% royalties on your direct sales, minus payment processing fees? A platform where YOU control how much content is given away as a free preview, and you have the power to set your own prices? A platform where payment lands in your bank account days after someone made a purchase, not months later? A platform where readers can read your stories from any browser connected device, without needing to download an app?
If any of that sounds appealing to you, read on to learn more about Laterpress!
THE READER EXPERIENCE
Kindle Vella - Each episode of a Vella serial had a word count limit, requiring chapters to be between 600 and 5,000 words. Episodes could be read from Amazon’s site, or the kindle app on ios and android devices. (Though oddly, never from an Amazon Kindle device, like the Paperwhite or Scribe.)
Laterpress - Stories are web-native, readable on any browser-connected device. This includes computers, smartphones, tablets, even browsers in game consoles. (I’ve read Laterpress hosted fiction on my Xbox. It can be done!) There are no word count rules. Make your chapters as short or as long as you want.
Authors can also make their books downloadable. This optional feature would let anyone who purchases your book download a file they can send to an ereader like a Kindle or a Kobo and enjoy it that way.
Want to see some examples of what books look like on Laterpress? Below are five stories which all started as serialized fiction before becoming finished novels, or are still ongoing serials.
The Truthspoken Heir, by Novae Caelum (Sci-Fi)
Sigils & Sushi, by Nia Quinn (Urban Fantasy)
Finding Normal, by E.A. West (The longest-running serial currently on Laterpress with over 200 chapters!)
Chew, by Naomi Ault (Horror)
Welcome to the Nexus, by Nate Gillick (Epic Portal Fantasy)
We also have a large library of public domain books that can be enjoyed for free.
PUBLISHING CHAPTERS / EPISODES
Kindle Vella Episodes - Authors could schedule when episodes release, or publish them to go live as soon as Amazon’s systems reviewed and approved them.
Laterpress - When you publish a chapter, it’s live that instant. No delay. The ability to schedule when chapters go live is in development, and should be available in the next few weeks.
FREE PREVIEWS
Kindle Vella - At launch, the first three episodes on content were always free. That number was later increased to the first ten episodes. This was a mandatory setting authors could not change, short of artificially breaking up the story into shorter chunks to hit the free limit faster.
Laterpress - Authors have much greater control over how much content is given away for free. You could have no free preview chapters. You could have up to 100. (Yes, really.) You could make the whole thing free. The choice is yours, and it can be changed at any time. You’re not forced to commit to a decision.
MONETIZATION
Kindle Vella - A platform-specific currency model, where authors made a 50% royalty based on whatever the purchase price of tokens was. The math got convoluted with different token bundle options. At launch, episode cost was based on word count. Later, all chapters cost 10 tokens regardless of length, punishing authors who wrote longer chapters.
Laterpress - Authors can set their own prices. Sell your serial like novels, with each season being its own single purchase. Sell chapter bundles. Make your fiction available to subscribers only. The choice is yours! (Currently, subscriptions are annual only. Monthly subscription options are in development and should be available by the end of the year.)
PAYMENTS
Kindle Vella - KDP account holders are issued a single payment combining all revenue, paid out two months after that month. (Meaning January earnings are received in March.)
Laterpress - Stripe is our payment processor. When someone makes a purchase, those funds will be deposited into your bank account within five business days.
RESTRICTIONS
Kindle Vella - Had rules around the minimum number of episodes that must be included if Vella content was being repackaged into an ebook to be sold on their main bookstore, or enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Content could be serialized elsewhere if it was behind a paywall.
Laterpress - None. We have no restrictions on where or how you publish. Use us exclusively. Publish on Wattpad, Royal Road, Radish, Laterpress, and more at the same time. However you want to publish, we’re happy to be included in those plans, and don’t want to do anything to restrict your business.
COMMUNITY
Kindle Vella - Amazon wanted Vella to borrow elements common to social media. Episodes could be given a “thumbs up,” with that system serving as social proof people were reading a story. They featured trending stories. There was a leaderboard for “top faved” stories. Authors could leave author notes at the end of each episode, offering behind-the-scenes info, or use the space to make announcements.
Laterpress - Our publishing platform was built around making direct sales for self-published authors as easy as possible, while providing a quality reading experience. Readers can leave ratings and reviews on a book, but we do not currently offer the ability to leave comments. More community features are planned for the future, which I'll comment on more below.
FINDING NEW READERS
The Kindle Vella Store - Vella stories were grouped up in their own section of Amazon’s site. Besides the previously mentioned trending stories and top faves, readers could search by genre or common story tags. This page also showed a reader’s Vella library – all the Vella titles they’ve been reading.
Laterpress - As a “direct sales first” platform, we’re upfront in setting the expectation that most of the readers buying your book through us will be readers you brought here. That’s a large part of the reason we give authors 100% royalties on their sales (less payment processor fees). You did the work of making that sale, you deserve the reward!
With that said, we offer several features to help build an audience, and we will be expanding these features over time. Every reader has access to a Laterpress bookshelf, which shows every Laterpress-hosted book a reader has purchased, all in one place. When a reader gets to the end of a book or scrolls to the bottom of the bookshelf, they will see recommendations for other books in a similar genre to the one they’re currently reading. These Author Community Features are how Laterpress makes our money. If a reader discovers a new book through recommendations and buys it, there is a 15% fee assessed on that transaction, with 10% going to Laterpress, and 5% going to the author whose book led that reader to discovering a new author. That’s right, we only receive a cut when our discovery features lead to new readers finding your work, and authors get a cut for the traffic their books bring to their fellow authors. That means it’s in our direct best interest to create an ecosystem where lots of authors are publishing books, and continue to improve discovery features to create that cross traffic for readers to discover new authors, benefitting everyone. Look for us to keep iterating and expanding on these features over time, including some announcements we have planned for 2025.
LEAVING THE PLATFORM
Kindle Vella - All Vella authors will see their stories unpublished automatically in February 2025. Prior to the shutdown notice, there was a delay before stories would be taken down, to allow time for readers to finish what they started. Amazon owns the reader data, not authors.
Laterpress - Publish or unpublish your stories whenever you’d like. We offer reports authors can download so you know who your customers are and can notify them of your changes of plans. Your subscribers are YOURS, not Laterpress’s, and we provide the information you’d need to take them with you. Your customer data is yours. If you decide to pursue other options, we don’t want anyone leaving feeling like they’re back to Square One, as it might be with other platforms.
NEW FEATURES COMING SOON:
Scheduled Publication - Plan out when each chapter of your serial goes live. Authors can “set it and forget it,” making it easier to manage consistent chapter releases and set reader expectations on when new installments of the book will be available.
Monthly Subscriptions - Authors can soon set a monthly subscription price for access to their stories. This is a much-requested feature and a staple on other platforms. We’re happy to make that option available to authors in the near future!
Audiobook Functionality - We have plans for tools that will allow authors to provide an audio option to readers, helping make your stories as accessible as possible, and giving readers more choices in how they engage with the book. Even better, these features are planned to work on a chapter-by-chapter basis, meaning every story episode can have audio upon release. No need to create audio for an entire book in one go!
Community Features - It’s too soon to talk about specifics, but we have some big announcements planned for 2025 on this front. Stay tuned!
Do you want to know more? Here’s some additional recommended reading:
Learn about our Author Community Features and Affiliate Links
Join our Discord community and learn from Laterpress staff and users.
What a more guided walkthrough of Laterpress? Feel free to sign up for a private demo.
Keep Calm and Carry On
We're huge fans of serial fiction here at Laterpress, and hope everyone impacted by the Kindle Vella closure finds a good home for their stories. Whether you choose to include us in your future plans or not, we hope you find success, however you define it. We want to see a future where serial fiction continues to grow and thrive, and are doing everything we can to build a platform that achieves that vision. It's been an exciting few years for us, and the best is yet to come. Seriously, 2025 is going to be wild, and we hope to have you along for the ride!