Got an email from KDP recently letting me know that they were discontinuing the Kindle Vella program, due to it not taking off the way Amazon expected since it began in December 2021. Frankly, the response to the two stories I'd started on the platform was a bit underwhelming, as you can see by the graph here depicting every time someone read at least one chapter. Most folks appeared to pop in, read one or two chapters, then leave. Two ambitious folks read both stories in their entirety, but despite including my email at the end of virtually every chapter and damn-near begging people to drop me a line if they liked it, I never got any feedback save for getting some thumbs-up marks on the chapters (which I honestly didn't even notice until today). Since they're shutting down the whole dang program, I imagine this was typical for most of the writers who tried it out.
On the upside, I made nearly twenty bucks thanks to KDP sending participants bonuses for contributing to the program. It's a damn sight better than the royalties those two stories earned, which amounted to about forty cents over those three years. Not exactly a hidden goldmine, right?
So, what now? The stories will be finished eventually, so if you're one of the few who read them, physical copies will one day exist, but I wanna get the published version of my Jonah Hex history project done first, not to mention the second Swords & Sixguns novel. Low response means low priority, unless y'all want to convince me otherwise.
And if you never read them at all, then you've got until February 2025 to read them on your Kindle. You can find the first four chapters of Godheart here, and the first seven chapters of Forgotten Be Thy Name over here....and if you like them, for goodness sakes, tell me!
