The Kindle Vella bonus for October 2021 has risen to $550,000 from $500,000 in September 2021.
Amazon appears to have dropped the ‘launch’ part of the ‘launch bonus’ as it has been known since Vella started in mid-July.
The company has also extended the compensation for authors whose works are read using free Tokens at the 200 Token bundle rate until March 2022 — it was previously until the end of 2021. This compensation will be included with your overall bonus amount.
Amazon says, ‘Our bonus program is ongoing and we will continue to award bonuses as the program grows. For the month of October, stories are rewarded based on customer activity such as Faves, Thumbs Up, and Token redemption (free and paid), as well as publishing activity, including the number of new episodes and frequency of episodes published in the month of October.
‘We continue to see readers are enjoying stories that are updated regularly, and want to encourage you to publish episodes frequently to keep readers engaged.’
Weaknesses in the Kindle Vella system are starting to emerge with complaints from readers about the high cost of reading some serials, with a 30-part serial possibly costing a total of $20 and upwards. There are criticisms about the token payment process and some readers are also turning away from the serial format, saying they prefer to read books from the beginning through to the end.
It looks like Amazon needs to at least tweak the Vella formula, perhaps with a monthly subscription fee rather than the convoluted token payments and open-ended cost of reading a serial.