The Kindle Vella bonus for December 2021 for authors has risen by the usual $50,000 to $650,000 from $600,000 in November 2021.
Amazon has extended the reach of Kindle Vella stories by making them available to readers in the Kindle app on Android and Fire devices.
Readers can find the Kindle Vella storefront in the Kindle app by going to the Store tab and tapping on the Kindle Vella link in the top menu, or search by author name or story name in the Kindle app on Android and Fire devices.
Kindle Vella is a recently launched venture from Amazon which focuses on serialized stories. It started running in July 2021 and initially only offered reader access through the Kindle iOS app and on Amazon.com, so extending Vella to Android and Fire devices is a major expansion. Kindle Vella is so far available only to the US market.
There are some signs that the Kindle Vella venture might be starting to pick up some momentum.
The Marriage Auction by Audrey Carlan is still leading at the top of the Vella Faves for another month. The serial, about four women who enter into a clandestine auction to be married to the highest bidders, was in the top spot in October with 16,240 thumbs-up and that rose to 23,611 in November and the serial now has more than 44,000 thumbs-up, so it almost doubled in a month.
Thumbs Up are given by readers when they like an episode to let the author and other readers know you liked it. Faves are a different factor and readers get one Fave a week when they unlock episodes and can award that Fave to the story they’re enjoying most that week.
However, it’s second-placed Hot Vampire Next Door by Nikki St Crowe that showed the real growth in hitting over 23,000 thumbs-up for December from around 9,000 in the previous month.
Amazon says the Vella bonus program is ongoing and it will continue to award bonuses as the program grows. For December, stories are rewarded based on customer activity such as Faves, Follows, and Token redemption (free and paid), as well as publishing activity, including the number of new episodes and frequency of episodes published in December. The company says it continues to see readers are enjoying stories that are updated regularly.
If you’ve earned a bonus for December, you will get an email and can see the bonus amount posted in your Kindle Vella Dashboard (https://kdpreports.amazon.com/kindle-vella). The bonus and Kindle Vella royalty earnings will be paid out with your total KDP payments in February.
For all authors, Amazon is continuing to compensate episodes unlocked using free tokens at the 200-token bundle rate until March 2022. This compensation will be included with your overall bonus amount.
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