I'm Releasing Chapters of My Novel (for Free)
Disclaimer: I am no longer participating in Kindle Vella. After working with the platform, I've determined it just isn't right for me or my audience. By September 2022, the currently-published chapter will be removed from the platform. No additional chapters will be published on Kindle Vella, but I may consider trying again in the future when the platform is no longer in its infancy.
Hello! I'm T. L. Bainter; I'm a writer who has received three short story awards from the renowned Writers of the Future competition for my works Edwin, The Ansleigh Arc, and Beneath Magenta Rain, the latter two of which you can read via Amazon. Writing has always been my passion and long-term dream, and I even wrote a novel several years ago that did pretty well (you may remember it as How I Ruined My Life). Recently, I chose to unpublish How I Ruined My Life to make room for an updated and much-improved variation on the story.
For a little over a year now, I have been referring to this story as Keeping Secrets from Friends, as a bit of an on-the-nose codename. Not only was I legitimately keeping the nature of my new story a secret from everyone, but much of the story does revolve around the sorts of things that we hide from everyone, including our closest friends. However, the official title of the novel is Spencer & Curt.
What's It About?
Spencer & Curt is a coming-of-age, young adult novel about a group of friends discovering the world and themselves. Each chapter is a new adventure with the ragtag crew of teens. Sometimes their adventure is a struggle to drink oddly-flavored sodas, other times the adventure is a quiet conversation on top of a water tower. In Spencer & Curt, you'll find difficult conversations, good laughs, believable romances, and true friends.
My focus with this story has largely been on characters and dialogue. This is very much a character-driven story, though the plot is of course important to some degree. Most of the story arcs will each be wrapped up in the chapter in which they're introduced (making this perfect for the serialized format provided by Kindle's "Kindle Vella" platform).
Why... Kindle Vella?
Here's the thing--I'm not really a huge fan of these sorts of platforms, at least in the current state of them. I've done Wattpad before and I actually have some good memories of my time doing that. I wrote more than I ever have, and I'm proud of the story I put on there all those years ago. More than that, I'm so glad I met some AMAZING writers (some of whom went on to be traditionally published and win awards) through that platform. However, it was not a way to find success because the kinds of stories I want to tell... aren't the stories that succeed on these platforms. Spencer & Curt won't find success on Kindle Vella. The good news is, that's not why I'm doing this!
Kindle Vella has a number of advantages, but the most key advantage for me is accessibility. Anyone can just go and read my story! It's going to be easy to find and reliably available, unlike if I just hosted a PDF on Google Drive and regularly updated that. Additionally, what if I want to make each chapter available as an eBook? I would have to consistently, manually recreate the eBook every two weeks and get that uploaded. That's painstaking. With Kindle Vella, I can easily upload each chapter as an "episode" every two weeks (my current upload schedule). This way, anyone can read each chapter that I put up (provided Kindle Vella is available in their region--I know it is currently unavailable in some places, but will be made available in the near future).
Ultimately: Kindle Vella is a decent enough platform, but it is the nature of platforms like these to attract certain sorts of writers (and then, certain sorts of readers). The algorithm for Kindle Vella could really do with some improvements, that's the best way that I can think to sum up this point. Don't judge my works based on the works that it is appearing alongside. Kindle Vella is a means to an end.
What DO I Want, Then?
So it's not about finding success on the platform, it's just about making sure people can read it. What do I want out of this, then? Well, that's pretty straightforward: a kick in the pants. By setting a very public goal of releasing one chapter, edited (at least reasonably) every two weeks, I can ensure that I'm going to finish editing this story. Editing is a slow, painful process for me. This isn't a story that I'm trying to be exceedingly secretive about and it lends itself quite well to the platform of Kindle Vella, so this is a perfect way to ensure that I will be putting my nose to the grindstone over the next several months as I work on this.
Additionally, I'll be getting real feedback (hopefully)! If you read a chapter of the story, I would absolutely love your feedback. Kindle Vella actually has a cool polling feature that I'll be putting to good use. With each chapter, I'll ask a question of my readers (you'll have about 30 days to answer any question associated with a chapter) regarding their opinion on a particular part of the chapter that I'm unsure about. In the first chapter, for example, I'm asking what you think of my opening (something with which I have always wrestled when it comes to writing). With a little help from readers, I'm sure I can make the best possible version of this new novel!
Where Do I Read?
Kindle Vella! I'll be releasing new chapters every other Saturday and the new chapter went up today! You can read it right now if you want. Seriously, go do it, I'd appreciate it so much! The image above will take you there, or you can click here. Once you've read the chapter, feel free to leave an honest review of the story so far (and respond to the poll)! You'll be able to read a new chapter every two weeks until this draft is finished and I do a final revision prior to the official release of the book!
Conclusion
Thanks for taking the time to check out this out-of-the-blue post! I'm so excited to finally start sharing this project with people. Even if only a few individuals discover this prior to it being published, that'll make my day. This is a story that has been on my mind and heart for a very, very long time, and reaching a point at which I feel comfortable sharing it in bits and pieces is a huge milestone. It has been ages since I've released a real, full-length novel and I'm just eager to get this process rolling. I appreciate you for whatever time you devote to this!