Last weekend, I was at Or-E-Con, the virtual OryCon, which is on (temporary, hopefully) physical hiatus.
At noon Saturday was a panel on, among other things, streaming with Vella. Everything in this entry is derived from my notes, and a few things I’ve heard from other writers who have used Vella to serialize their stories.
Most of the information here is what I noted from what Robert Plamondon, author of (among other things) the Vella serialized story Silver Buckshot: Magic, Mystery, and a Most Aggravating Boyfriend
Any errors are my own, and any misrepresentations are unintentional and will be corrected if pointed out.
I myself am planning to start a Vella story, Yagmar the Barbarian: The Singer and the Staff, in January. So, tune in here next year and I’ll follow up this entry with what I learned then.
The panel started off with Robert Plamondon explaining what Vella is, and demonstrating how to set up an episode.
What is Vella?
What it is, is a way of serializing stories. The author posts one chapter at a time, readers buy tokens and can spend them to read chapters of a story. The first three chapters are always free, so readers can decide after that if they’re interested enough to start spending their tokens.
Writers are paid based on a combination of how many tokens are spent on a story, but also on reader engagement, through monthly bonuses. “Engagement” is a nebulously defined term, and based on a complex secret formula that incorporates not just how many people read something, but how many respond to it, vote for it, answer the polls, and also how regular a schedule the author keeps.
Setting up an episode is a simple feat. Once you have your account set up, and your story created, you can post episodes just by clicking the “new episode” button, filling in a bit of information, and uploading the text.
Two things he recommended about doing so:
- Always use “Upload a Word doc” (and put each chapter in its own word document) and not “Freeform” which is the other option. You can do all your formatting in Word, and Vella will preserve it on import.
- Set up each new episode in advance. When you create it, there’s a field to schedule when it goes live. Plamondon recommends always using that field, so that your story updates on a well defined schedule. Episodes of Silver Buckshot for example are released every Sunday morning at 8am. I plan to do the same with Yagmar, but on Friday morning, so people can read it over the weekend.
When you set up the episode, make use of the options to use polls and the Author Note. Both of those things will increase engagement, and thus your bonuses, and help keep readers interested so they come back to the story. You don’t need to use them on every single episode, but definitely use them frequently.
How to maximize your bonuses?
I’ve found several things around the web recommending various tricks, but what it all boils down to seems to be to update on a regular schedule, make frequent use of both polls and author notes, and, of course, write a story that will interest people and make them want to keep coming back for it.
How frequently should you update?
Plamondon says that conventional wisdom says once per week. Some people think twice per week increases engagement. That might be true, but it doesn’t double it, and may not be worth the extra stress of trying to match it.
There’s also the danger of losing readers by updating too frequently. If they always have a long list of unread chapters, they may feel like they can’t catch up, and just give up altogether.
What about word count? How long should each episode be?
Plamondon says he doesn’t even know for sure what his average length is. It can be anywhere from 600 to 5000 words long. He doesn’t worry about it, and he’s happy.
I’m personally aiming for around 1000-1500 words per episode, as I have read elsewhere that that’s a sweet spot. I guess I’ll let you know in the follow up next year how that worked out for me.
How About You?
Anybody else have any experience you’d like to share? Or questions you’d like me to answer? Please post in the comments below, and I’ll do my best!