Today is the day that I have become a Kindle Vella author.

But it was one day last week that I officially took the plunge. I won’t give the full story right now. Here’s the short version.

I’ve been working on Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution, since June. I did the research for this back in 2021, but other writing got in the way. But I made good progress on it in June, July, and August. I felt I was working toward a schedule that might have the book published in October if everything went right, or in November if not.

Completing the fourth book in the series would feel good. I published the last one in 2019. I can’t believe it’s been four years since then. I had enjoyed writing the series and always planned for more volumes, but other books got in the way. Finally, I made the decision that this one would be next. The fact that I have more sales in this series than any other was a strong inducement to get back to this.

But my plans were interrupted by Kindle Vella. For those who don’t know, Vella is a place where authors publish their stories/books as a series. Chapters are called “Episodes,” books are called “Season.” They can be published on any subject, at any frequency the author wants.

Vella has a combination of fiction and nonfiction titles, but fiction dominates. I’ve browsed the nonfiction lists and haven’t been impressed with what’s there.

I’ve been watching Vella a couple of months. No one really knows if it is going to be successful. I finally decided there was no downside. I publish episodes while I’m still finishing up the final chapters. Vella allows you to publish the season as a book thirty days after the final episode appears. So I put it on Vella first. That causes me to be disciplined, to keep writing, editing, uploading, formatting, and promoting. When done, I’ll pull the episode back into a book and publish it that way.

Maybe I’ll make a little money with this volume on Vella, maybe not. But the book will be published, perhaps three or four months later than intended, but it will be published. Maybe it will join the ranks of its older brothers in the series and increase my sales later on.

Here’s the link to the series on Vella. Or maybe that’s just to the first episode. The first three episodes are free for anyone to read. Some number of free tokens are available to new readers. After that, you buy tokens and use them to read episodes. I’m not quite sure of the cost to read a book like this. But check it out.