Imagine reading your favorite authors in a television series mini-book on digital platforms you already own.
Already established Radish and developing Kindle Vella offer serialized fiction but are marketable in different ways.
Reader Features for Kindle Vella
Readers in a few months can access Kindle Vella content through the Kindle iOS app or Amazon.com. It is not known at this time if Amazon will decide to expand platforms to reach Android smartphone users. Readers of Kindle Vella will be able to read the first three episodes of any story for free to see if they are interested in the story line before purchasing sequential episodes.
Readers will then have to purchase “Tokens” through the app or website. Each episode cost is dependent on the number of words the writer writes in the episode. Derek Murphy breaks down the cost of Tokens in CreativINDIE, saying, “The pay scale is roughly one token for 100 words, or 50 Tokens for the max length of 5,000 words per episode.”
Kindle Vella offers a minimum purchase of 200 tokens for $1.99, equivalent to four or more episodes depending on the length of the author’s work. Kindle Vella says, “Token pricing may change before Kindle Vella stories are made available to readers.”
Fun interactive features on the Kindle Vella platform allow readers to click a “thumbs up” button to support the author by liking their episode and showing a positive review to other prospective readers. Readers can ‘crown’ one weekly “fave” episode they enjoyed. The episodes that are most “faved” will be featured in the Kindle Vella store. A feature like this allows readers to support their favorite author’s work. Readers can view Author Notes at the end of an episode to see what surprises may be in store for the next episode.
Reader Features for Radish
Radish readers can access episodes of their favorite written stories on an iPhone, iPad, or Android through the Radish app in Apple Store or Play Store. Radish also includes three free episodes for readers to browse. Readers then can buy locked episodes without waiting for them to be free for three “coins.”
The reader can purchase coins through the Radish app. A minimum purchase of six coins is $0.99, or equivalent to two episodes. Radish readers can earn coins by watching up to six video ads per day for six coins and perform ad offers tasks for various amounts of coin or invite their friends to subscribe to Radish for both members to earn 12 coins.
Readers can try their luck in the daily Lucky Draw that shuffles a deck of cards and allows app users to pick a card to see if they successfully won coins or coupons that day. Radish has story coupons that Radish gives as “gifts,” or from author giveaways, but unlike coins, story coupons sometimes are story specific.
Radish offers some cool features for their readers. Radish allows readers to heart an episode they love by clicking on the heart button at the bottom of an episode. Radish lets readers interact with the author by enabling readers to comment on episodes and allowing the author to host live chats with fans. Readers can interact with their favorite episode author through the Radish live chatrooms and comments to ask their burning questions, see what is in store for present and future stories, and possibly win story coupons from the author.
Author Features for Kindle Vella
Kindle Vella announced that current Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) writers who reside in the United States can publish on Kindle Vella. There is no announcement as of yet about expanding into other KDP countries.
Future Kindle Vella authors can try their hand at serialized fiction by going to the Kindle Vella Library, uploading their story title, name or pen name, a brief description of the story for readers, an image for the story, up to two categories the story falls under, submitting up to seven story tags for the story, and the episode you wish to publish.
Kindle Vella authors earn 50% royalties “…of what readers spend on the Tokens that are used to unlock your story’s episodes.” Kindle Vella’s royalty formula per episode:
(Number of Tokens to unlock episode) x (Tokens bundle price / # Tokens in bundle – taxes and fees) x (50% rev share) = Earnings per episode
Kindle Vella has not released a range of the cost of taxes and fees per Token plan. Tokens will be available for purchase through the Kindle iOS app for a fee. Whichever Token plan purchased is what will be subtracted from the revenue in the royalty formula.
Author Features for Radish
Radish has prospective authors apply for a spot on their app by applying on the Radish Writer Application Form. This form asks potential authors to list their name, email, a short blurb about their writing career, an optional pen name, and to choose an unlimited number of categories they wish to submit stories. It is also crucial that writers send a pdf, doc, or docx of a least the first 30 pages of their story pitch. Radish also asks that you summarize the plot and link other writing platforms to view previous work samples.
Once accepted, Radish authors are encouraged to regularly submit a 1,000-to-2,000-word episode with a pricing model for the episode. Radish’s royalty plan is hard to find on their website and app. Radish gives an example of that, “We have writers making over $1,000 in monthly revenue – with some top writers earning nearly $40,000 a quarter.” There are speculative articles about what authors have earned through Radish, but no royalty formula or percentage is listed on Radish.
Each platform has its pros and cons, but Radish and Kindle have their own user preferences, brand loyalty, and economic value.