Suiting Up for Serialization
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | April 16, 2021 |
Is It Just a ‘Token’ Effort?
So there we were on Wednesday this week, duly reporting on the dash to digital by the spring/summer international book trade shows. (London Book Fair, Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the US Book Show, and more, all must again be digitally mounted again this year as coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic conditions remain unpredictable in early summer.)
And then something else happened: Amazon announced the creation and activation of Kindle Vella, a platform for serialized writing.
The significance of this played out in two perfectly positioned messages to the news media.
(1) The news itself on Wednesday, the first in a long time from the halls of Kindle Direct Publishing. Writers were invited to immediately begin to write and upload content to Vella. The Kindle Vella store is to begin selling tokens to the public within a few months once serializations are in place for readers. (One message from Seattle has suggested that means between five and 10 episodes of each serial going live on the site.) The public is to use those tokens to “unlock” episodes of serialized stories they want to read, after being wooed into those stories by free opening episodes.
But there was a second story coming.
(2) The news on Thursday was from Wattpad Studios, about a film project underway with Netflix. Wattpad, based in Toronto, is the serialization leader in many markets, operating in 50+ languages with more than 90 million active users. It’s challenged in Asia by long established “online literature” systems, and in recent years by Korean services including Radish. China’s Webnovel has begun wooing some of the Wattpadian faithful, as well. Not for nothing did Wattpad in January arrange its bloodless acquisition with South Korea’s Naver, to bring the Asian Webtoon comics platform into its fold. That may prove to have been a canny defensive move.
You’ll find plenty of how-does-it-work discussion about Amazon’s new Kindle Vella at author communities. Terms of use appear to leave control of the content with the writer, but no, your previously published books can’t be chunked out as episodes on Vella. While many authors like the idea that some remuneration is part of the deal–by contrast at Wattpad, you have to achieve a good deal of status to have much access to earnings–just how much your 50-percent split of Vella readers’ tokens will be worth financially is unclear at the moment. An installment is said by Amazon to lie between 600 and 5,000 words.
Such points of operational detail will come into focus soon, and will never please all of the people any of the time, of course. For a good rundown of what Donald Rumsfeld would call “the known unknowns,” see our friend Jane Friedman’s writeup at the new edition of The Hot Sheet.
But at the higher level, the way to look at this development is less about serialization itself, which has been going in and out of fashion faster than guys’ beards. And it’s really not about how many cents you might get per read. It’s more about what these companies are creating these platforms to do … and what that means for publishing and authors.
Who’s Afraid of Bad-Boy Romance?
Provocations graphic by Liam Walsh
Wattpad, having broken the Netflix barrier, is in production with Netflix Originals Spain on a YA film titled A través de mi ventana (Through My Window) by a Venezuelan serialist named Ariana Godoy.
Other studio and production company liaisons for Wattpad include Sony Pictures Television, NL Film in the Netherlands, Constantin Film in Germany, Screen Queensland in Australia, Mediacorp in Singapore, Gruppo Mediaset in Italy, and more. At least 90 productions are in the works with Wattpad Studios at the moment. In short, Wattpad is extremely big business.
Godoy’s story also has been published by Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial into the Spanish-language markets of Europe and Latin America through one of Wattpad’s many publication partnerships, headed by Ashleigh Gardner.
And Kindle Vella could well become a proving ground for content development even more readily than Wattpad has done.
Wattpad Studios’ chief Aron Levitz–along with Eric Lehrman, Lindsey Ramey, and the Hong Kong-based Dexter Ong–have spent several years demonstrating that with a widening field of serialization properties that Amazon Studios might be happy to consider for Prime production–and Amazon Publishing could survey for book development–Amazon has both the power to create this serialization platform and to capitalize on its content with its own media-development forces.
Remember, Amazon Publishing created an imprint, Topple Books responsive to filmmaker Jill Soloway and her production operation, Topple Productions.
The key is that word development. Publishing’s kissing kinship with its sister media (still a plural word) can be seeded and nourished on serialization platforms–as Wattpad has proved–with one very important advantage: a built-in audience. That’s the secret sauce of serialization today. Even Dickens would concede that what we’re talking about now is Copperfield on steroids.
Godoy’s Through My Window has had 176 million reads at Wattpad. And those 176 million reads arrive independent of the Random House publication of the book.
So what do 176 million fans of that story want to see? The movie.
What do they want to have on their shelves? Grupo Editorial’s book.
Authors may look at serialization platforms as places to test new material, entertain friends, work out their favorite fantasies, hone their craft, make some healthy mistakes. No contest, that’s all great. But the entertainment media see these platforms as audience farms on which scouts may safely graze. A herd of 176 million happy readers cannot be anything but reassuring to the Netflix International Originals team, right?
And what could Kindle Vella’s own contribution to this trend be, artistically speaking? Way beyond those farmed audiences and that assured box-office turnout, what still has been missing is range.
Wattpad has done many things right since it was created by Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen in 2006. After all, the platform’s following spends 23 billion minutes (with a b, yes) on Wattpad stories monthly. But that audience–and this is not a criticism, just the way it has played out–is overwhelmingly young (Generation Z and millennials) and female, heavily tilted toward romance. Again, nothing is wrong with that except that the work rarely breaks out beyond the YA romance spectrum. It has a baseline of what (to Wattpad’s occasional frustration) I have dubbed bad-boy romance. Godoy’s Through My Window is right on brand: It’s the story of Raquel who is pining for Ares, the bad boy next door.
And hey, that’s fine. Clearly, the Wattpadders are eating it up. What do I know, right? Right.
But what we have yet to see is the arrival of a serialization engine that can, with the same level of reliability, generate and cultivate development of a broader range of literature. And that, here at its outset, is an opportunity that Kindle Vella holds out to writers. Once those joyful word-of-mouth recommendations establish a platform, that platform, while it may be lucrative and wonderful at what it does, will become quite entrenched in its niche. That’s the pattern, predictable and natural but limiting. Look at Webtoon and the similarities of its comics.
Kindle Vella is two days old. Not yet entrenched. Not yet niched.
- Imagine what I would call “serious serialization” in which a literary work is played out over temps perdu.
- Imagine serialized political nonfiction of the kind that has charted sky-high in recent years, thanks to our bookseller-in-chief, the former inhabitant of the White House.
- Imagine a serialized memoir that catches up with itself and suddenly the new episode is titled “Today” and the next one is titled “Next Year” and a memoirist has become a futurist and millions of followers have become devoted to that story.
I say there’s much more possibility in these platforms (even in carefully defined sub-platforms) than we’ve seen yet, and serialization is something you can think about, even behind the shield of a pseudonym, as a potential route to new channels for your art, your craft, and your good work’s development.
Could you consider serialization? Or does the whole idea leave you cold? There are no right or wrong answers. But these are questions worth asking yourself. And that scary shot I used at the top of this column? That’s taken on the top of a double-decker bus in London. See? These things aren’t always so scary, after all.
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
I’ve liked the idea (re-emergence since the time of Dickens?) for years; tried it years ago & got blasted by all but than less than a handful of my reading friends for the format – but with heavy weights in the media world pushing it, and most of us used to it via TV series, why not 😊
Hey, Felipe,
Sorry for the delay in answering.
I agree with your reasoning on this. And if you have acquaintances who rib you about trying it, consider using a pseudonym (I assume this is possible — at Wattpad, the writers are known by their “@name” formats, much like a Twitter handle). Then you don’t have to worry about what others think.
It’s certainly not for everybody, but there are such close parallels with the “nearby media” of film and television that if you’re interested in breaking into those crossovers, I’d say go for it.
Thanks much,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
There are other such platforms, Porter, like Serial Box, which assembles writers’s rooms, like in LA, to produce “episodes” of fiction.
They have recently begun serializing single-author original works too, but I would caution writers to consider carefully the contracts offered. They are non-standard and it took agents at my company quite a while to negotiate acceptable terms.
Fortunately they are staffed by publishing industry pros and hired as contract consultant John Schline, longtime contractor director at Berkley and then business affairs manager for PRH who oversaw the unification of the Penguin and Random House agreements. I have a long relationship with him and we were able to work things out.
Companies with a tech or media background may not be so accommodating. So, read the fine print. Just sayin’.
Hey, Don,
Sorry for the delay, the year so far is like being shot out of a cannon.
I’m aware of Serial Box, yes, and have written about them several times. Molly Barton is great and someone I covered even at Penguin before she left and started Serial Box. It now has a new name, you know: “Realm,” rather than Serial Box.
The reason I didn’t include it is that, as you know, its pieces are written by professional writers — often really good ones — and sometimes, Molly has told me, working in something like the old “writers room” format of TV sitcoms (think Dick van Dyke). They’re also trending toward a more podcast format. Like everyone else on Earth. But the point is they’re designed stories created even with a show runner of sorts at times who leads the concept, all very professional and with a big pool of paying subscribers.
By contrast, Kindle Vella and Wattpad and Radish and the others are self-publishing platforms. Anyone can just turn up and start churning out the installments, which makes it a much easier level of entry, of course, if also an undoubtedly much denser jungle to navigate in terms of how many are likely to be writing. Wattpad has always stressed to the press that they are populated by far, far more readers than writers, but you’re still looking at a vast contingent of fearfully competitive writerly folks.
I agree with you unstintingly on the need for caution, the reading of fine print, and especially attention to the question “Do You Know Where Your Rights Are?”
But with producers and the studios circling these platforms for development content, however, I think it’s well worth those who have a knack for this kind of thing — and the constitution to handle it — to have a look.
I’d love to see that original serial boxer Dickens read a little of what was on Wattpad. A bad-boy romance between Nancy and the Artful Dodger would have been on the stands in Fleet Street within 10 days flat: Oliver Twisted.
And don’t you steal that title from me, Don Maass. :)
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
My head is spinning. So much happening in the publishing world. Thanks for keeping us alerted. But sometimes I yearn for basic and simple, as a writer and as a reader.
Hey, Beth,
Sorry to have spun your head, but keep in mind that publishing — compared to other industries — actually moves very slowly (not always to its benefit as an industry), and so you rarely need to just jump right out of the chair and do anything when a new thought or trend comes along. Vella is a good example. As new as it is, and just getting started, it won’t be offered to the public for a bit, so they can populate the site with content people are writing. Hence, you have time to think about even something as new and moving as this.
All in good time, and that means inevitably what’s right for your head, your craft, and your goals.
Stay in the driver’s seat and spin your head only to look left and right at cross streets. :)
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
You do keep us up to date, don’t you!
I do find Kindle Vella a very intriguing idea for the next installment of my fantasy series. I’d have to write as though the Vella story was the first, but as the series is set up for each book to be an entire story, it wouldn’t be too hard to “start over.” As my world is already build it shouldn’t be too hard to write the story pretty easily once I have a plot. All of the prewriting is done…
I have the first book of the series on Amazon, the second is on Wattpad with the intention to eventually move it to Amazon, and as I can’t really do anything else with them due to being already published, this might give the story line a place to grow and maybe find some readers.
Obviously I’ve got a Wattpad account (registered in like in 2012) but after some good success with my first book which I tested over there, I have had crickets since. I just couldn’t keep up with the social media aspect of finding readers and then it sounds like my content wasn’t really a fit for the main readership there anyway. I’ve been planning on cancelling my account once I moved the 2nd book to Amazon.
My only concern is having to come up with good content on a regular basis. I already struggle with getting things written around all my other daily obligations. I suppose an option would be to have a co-author. I went to the Vella site and they have a 600-5,000 world installment range. I suppose 600 words per week would be doable.
Well, thank you! You’ve obviously given me a lot to think about!
Oh my gosh — all the typos! I’m so sorry. And a little embarrassed… :P
Never apologize for typos, Lara, I am the Tzar of Typos, LOL.
Love,
Poter
Hey, Lara, sorry for the late, late reply here — mad is too kind a word for April.
I think you have a chance to do an interesting experiment with Vella if you have a mind to. With luck, it will have a more broadly based genre and readership range. Mind you, my guess is that “bad boy romances” will rule that roost, too, but I think it’s likely not to get so heavily niched to that genre and market (not least because Amazon itself likes breadth for promotion).
Giving it a try, therefore, might help you actually find and define an audience a bit more tightly than in the past. Put it out there, push it all you can, and see who turns up for more installments, you know? Chat them up, find out their demographics, see who’s there and see what you figure out. In a sense, it’s like reverse-engineering your readership, come-hithering them in on the new platform and learning who’s looking as they turn up, right?
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Wow, this is interesting stuff, Porter – thanks for putting it on my radar!
On one hand, it all can seem rather overwhelming, but on the other, it’s nice to see the publishing biz finally embracing more disruptive platforms and ideas.
We live in interesting times indeed…
Thanks, Keith, and forgive the insanely late reply.
April has finally stopped, which is a blessing, lol.
Agree with you, this sort of widening alternatives — particularly with the heft of Amazon behind them — is really encouraging and a great way for writers to try working in unaccustomed ways. Might lead to absolutely nothing, but I think of it almost like something I’ve done in being sure to write in a wide range of localities as I travel because I find that simply changing a physical setting can open new ideas and perspectives.
Give this a good think if you’re interested, I do think someone with as agile a purview as yours could really make it work for you.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I wish Amazon would give its exploited workers the consideration it gives all its rollouts. Just sayin’.
Thanks for reading, Bernadette,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I serialized the first novel of my mainstream trilogy, one finished scene per week, for two years – every Tuesday.
On Wattpad – probably the worst possible platform for an older mainstream novelist.
I connected with – and got all my first endorsements and reviews – from the same coterie there: older writers and old-soul writers, which was very helpful when I published the novel.
The secret was that I had over 40 of the 200 or so scenes finished when I started – and barely made it to the end because I have zero energy and high standards.
I’m glad I did – but I’m at the same decision point with the second novel in the trilogy (except I’m much farther along in finished scenes) and I don’t think I’ll do it again. I needed the little bit I got when it was the first time, but now that I know I can, I don’t think that’s the best use of my efforts.
The problem with putting it up on Kindle Vella is that you really need to have read PURGATORY to continue with the story. I could do an inexpensive sale for Book 1, but I’m not sure of the audience on Vella for what could be categorized best as contemporary mainstream literary fiction.
I’d really be curious to know what you think. Because the time is now.