Publishing on Kindle Vella

Over the past month or so, I've mentioned in a couple of places that I've been rethinking the possibility of publishing on Kindle Vella, which is Amazon's platform for episodic writing. Initially, I had several reasons for not participating in Vella (e.g., the rigid exclusivity provision and the prohibition against publishing in other formats).

Since then, Amazon has mellowed. Vella authors can publish in other formats (audiobooks, print, etc.) and you can share a limited amount of the material online. Having those options advances the ball far enough to get me interested in the game. 

Anyway, I'm thinking of diving into the deep end of the pool by putting up two stories that are already well along in terms of writing. One's called Glimmerblade and I recently shared the cover art:

As you can probably guess, it's fantasy and there are some dark elements. Frankly speaking, I don't know if Amazon will let me get away with that cover. They've essentially banned me from advertising the third Warden book because the cover (which you can see here) is allegedly too violent, and this goes way beyond Warden #3.  That said, I'm willing to roll the dice.

The other Vella title is likely to be a scifi story about an interstellar mercenary.  That one I'm still trying to select a cover for, but my real problem is coming up with a title.  Interstellar Merc just feels a little too generic, so I'm kicking around a few other ideas. Usually I don't have much trouble with titles, so hopefully something interesting will pop into my brain soon.

Anyway, both of these are stories that I've had around for a while, so I don't think that putting them on Vella will take away from my other writing efforts (namely, the Smokescreen novel, which I'm still trying to wrap up).  I'll share some excerpts here on Patreon, but bearing in mind Amazon's restrictions I'll have to keep track of how much I post (which is essentially what I have to do when I share excerpts from ebooks). But regardless of anything else, my real hope is the same as always: simply put, that readers will like my stories.