 What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. I've got some pretty exciting stuff to discuss in today's video. Basically, I'm just going to be talking a bit off the cuff. I don't really have any notes or anything on what I'm going to be talking about today. So if it seems a little bit all over the place, forgive me. In a nutshell, what I'm going to be doing is talking about my plans for the future of my writing, what I'm going to be doing pretty much into next year. Because 2022 for me is the most planned out year of writing. I've probably ever had and of course those plans can change, but for now I'm prepared and I know what I want to do and how. And in talking about my plans, I'm also going to be talking about some really exciting stuff that you should probably know about, especially if you are a self-published author or you intend to be. Some stuff that I think might really affect your plans as well for how you intend to do your writing and how you intend for people to read it. If you're new here, first of all, thanks for tuning in. If you are also a writer, I would love it if you stuck around. I make lots of videos here on writing how I do it, what works, what doesn't, a whole lot of fun stuff. And hey, let me know in the comments what your plans are for your next year of writing. Do you even have plans or are you just kind of winging it like I know most writers do? First thing I want to discuss is Kindle Vella. You've probably heard of it by now, but if you haven't, let me give you the quick rundown because this I honestly think has the potential to be a big game changer for self-published authors. Kindle Vella, I would say, is Amazon's answer to Wattpad. It's their version of Wattpad because as we know, Amazon has to monopolize every facet of human life. And as much as I am not really a fan of Amazon, they have pretty much put writers, especially self-published authors, in a situation where we don't have a choice but to use their services if we want to be successful. Anyway, it's their answer to Wattpad, Wattpad basically being a platform, almost like a social media platform even, where writers will upload short stories or long stories, most of the time for people to access for free. And the big thing with these type of platforms is that it's the best outlet I would say for serialized works. And that's the angle that Kindle Vella is going to be really digging into. Serialized works basically being stories that are broken up into, you know, long series. It's almost like an episodic TV show, but in writing form. The idea is that readers would tune in, you know, weekly, monthly, whenever the next episode is released to read the next one, and then the next one, and then the next one just to see where the story goes. One of the major differences I've seen with Kindle Vella over Wattpad though is their approach to it and how the monetization of Kindle Vella will work. So with Wattpad, there is, you know, options where you can get paid for your work, but Wattpad as a whole isn't looked on very, let's just say respectfully, by most other people, which I think is unfortunate. There is a lot of great stories on Wattpad. There's a lot of trash too, but so what, you know? Kindle Vella looks like they're going to be taking a bit more of a professional approach, not that there's any real like gatekeeper there that says your story's good enough or your story isn't, but it looks to be structured in a way that's going to encourage writers to really take it seriously and treat it like a proper, almost like a career option. From what I've found, what they will be doing is you'll upload a few episodes. I'm just going to be using the word episodes just so we all know what I'm talking about, but you would upload a few episodes and the first couple of episodes will be free for the reader. But after those first few episodes, the stories you upload will be worth about $2 per 20,000 words. And you, like me, might be wondering how much of that money does the writer or the author get and they get 50%, which is pretty good. It feels silly saying that you get half of the profit for something that you created is good, but you know, we live in 2021, so and it is Amazon, but you get half. So per 20,000 words, are you right? You will probably get about a dollar back. If you're uploading a new episode every week or every month and let's say generously 100 people purchase the next episode, you'll get about a hundred dollars. I don't know about you, but that's pretty damn good. With that in mind, this seems like a really good way for authors and writers not just to build their portfolio of written works, but also as a way for writers to boost their passive income, which is so incredibly important if you want writing to be your career. Like I know I do. There is something else that Amazon's kind of announced recently that I want to talk about, but before we get into that, just to wrap up the whole Kindle Vella section of this video. In regards to my future plans with Kindle Vella, for now, I can't really do anything because it's exclusively for readers and writers in the US. But I'm assuming and I'm hoping that that will be rolled out to the rest of the world, or at least most of the rest of the world by the start of next year, because that's what Amazon usually does. They test their new features or whatever in the US, and then a little while later, they will roll it out to everywhere else. So I'm hoping by the start of 2022, I over here in Australia will be able to upload to Kindle Vella as well. And if I can, my plan is actually for context, I should probably tell you, so I'm in the middle of planning a big epic kind of fantasy series. That's my big thing for next year. That's what I'm going to be putting pretty much all of my writing focus and time into. And I will still be doing those as books, not on Kindle Vella. There'll be about 50,000 words, a piece, tops is what I'm aiming for at the moment. So they will be quite short. And there will be a long kind of A plot running through all of the books, a major plot that connects them together. But for the most part, those books will be very episodic. There'll be a conflict and a climax and a resolution for a story within each of those shorter books. I've already kind of started on that, but the reason I'm talking about Kindle Vella is because I had an idea. I won't be uploading those books on Kindle Vella because I still want them to be proper books. But I have been kind of struggling with how to do a bit more of the world building. And then in regards to Kindle Vella, I thought, why not write some kind of little short stories set in that fantasy world for Kindle Vella? So my plan for the moment, assuming again, that Kindle Vella rolls out to Australia by next year, is that at the start of every single month, I would upload a new episodic short story on Kindle Vella set within that fantasy world. Just kind of showing you the world, you know, showing you some of the creatures that I'm creating, some of the locations, a little bit of the magic system, how it all works, kind of just easing you into it. That way, when the actual books come out, it's already going to feel very familiar and comfortable. My plans for that fantasy world are, I'll admit, extremely ambitious, but I've already done so much planning and it's all really coming together really well. This is the first time in a long time I've really known exactly what I'm doing with this story. So writing a few short spin-off stories within that world for Kindle Vella just feels natural. And also, I was thinking I might do a bit of a second different series on Kindle Vella as well. Again, uploading once a month, just horror short stories. I really like writing horror short stories. That's pretty much all I've done during this year. I am looking forward to moving away from that into fantasy, but I think I could write at least one horror short story a month just to keep my foot in the waters of horror. So I think it would be fun to upload them to Kindle Vella as well for anyone who wants to read them. Anyway, that's Kindle Vella. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you think that's going to help you with your writing. Now, the second thing Amazon's kind of announced that I'm excited about. I got an email the other night from my mate, Jeremy Fee, literally just before I went live on Twitch to do some writing sprints, which you should come and join in sometime. It's really, really fun. But he sent me an email letting me know that Amazon finally, after years of me complaining about it, they are finally offering hard covers as an option for self-publishing. I made a video literally not that long ago at all. I'll leave a card up here talking about when I used IngramSpark to make Welcome Descent and how I'm not really a big fan of IngramSpark at the moment, just with a bunch of issues they have. Again, you can check that video out. But I said that I would have used KDP exclusively for the paperback and the hardcover and the ebook if only they had a hardcover option. And now they do. As far as I'm aware, it's still a brand new option. So it's not perfect. In particular, the hardcovers are just printed on the actual cover. There is no dust jacket, which I'm not a big fan of. So this one is a dust jacket book, meaning, you know, the dust jacket comes off and then you've got the blank hardcover underneath. At the moment with Amazon's self-published hardcovers, it would just be printed on here instead. And I don't know, I don't think it looks as good. And it just doesn't really have that same feeling, you know? But the fact that they are doing hardcovers is definitely a step in the right direction. And I'm almost positive they will eventually offer dust jackets as well. Like I said, Amazon likes to start off slow and then roll out the big changes that everyone actually wants, maybe except for Goodreads. There's still a whole lot of changes they could be making over there. But I think that's pretty big news for self-published authors, knowing that you now don't have to spread yourself across KDP and other print-on-demand companies just so your book has a hardcover. I won't be making any hardcovers there yet, but once they offer dust jackets, it's definitely something I'm going to be looking into. We're still yet to see what the print quality and all that's going to be like, but I haven't had any issues with KDP's paperbacks so far. So this year so far has been a pretty big year for my writing as far as finally publishing another book, My Psychological Horror, Welcome Descent, you know, full novel, along with me having a short story in the anthology Local Haunts. Then before the end of the year, the next anthology in the series comes out, which I also have another short story in, that one's called Served Cold, along with an anthology of horror short stories that I'm putting together with other writers. That one should be coming out end of October, early November. We're just about to move into the formatting and kind of publication stage of that anthology, so the timeline's looking pretty good so far. And then in addition to that, I also have my very own full collection of horror short stories coming out before the end of the year as well. So that's literally three more books that I'm involved with coming out before the end of the year. That means I'm going to have technically five books, all horror. So again, I'm excited to move back into arguably my favorite genre, fantasy, next year. I gotta tell you, I'm really, really, really excited about this fantasy series I'm working on. I think it's going to be... I don't like to talk myself up too much. I'm just not that good at it, which is unfortunate when you're a self-published author. I don't like talking myself up too much, but I really do think if I write it well, this fantasy series could be incredible. And I'm excited to not only write the books, but also work in some spin-off short stories for Kindle Vella. Tell you what, let me know what you think about any of this. What do you think about Kindle Vella? What do you think about, you know, Amazon finally having hard covers? What are your plans for next year? Are you being as ambitious as I am? I'm probably definitely setting my expectations way too high, but meh. Or like I said, are you just gonna wing it? Which is also fine. Either way, best of luck with your writing. And thank you so much for watching this video, especially for watching it through to the end. I appreciate it. The video is about done now, so go do some writing. Catch ya.