Thursday, July 22, 2021

The Hostage in Hiding: an update



The Kindle Vella platform launch remains the strangest thing we’ve seen out of Amazon in a long time. While it’s very cool that THE HOSTAGE IN HIDING is a “Top Faved” (that’s what that crown means) and Top 40 book, finding the blessed thing remains a challenge.

Things we’re learned so far:

• the easiest way to find it is to go directly to this link in a web browser:

https://www.amazon.com/The-Hostage-in-Hiding/dp/B095C1LGD8/

Chrome, Firefox, Safari, it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Everything we’ve tried so far works.

• EXCEPT, for some utterly unfathomable reason, even though the platform is called “Kindle Vella,” you cannot get to it using a Kindle!

• Supposedly you can get directly to the book using the Kindle for iOS app, which is supported only on iPhones and iPads. However, thus far we have not been able to find the Vella plug-in on any of the Apple devices we have handy. It may require updating the Kindle for iOS app on your device. If someone else is having more luck with this, please let us know.   

• There is no Android app for Kindle Vella, and apparently none planned. This seems to us to be a serious strategic miscalculation. However, the book is accessible by using Chrome on an Android device and going to this link: https://www.amazon.com/The-Hostage-in-Hiding/dp/B095C1LGD8/. If there is a difference in functionality between Vella on Chrome and Vella on iOS, we haven’t seen it. Yet.

• For being such a highly touted new platform, Amazon sure doesn’t seem to be increasing its visibility. A search on Amazom.com for “Kindle Vella” returned a lot of listings for paranormal romance novels written by Vella Day. A search for vella plus Henry Vogel returned—I am not making this up—the sales page for “Medela Lanolin Nipple Cream.”

Well, that was not what we expected…

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