Sometimes it’s easy to look at the data and be disappointed that the numbers aren’t higher. Especially on days when the reads are still at zero, and there are no reviews to draw attention.

But I’m playing a long game, and when I back up enough to see the big picture, the growth is indisputable.

I’ve written and published three vellas since the platform started, but we’ll ignore the second one for now, since I mostly ignored it the whole time it was publishing.

The first one was an in-progress rough draft that I’d never shown anybody. It was the first piece of writing I’d done in years, and probably the most ambitious piece of writing I’d ever done. I started publishing it as I went because I needed motivation to keep going. I posted once a week

There was a spike of reads at the beginning, when Vella first opened, and there weren’t as many stories. Then there was a spike the following January when I asked for advice and feedback from other authors in Facebook groups. I had mostly just been posting about it on my own feed, but I did create an author page around that time.

I gave up and pulled it down in March, but I kept writing and revising, taking into account the great advice I’d gotten when I asked for help.

In September, after reading a bunch of more successful vellas, I decided to try a different genre. I started posting a humorous paranormal romance (still once a week, but I shared this one with critique partners and revised it before posting). I pushed it in tons of FB groups that hadn’t existed when I started. I posted about it on Instagram.

I’ve had three times as many reads in half the time, despite an increase in competition, and a publishing rate that seems to be slower than average. The story has three episodes left, and then we get to see what marketing looks like after a vella is marked “complete.”

I’m still working on Cate as a novel, but I’m excited to see the Devil become part of my backlist, instead of my only active offering.