welp, all our stuff is up and amazon is offering 200 "tokens" for free soooo. I'd put up @cherrystark's page but she should do that.
i know, it's a ....... well, I won't use the word but, I've got quite a few folks outside the US who want to read stuff (not just mine) and they can't yet. I'm hoping that changes quickly.
I'm confused. Is kindle vella open to publishing on now? xD
also, if it is, how has your book done so far?
also also, FB groups are just kinda weird...
It just opened today. people are being insane, although... the fb group that @cherrystark and I run have been fairly good. Most with feet firmly on the ground (we've only been pounding "long haul" into them for months) and most of them thinking soft opening beta, things will be goofy.
On other pages (excuse me while I turn away trying to contain the hysteria) there's one guy (thank every god known to man he's not one of ours) who may have pulled his stuff (ELEVEN PROJECTS) because he couldn't find them (don't ask me why) and he wasn't a millionaire by noon.
(hysteria break)
Onward.
Tons of nit picky groans and gripes. A few wishful thoughts (those were pleasant.)
I broke a crown on one of my back molars yesterday, dead tooth, no pain but a good portion of the day at the dentist (as long as I was there get some other work done) so between that and the launch I'm pretty rummy posting "people be happy you've worked hard" and "people remember this is the long haul"
I was never a cheerleader so this is freaking foreign to me. I'm sure poor @cherrystark is strung like a rubber band just watching me and waiting for me to go off the deep end and start screaming obscenities' in Swahili.
For the most part, people seem to be (at least in our group) doing okay. I even made a few pennies in royalties. Everyone signing on gets 200 free tokens but then you can buy more if you want. I don't know if the "free" tokens are still being paid to the authors as if they were bought but at this point... who cares, I'm just glad it's up.
A few people have been great with the launch. There is still so much complaining. They act like it's their "job" to find faults with the program. Within the first couple of hours after the launch, people were demanding to see their stats.
This morning, one lady posted how disappointed she didn't get any money yesterday. I was disappointed too, but I count myself lucky for the likes I did get
They announced the Vella return policy after the soft launch and OMG people are still having a cow. They are complaining like this return policy is going to cost them thousands of dollars in potential income instea of a couple of pennies. Yes, pennies add up but if you have a solid serial, I can see the need for returns as miniual.
Unfortunately, there are still people treating Vella as a place to pedal their uneditted first drafts to get money and hopefully feedback before they sell it as a polished "book". Oh dear.
We're also finding a certain group of writers who, now that they have a few chapters (1 to 5) up on vella are suddenly expert writers with tons of advice how you should do something specifically if it is the way they do it.
The biggest load of crap just happened! With Vella's launch, a lot of groups are posting no "self-promo" or limited self-promo in favor of self-promo groups. One of the group admins takes the cake for crazy. She was pretty hands off in her group until she passed the "no self-promo rule"
To me, it's simple. "Don't post your links". Well! She decided to boot everybody in the group and will only let them post if they agree to a new set of rules saying they won't self-promo. To her, self-promo is not only posting your links, it's mentioning your title, showing story art, and more. If you want to crow about your success, you have to say stuff like "my reverse harem alien romance did well" or crop out any identifying features in your screenshot or else it will be self promo.
The group is supposed to be all about support but if you complain or ask for help, it's against the terms of service. This all happened within the last hour or two without warning.
Needless to say, @therosesword and I left.
LOLMAO these groups sound unbelievable. No self promo means...never mention the name of your book? wow.
The icing on the cake was after we left, the admin messaged us both saying "I didn't mean to ban you!" 
Yup. I was showing of the art you did and that went bye-bye. And I put up a notice when the stuff first started showing up on vella to show people what to look for and, of course, I showed my stuff because, who else's would I show, I didn't know who had what up but, bam, that went. Like Cherry said, can't even mention the title of your work:
We were gone gone gone within seconds.
I was wondering over the past three days, and so was Cherry, why were we getting 5 to 10 requests to join our group a day. The average was around 7. Every single day. And most of them were from the "support" group. Now we know why.
We stayed for as long as we did because we "liked" her and wanted to support her, but as an admin, she didn't DO anything. Aside from the regular Vella crazy, her group had been okay to post in and get feedback (ie support) Now, all of that is gone because she wants to create a "positive" place. You can still post about Vella but according to her video, you also have to post the resolution to the issue so other people can "learn" from it.