Amazon vs Indie Authors
The damage is becoming worse.
Amazon was once a great source to publish your books if you wanted to avoid the publishing house rules and regulations. Doing things at your own pace and in your own way is okay! But recently Amazon has started causing more damage than good. They have a strong list of do’s and don’ts that surpass what it once was.
Someone probably abused the system somewhere and now we sit here in this position.
Amazon punishes the author more often than not.
A good example is if you post your work through Amazon and it ends up pirated by someone they will probably pull you from being able to publish.
A recent situation has also arisen where if a reviewer uses AI they will remove the work as well. For any author or reviewer out there that didn’t know this please be aware.
Amazon doesn’t give the ability to bulk buy the book for stores to carry.
We inquired to an author about putting their book into a bookstore. The author is the only one who gets wholesale price and then goes back to the possibility of being removed due to selling it elsewhere. Amazon wants to be the only one with access.
Audible Exclusive means ONLY Audible can have the book.
If you go through Audible to have your audiobook handled and decide to make it Audible Exclusive just know only Audible subscribers/buyers can listen. It doesn’t become available to Libro.fm or any other source. You might be limiting your market.
Kindle Unlimited
Not sure about the truth behind this one so please inquire to an indie author who goes through Kindle Unlimited. From our understanding and what we have been told if you borrow a book on KU and only read half the book the author only gets paid for the pages read. (We will be doing some research to see if we can confirm or deny.)
We are positive Amazon does amazing things by letting authors publish for low to no cost. But there are some huge red flags on the other side of publishing with them. Also, publishing houses probably don’t have the issues indie authors do. They have a bigger standing between the two of them.
We just want authors to be aware of the situation fully before making a decision.