Friday, June 8, 2018

To Amazon Or Not To Amazon - That Is The Question


Readers, I’m taking a good, hard look at Amazon right now.

Amazon has begun policing its book section for scammers, pirates, and general ne’er-do-wells.  That’s all well and good, but, like a tuna net that captures dolphins along with the fish, they’re capturing and punishing honest authors, too.

Kindle Unlimited is one of the biggest problems.  Scammers target unsuspecting honest authors to hide what they’re doing to scam the system.  When they target honest authors, Amazon threatens the honest author with cancellation of their accounts because of something over which the honest author has no control. Now, I don’t have any titles in Kindle Unlimited, and haven’t for some time. It doesn’t affect me.

Something that does affect me is their CreateSpace arm.  I use CreateSpace for my paperback books.  I intend to switch them to another distributor soon, but, until them, I’m using CreateSpace.  Since I began republishing paperbacks through them, they’ve been suppressing them until I can prove that I own them.  I’ve done so with each title, but they’re dragging their feet on clearing some of the titles…and I’m not the only author that’s experiencing this.  Soon, I’ll begin moving the paperbacks to another distributor, and I won’t use Amazon’s publishing services for print again.

Add to this the fact that their ACX division, including Audible, is trying hard to pay pennies for each audiobook purchased.  Many authors, including myself, won’t work through ACX/Audible to provide audiobooks because of this.  I have several titles under contract with them, and I have no option with those titles…but, the audiobooks will begin coming out of contract beginning in 2020, and I’ll be pulling them and distributing them myself, through other distribution networks. I won’t use ACX/Audible again under their current terms.

Now, I’m giving serious thought to pulling my ebooks from Amazon, and only using them for a distributor of print books.  My ebooks would be available at all of the other retailers, like Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple – and with the Walmart/Kobo deal coming very soon, I highly recommend obtaining a Kobo ereader.

I’m thinking about it.  I haven’t done it yet, and I may not do it.  But, you know it’s bad when I’m at the point of thinking about pulling my ebooks from Amazon.

What are your thoughts?

Please let me know in the comments. But, mostly, thanks for your continued support!

Keep reading!

T. M. Bilderback (But you can call me Michael)

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