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)
Follow me on Twitter: @mrtmbilderback
Catch my
website: http://www.tmbilderback.com
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