IWSG: If I were Queen

 (Reminder: this site is now ONLY my blog. If you're looking for my book links or contact options, events, or any other aspects of my writer life, please visit http://dangerouswhenbored.com )

 

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.  The awesome co-hosts for the July 1 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Cathrina Constantine, and Jacqui Murray!

July 1 question - Is there anything you'd like to see changed, added, and/or rearranged about the book publishing industry?

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Hmmm…I guess this is one of those "If I were Queen" kinds of questions, where suddenly I have the power to make sweeping changes. The problem is that I don't want to be queen because I don't know if I know how to fix things. What if I made it worse? 

But if I was going to try, I'd take on the giant (silly little guy with a slingshot that I am): Amazon. 

(leave now if you don't want to hear my anti-big-business rant). 

Indie authors RELY on Amazon. When they first came out with Kindle in 2007, it revolutionized the publishing industry, opening up new pathways to publishing and putting real distribution power in the hands of penny ante folks like me. Without the Kindle revolution, most of us wouldn't be able to get our work into the hands of readers. 

But as often happens as businesses grow and become more powerful (I'm looking at you Google)…it's gotten worse and worse (see: enshittification). 

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Amazon killed other bookstore chains (remember Borders?) and made it harder for indie bookstores to keep afloat. What had been a pretty sweet deal for authors got sourer and sourer and every year, with new restrictions and re-stacking the deck to make sure the house always wins. KU page read rates keep going down, making it less and less worth it to participate from the author-side. 

Amazon needs our products, but it doesn't treat as partners. To them, we're another avenue to exploit. So, the very thing that once opened up the world to us has shut down other options. And along the way they stopped being a bookstore and became an AI-driven cesspool full of inferior knock-off products that aren't what you thought you were ordering. 

Have you tried even just FINDING something there lately? Since they switched to AI-driven search, it's like asking your 90 year old aunt with dementia where she left her book. Last time I tried to look up one of my books, I had to type in the title, my first and last name, and change the search drop down to "book" and it still offered me three products that weren't my book above the actual search result. One of them wasn't a book at all. 

(and I feel like puking because I know about data centers and water use and what the environmental impact of all this AI is. I've got enough guilt leftover from my AquaNet days, thanks). 

Selling there is like sailing among pirates in an unarmed rowboat. 

So, when I released my first indie work earlier this year, I knew I didn't want to be beholden to Amazon, even though I knew I'd also need to have my work available there. My work is published widely, so that if any one avenue shuts down, there are always others. 

• Bookshop! My affiliate link pays me an extra commission if you buy from there 
• Curios: a new-to-me platform for direct sales
• Bibliobean Books: an indie bookstore (woman-owned) I consign my romance work with 
• Books2Read aggregators: On my website, I link to as many of the places my books are available as possible, trying to be anywhere readers might look for me.  

Amazon, of course, punishes me for this, making it harder to find my work on their site, making it more difficult to change my prices and run specials, and paying me a smaller cut because I won't give them the whole pie. Good thing this isn't how I pay my mortgage.

And it's hard to get readers to do something less convenient like buying direct from me, downloading from Bookfunnel and transferring a file to their favorite reader. 

Amazon did a really great job making shoppers reliant on them, and now they're pressing that advantage. *ssholes.

So, my current policy is to have my work available there, but funnel people away from them whenever I can, and do my own shopping elsewhere whenever possible, even if I have to pay a little more for it. (The Kobo reader is my favorite right now, and their KU equivalent doesn't require that writers give up the right to sell elsewhere, too).  

So, yeah. This is one Amazon I'd like to raze to the ground. I'll stick to the actual river, jungle, and Wonder Woman. They're all better Amazons.