Like many left-wing people, I am not a big fan of Amazon. Between their support of oppressive government regimes, their aggressive anti-union tactics, and the appalling working conditions involved in the delivery and warehouse of Amazon, there’s a lot of reasons not to support them. Personally, I try not to purchase from Amazon.
With all that said, that poses an interesting problem as a self-publishing author. According to Reedsy, Amazon is at least 80% of the ebook market in English-speaking countries. Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program is a big potential earner for self-publishing authors, and enrolling in it requires keeping the ebook exclusive to Amazon for at least 90 days. Readers are much more likely to pick up an ebook from an author they’ve never heard of before when it’s in KU, because it costs them nothing to try it out. And many people subscribed to KU are voracious readers and will consume a huge amount of books within the program.
So: what do you do if you are trying to start a self-publishing career but you don’t support Amazon?
I’ve decided to compromise. I want to make sure that people have an alternative to Amazon to purchase my book right from day 1, so I’ll be releasing a paperback alongside the ebook. I’ll also only be enrolled in KU for the first 90 day period, and beyond that I will ‘go wide’ (which is self-pub talk for going to other retailers, e.g. Kobo).
This is just the strategy for the first book, and since I’m learning as I go with self-publishing, things may change with future releases. So far, creating a paperback for Love, Undisclosed has involved a lot of extra time and effort, and I’m not sure how willing I am to go through this process again. I’m hopeful that for this novel, this will strike the right balance of giving myself time to find an audience in one of the biggest marketplaces while also not making my career dependent upon Amazon, a company whose ethics I fundamentally disagree with.
Max Louise Perry 