The past few weeks have been a long process of research and discovery for me, as I begin my descent into the murky world of self-publishing. The topic I’d like to discuss in this post is Distributors – or more specifically, that grand and terrible rainforest that dominates the landscape and ecology of the publishing world…

~:~A~m~a~z~o~n~:~

The main news is, I received word earlier today that my debut novella, The Carver’s Gift, has been blocked on Amazon. The reason they gave was a little cryptically worded, but it seems to boil down to one (or both) of two things:

• The book may be too short to be published through a 3rd party aggregate service like Draft2Digital – which is fair. At slightly less than 15k words, the novella is pretty compact, and it is every distributor’s right to decide if they wish to market only products of a minimum length, or quality, or content, etc. Their proposed solution to this feels a bit disingenuous though: submit this book via a KDP account instead (i.e., on their terms), and maybe you’ll have better luck
• The book may be blocked if it is readily available for free anywhere online – including excerpts or sneak previews of ANY of the book’s content: for example, the 4 posts serving tasters on this very website, so you can decide whether you’re going to enjoy the book before you have to pay for it. With this point, I take a bit more personal umbrage.

I’ve seen some contentious discussion around the internet about this specific marketing strategy, often referred to derogatorily as “Baiting.” I like to think I’ve been very upfront about my intentions – I’m not trying to trick anyone into giving me money I didn’t earn, I’m never going to post a fake ‘next post’ link that drops you directly onto a check-out page in surprise and shock. I would rather make fewer sales and have more satisfied, enthusiastic readers, than make twice as many sales of e-books that, at best, sit unread forever on your Kindle, or at worst, generate negative reviews from unhappy customers. Anyone is free to disagree with me on this – and please, you are welcome to let me know why, if you do. But it seems… let’s just say ‘unlikely,’ that Amazon has this policy because they are concerned about the welfare of their patrons, being taken advantage of by the cruel, sneaky ploy of Baiting.

It’s just a thought, but I believe if may have a bit more to do with control.

Let me be perfectly upfront about this. I do not like Amazon. From their years-long campaign against fair labor practices, blatantly illegal union-busting tactics, and general disregard for the value of human life, to their uncomfortably large share of the market for, well, everything, there is a lot not to like. As with so many modern monopolies perfectly-legitimate-megacorporations, the company has mutated from a nimble, young up-start running circles around their established and austere competition, into a bloated, heaving monstrosity that decided the easiest path to continued success isn’t through innovation, but rather by smothering any and all new competition out of existence.

As an aspiring author, this puts me in an awkward position. On the one hand, if I want to get my work into as many hands as possible and become a successful, career writer (which, y’know, would be pretty darn cool), it would be really helpful to be listed on the biggest marketplace in the history of marketplaces. But on the other hand, I would:

• No longer have the right to post or distribute my work in whatever ways I see fit if they are not pre-approved by the money-minting algorithms at Amazon.
• Be bullied into very specific pricing schemes by Amazon’s royalty policies: They pay standard 70% royalties for e-books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, but only half that, 35%, for anything else – so for The Carver’s Gift, a novella of ~15k words, do I grossly overprice it at $2.99, which is more than I feel I’d be willing to pay for that amount of content? Or do I stick to my principles and price it at a much more fair and reasonable $0.99, and let Amazon keep even more of the profit off my work?
• Know that I was responsible for adding just a little bit thicker of a lining to Jeff Bezos’ designer pockets.

Well.

For this first novella at least, the decision has already been made for me. I have no intention of deleting anything I’ve already published in this Library of mine, nor do I intend to fluff up the story to make it unnecessarily longer. But with all this in mind, I’ve also decided to pull the trigger of the Principles Pistol, and shoot myself in the foot: I do not plan at this point to distribute any future works on Amazon.

Maybe this is a terrible mistake. Maybe in the future, I’ll be forced to come crawling back, supplicant at the Throne of Bezos. I’m sure if I ever sign a book deal with a major publisher, the decision will be yanked firmly out of my grasp in a heartbeat. But for now, this can be my lonely little hill to die on.

I’ve been, admittedly, pretty dramatic through this post so far. But please let me just say, I don’t write this with any judgement. It is for everyone to decide on their own what companies to support, and I, hypocritically, still use Amazon for plenty of other things. It’s almost functionally impossible not to interact with a company of this size, whether or not you like it. For a significantly large percentage of readers, the streamlined ease of using a Kindle for all their reading is simply too valuable to pass up. So for those of you who may be Kindle-exclusive readers, but are still interested in checking out my work, I’ll just leave this right here:

https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle

If you purchase a DRM-free copy of my e-books from any of the other distributors I am listed on, such as Smashwords, you can use the above link to upload the .epub file into your Kindle library and read away at your leisure. It might take a little longer if, _{^{say, you’re using Airplane-Mode to hold onto library books a little bit longer than their return date…}} but I won’t judge.

I am not the David to Amazon’s Goliath. If anything, I’m more like one of the extras in a Godzilla movie, running about and screaming in the background trying not to get squished. But maybe there’s some dignity to be found in being that one extra who stands their ground and flips the bird at the behemoth before the flying bus crashes down on top of him. I guess we’ll see in the years to come.

Thanks for following this diatribe to its bitter end,

K. T. Lazarus