Is this the end of a beautiful friendship?

Today’s blog post is coming to you from my boots, because that’s pretty much where my heart sinks to every time I hear about yet another indie author who’s found themselves suddenly facing days of zero page reads in KU along with plummeting sales. And don’t get me started on the people who buy a book, read it and then return it for a refund a few days later! Amazon said a while back that they were taking steps to stop that happening, but now it’s started again.

As someone who devours books at an alarming rate, I’ve been a huge fan of Kindle Unlimited for years as a reader. But recently, I’ve noticed more and more of my favourite authors have been disappearing from it in favour of other places like Kobo Plus, Apple Books and the new romantasy platform, Yearn.

And as an author, it’s easy to understand why because I too am rapidly approaching the point where I really can’t see a happy ever after for myself with KU.

This last year has been a really tough one for indie authors, especially the last few months. Amazon is awash with AI books right now, which real authors have to compete with for every sale and every single page read. Many of us have seen our income halved (or worse) compared to this time last year.

Add to that the fear of being accused of using AI ourselves, even if we absolutely don’t.

And the constant niggling worry that our accounts might be shut down without warning and our last two months royalties withheld (yes, they really can do that.) It’s happening more and more frequently lately, and we’re well aware if that happens to us, there’s a very good chance we’ll never even know why, because apparently they don’t have to tell us what we’ve done, only that we’ve done something. Then it’s up to us to try and figure it out.

So when you add all those things together, it’s really no wonder so many of us are starting to ask ourselves if we really want to keep our books in KU, or even with Amazon as a sales platform. Because what sane person would want to leave all their eggs in a basket the bottom could fall out of at any minute?

The main problem authors face with KU is, of course, Amazon’s exclusivity clause. If a book is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, the eBook must not be made available anywhere else apart from Amazon. That includes selling it direct from the author’s own website or even giving it away as a prize (yes, they really expect us to buy our own book from them so we can give it away!)

Amazon is the only subscription platform that does this. If your books aren’t in KU, you can make them available with as many other platforms as you want, but the moment you put them in KU, that book must remain exclusive to Amazon.

Until recently, most of us thought it was worth the trade-off. Amazon is huge and they have totally cornered the market in eBooks. So exclusivity seemed a small(ish) price to pay for the size of the market our books were gaining access to.

BUT, unlike other platforms, Amazon are doing nothing to stem to flood of AI books that are taking over Kindle.

They are also seemingly doing nothing to combat the pirate sites that are scraping our books from Amazon. In fact, if their bots find a KU enrolled book on a pirate site, there’s a very good chance the author will lose their account for ‘letting’ it be published elsewhere. That’s despite them being the victim not the perpetrator of a theft which obviously occurred via Amazon because that’s the only place the book is allowed to be.

All in all, with the way royalties are falling off a cliff anyway, a lot of us are starting to feel that it’s just not worth it anymore.

I’m keeping my Four Realms books in KU for now because I don’t think it would be fair to my readers to pull them until the series is complete. But after that I’m not sure how long they’ll stay there. And I’ll definitely be taking my next project elsewhere unless things change dramatically in the meantime.

This absolutely isn’t a ‘pity post’ or a ‘please buy my books’ post by the way. I don’t like reading those and I’m not about to start writing them. But if you do want to help real indie authors’ books rise above the tide of AI generated drivel, next time you see someone asking for recommendations, please consider giving one of your favourite books a mention if you think it would hit the spot.

Just a simple “I really enjoyed X by Y” is all it takes. Because a recommendation from a fellow reader carries real weight, much more so than a self-rec or a random ad popping up in someone’s Facebook feed.

So many indie authors are sinking fast right now. The support of our readers could well be the lifeline that saves us from going down for the third time.

Oh, and in case I disappear overnight from Amazon, or Facebook decides to send me to jail, now would be a great time to sign up to my newsletter so we can still stay connected if disaster strikes (the danger is real!)