It’s Done

I went through and removed series books from Kindle (to start–I will probably go back and do the others, but that was enough of a psychic hit for the night). (I discovered the series page on Amazon is broken when ebooks are unpublished so that’s great.)

This is not only due to the Recap system (I’m so not a “bestseller” that I’m not even at risk of that) but the fact that they STILL have not updated their Terms of Service to reflect how books are used with KDP’s generative AI. All I have is the word of one employee that they aren’t used for training data. And the more folks I talk to (both publicly and behind the scenes), the clearer it is that no one knows what is going on at KDP. The departments don’t talk to each other. No one knows how various areas work. Authors’ agents can’t even get answers from Amazon’s publishing imprints. Draft2Digital has no idea what’s happening.

It is unacceptable that there is no ToS update about their AI usage. It is unacceptable that apparently no one is manning this massive ship anymore.

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Want to know what a ToS update should look like? Well gosh, let’s just check with Kobo.

That’s right, they’re doing the same thing and this blog post details some of the usage. I am deeply disappointed and concerned. I have submitted feedback and received a prompt response. At least they’re being transparent but they had the opportunity here to show they are better than the competition and come out against this bullshit. Instead they’re embracing it. I have been a Kobo advocate while repeating “corporations are not your friend” and have always said I will turn on a dime and call them out if they do something egregious.

Well, they are.

I’ll have another blog post about it in a week or so. Because they have a ToS update, I’ve left books there for now, but it’s abundantly clear it is not the viable Kindle alternative many of us believed it would be.

ETA June 3: last night the Kobo CEO wrote a long thread breaking down how this isn’t as bad as it sounded. I still have questions but I am okay chalking some of this up to a badly written blog post by marketing.

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Yes, you’ll notice that is leaving no options left for selling, especially when you consider B&N still hasn’t paid me. (ETA June 2: There appears to be a payment I think is from them that just landed. It does not match any of the payment reports on my account. So I can say…they have possibly paid me something(?))

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ETA June 3: this is 10x than it seemed, I’ll have more later.

Oh, but we’re not done here! Because in a complete what-the-ever-loving-fuck move, Everand/Scribd has laid off the entire team producing audiobooks with books still in production, not told anyone anything, and I’ve been waiting three weeks now for a response after contacting three people. No one will reply, not even the single remaining woman I’m told is supposed to be handling this. I have no idea if my books will be stuck at Everand for seven years or if they will actually distribute to third parties so I can make some money.

Yeah there’ll be a blog post coming about that, too, because I am tired of quietly waiting privately for two simple yes or no answers.

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All of this happening like right now, at once. From everywhere.

I am so disheartened and sad. I don’t even have the energy to be angry right now. Just hit after hit and I feel like I’m gonna to need to make death saves soon because I gotta be near zero hit points–there’s been no rest, no breathing room. All I have left is to take the disengage action and dash the fuck out of here.

I want to stress at the moment I am okay, at least financially. I have good Patreon support. I have a few months of money coming from sales. Also, of course, I freelance. But May was the best month I’ve had at Kindle since the fifth Livi book (not even the sixth, that tanked)–a combination of the new Waverly book, two people recommending Waverly and Livi respectively to their audiences, and a whole lot of print sales.

I will probably be singing a different tune in the fall. And I literally have no idea what my career will look like in the spring.

—

The first Waverly book came out two years ago on Friday.

I still vividly remember what a panic I was in. I kept going back and looking at preorder numbers from years earlier to remind me that consistently with every series it simply takes a while. The majority of my series readers don’t go from series to series, my standalone readers typically don’t go to series (there are exceptions I know, I love you folks). Solomon’s Seal preorder in 2016 was for like ten (10) copies. Ten! The climb up is hard. So I kept going back and looking to remind myself that after a few books, usually a series finds its readership–that sort of kept me tethered to sanity with The Killing Beach.

Before TKB was even out, I had the first three up for preorder, and I was so excited for the dozen or so people who had preordered 2 and 3 before even reading the first one.

Then TKB came out, and several people cancelled their preorders for 2 and 3 lol.

I knew it was a difficult character and a hard sell. I knew people were used to me writing urban fantasy and weren’t into a mystery (even though I kept warning it wasn’t paranormal). I stressed, and worried, and friends kept trying to keep me sane by reminding me Waverly would find her audience.

Before A Wild Kind of Darkness released, the total preorders were three less than The Killing Beach had. By the time Alone at Night came out, it was even with The Killing Beach.

But this year, miracle of miracles, Silent All These Years had sixty percent more preorders over TKB and AaN. Waverly developed rabid fans who are filling their books with highlights and sticky notes, writing down clues in their murder journals, and just living and breathing this character with me. It’s not Livi numbers, it’s not standalone horror numbers, but it was a steady enough increase that I felt like it might be okay.

I'm going to have to reread this book and I'm about half way. SO MANY HINTS! The mystery and details. @skyladawn.ca my pen's going to run out of ink! 😂

— Melissa Hayden (@mellhay.bsky.social) 2025-05-31T00:59:14.659Z

Folks, I am devastated to be doing this.

That is not hyperbole. I am devastated. This is the character of my heart, it’s the series of my heart–I’m writing a complex sprawling twelve-book mystery that demands patience and an attention span at a time when audiences supposedly don’t have either. Every word in every book, everything written and everything that’s coming, is exactly what I’d want to read. I want so badly for her to have just a small steady readership.

And I feel like I’ve just cut it off at the knees. Like I’ve made a choice that will eventually kill it. I’ve done this to her, and it’s for nothing.

Because this choice doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t fix anything.

Only a mass rejection of genAI and the companies trying to integrate it will shift this–only massive bestselling accounts with massive readerships getting loud about it can do that. Only the Big Five coming together and taking these companies to task might get policies changed. But none of them will, and everyone is going to just endure this because everyone’s income is tied up in it. People are not going to destroy their entire livelihoods, which is why Amazon (and every other company) continues to get away with these things and always will. In five years’ time, Kobo and Scribd will probably file for bankruptcy after wasting all this money integrating useless genAI, Amazon will be advertising “readers: create your own genAI book!”, and none of us will even see this dystopia because we’ll be dead from poisoned air and droughts caused by this tech.

(The only remaining company will somehow be B&N because they just don’t bother paying anyone so can keep limping along.)

This choice of mine doesn’t matter and the only person who will suffer here is me. I know that.

—

Except…

Except…

As I’m writing this blog post, teary and nihilistic at 4am, what I hear is Waverly because she’s ever present for me, and she says: fuck kindle.

She doesn’t care. She’s prefers to be alone and she is used to no one liking her and she’s feral and she’s mine whether there’s a readership to sustain it or I’m telling stories to myself homeless under the bridge.

What Would Waverly Do? She’d walk away. Her morals are wonky but if this was her line in the sand, she would not cross it. She would torch her career rather than give up control of her soul. And as I keep apologizing to her, she reminds me to stop having feelings because I’m making it weird.

There’s a lot I will do to survive but I’m hitting my limit of what I will bend over and take from soulless corporations. And this entire fucking industry is on the verge of collapsing. It’s going to destroy me either way, so I might as well go out on my terms.

I will not be trapped in this particular darkness for so long that it starts to look like light.

So I’m going to bed sad. I will grieve the readership I was building that won’t follow to direct sales, the readership that has yet to discover the books and now won’t without them on Kindle. I will grieve the loss of excitement I had over the audiobooks. I will grieve the choices Kobo is making that will eventually doom it.

I will grieve that we have to waste time with this utter bullshit, time that should be spent on creative endeavours and instead is wasted sending “feedback” begging our sales channel partners to stop fucking us over, begging others to reach out and complain as well on behalf of everyone.

I will grieve and I will move on, because wishing things were different won’t fix it. Creating more stories is the only chance at survival and I will give no more of my energy (outside the upcoming aforementioned blog posts) to these companies who will steamroll over all of our rights in a heartbeat.