A Month After Removing Most Books from Kindle

This post is intended for me to track some observations, as well as for people who are considering pulling some titles from Kindle. YMMV but this is what I’ve observed so far, some expected and some not.

A reminder: I have started by pulling series books. Standalones are currently up, as are series starters River and Blood Ties since those are the only ebooks available in their respective series. Eventually (maybe in another month), other Kindle ebooks will come down if there’s still no TOS update.

The Finances

I don’t typically make a lot on Kindle, at a glance this will seemingly hurt me less than it would hurt others…but it still hurt.

May was the best month I’d had on Kindle since Livi 5 released in 2021. Only a fraction of that was the new Waverly release–a lot was backlist sales, mostly Livi but also Waverly, due to two different author peers recommending those books to their own readers (*waves at Olivia and Glynn*).

The bulk, then, of those June sales below, are because I tried The Silent Places as a deal everywhere–and I’ll be honest, it was three days of like 11 sales, 6 of which were on Kobo (which is why, when asked about why I don’t price match on Kindle when Kobo runs a sale, that should explain it–I spent a half hour manually updating price changes everywhere only for most books to still sell on Kobo and I made like $20 for my efforts).

That changed when a Bluesky reader did a giveaway of five copies on Kindle (thanks, Kari!)–not only were those five copies claimed, but several other folks went on to buy the book, giving the month an overall bump up. Without that sale and subsequent folks recommending the book, the chart would’ve looked much different.

When the rest of the books are removed from Kindle (which is incoming since they have not changed their TOS still), that will drop down to almost nothing since I don’t sell a lot of print.

The other difference, though, is Payhip. Glynn Stewart (buy his books) asked me where to link readers to when he mentioned Livi, and I suggested Payhip since it can be side-loaded for Kindle readers.

I made $143.87 USD on Payhip last month, and a lot of that came from him linking to the book. This is compared to the one or two books I sell on Payhip every couple of months–that’s significant, and direct sales rather than Kindle means I both get paid sooner and get a higher percentage (no doubt some sales are lost with the lack of Kindle availability; it’s impossible to say how it would’ve gone otherwise, but this is still a healthy number of direct sales).

(Also buy Olivia Atwater‘s books, she’s helping to keep Waverly in coffee.)

The Unexpected

You know those handy series pages on Amazon? It tells you what order the books are in, if there are supplemental titles, etc?

Did you know that page breaks if you remove Kindle books, even though your dashboard has the print still linked on the series page?

Waverly’s page now goes nowhere vs Elis’s page with the first ebook still there.

I list series order inside the actual books, and now in the descriptions as well as in the A+ content (which is a pain in the ass to update for all regions).

I don’t know yet if this will make a difference, whether readers buying print will have trouble navigating the series order and what they’re missing in the series. It’s concerning because I don’t write series as standalones but now it’s clear it’s vital that publishers, IMO, not rely on Amazon’s volume/series info because if they pull anything from Kindle, all that info disappears.

The Confusion

Amazon and Kindle are used interchangeably, by me as well, and this has led to some confusion. No, I did not pull my books from Amazon. Yes, I pulled many from Kindle, which is the ebook part of KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Paperbacks and hardcovers are still there. I am looking at alternatives but that’ll create a lot of complications I can ill afford.

I need to do better making the difference clear. The KDP reps I spoke to said the genAI recaps are for Kindle books, not print, and so this is why print are remaining for now (although they seem to be testing a feature on one- or two-sentence summaries based on the jacket copy and they are fucking terrible).

The Ripple Effect

I expected sales to dip, I knew that many Kindle readers would not learn to sideload or follow to other platforms, and I made my peace with that.

What I did not expect was for five patrons to cancel right after I told them I was ceasing to publish new titles on Kindle.

Some might be coincidence with the timing but, for me, that’s a significant and unexpected number to lose in a day, and it’s hard not to assume they’re Kindle users. Given I’d had other messages of support, I did not expect the opposite to occur from what is usually the most dedicated area of my fanbase.

So if you’re making this choice and you rely on Patreon income, keep this potential consequence in mind.

The Lessons

1. Doing this in stages is, I think, the right move. Initially it was for my sanity–it felt like I was taking 5d6 psychic damage every time I unpublished a book, so I prioritized series books. Now at least it means I’m not cutting an entire income stream off in one go, so that leaves time to start encouraging readers to try out other platforms.
2. I need to make more of an effort to encourage conversion to direct sales. Part of that is going to be showing how easy it is to side-load, which I need to do. I might take a short story or something, make it free, and encourage people to grab it and learn how to side-load.
3. What I’ve been saying forever: we are in this together and to survive the major transition periods in (or collapse of) publishing, it’ll come from having one another’s backs. The majority of my book sales lately have come from folks recommending them to their own readerships. I try to recommend books myself a lot. Our little micro ecosystems of writers and readers is vital.
4. There is a reason Kindle remains popular, and that’s ease of use. The giveaways from various folks on Bluesky regularly boost sales overall. Other sites can’t replicate that. Payhip has a gifting option but you need the recipients address. Smashwords has a gift option, but I’m not sure how that one works. Gifting isn’t something I can use given I’m Canadian, but it’s a useful feature for the US market. Other sites (like Kobo) badly need this. I cannot see a way to replicate this so it’s a small, super helpful promotional tool I have lost out on.

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Many folks apparently took it as a personal attack when I chose to do this and dredged up their litany of excuses with “Well of course Kindle is terrible but I can’t afford to make such a decision”–and folks, I literally do not care.

At all.

I didn’t tell anyone else to do this. I didn’t expect anyone else to do this. I was not personally attacking people by saying “I am pulling series books from Kindle” and did not call on anyone to do anything more than write to KDP and demand a TOS change. (I did find a lot of folks outing themselves as hypocrites for screaming about Kobo *doing the right thing by having a TOS change and explaining what they’re doing* but not doing a thing about Amazon, and I stand by that.)

I cannot afford to do this either. I know the risks. And a reminder: if my writing income dips so much that I have to focus solely on freelancing, I will have to quit that as well and find an entirely different job because trying to put my focus 100% on other people’s books rather than my own will kill me. That is not hyperbole–I will become so resentful of others I will quit, and being unable to write will have a devastating effect on my mental health. I do not have a backup or alternative if pulling out of Kindle kills my career. This is a massively big deal for me to risk.

Suggesting for some reason I can just afford to do this is minimizing the devastating effect it’s going to have on someone who already lives on poverty-level income.

But what I see are patterns. What I see is absolutely no one manning the ship at KDP anymore. What I see is a path ahead where KDP will do something so egregious that I will wish I’d made the decision to jump ship earlier. By doing this now, I am hopefully in a position to build up more of my income elsewhere so, when they do something even worse than this–and, again, screaming into the void here, but: there is no terms of service update for authors/publisher regarding how KDP can use your books with generative AI!–I will not be one of the people scrambling then to find a way to divest myself of them. (Or, more realistically, just once again shrugging and saying “It’s Amazon, what are you gonna do?” while enduring whatever terrible new thing they’ve done.)

There is little we control in this industry as authors, yes. But there is also a learned helplessness, a refusal to sit with difficult feelings and tendency to use that lack of control as a reason to accept shitty things.

Every time a discussion about the harm Amazon does comes up, every time readers talk about boycotts and trying to shop elsewhere, it is authors who are quick to dominate the conversation, to guilt people and shut those talks down. “Your boycott will hurt indie authors, though!” is said so frequently I’ve just started blocking people for it. Everyone knows this. Everyone! Indie writers barge into every fucking conversation about it to stop people from exploring change.

Boycotts hurt. Good people get caught up in them. That’s how it works.

I applaud anyone who attempts to get out of the Amazon system, and sometimes that means I get hurt too because that’s where my print books are. But that’s fine–I made that choice, and I support readers deciding how best to spend their money. I do not take it as a personal attack when people decide to shop elsewhere, when my peers decide to sell their books on different platforms (like KU). I do not fucking care. But I will not be made to feel ashamed for my choice. If what I am doing makes you feel a certain way, sit with that and interrogate it–do not bring it to me to pat you on the back and make you feel better. I don’t care about your feelings. Your choices are your own.

I would, in fact, say that if you see people actively trying to get away from Amazon: encourage them. The first step in making the publishing ecosystem healthier is to stop repeating the idea that it’s “impossible” to get out. The next step is to support the readers shopping elsewhere and the publishers focusing on other sales channels. Otherwise, the “impossibility” of getting out from Amazon’s grip just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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So that’s one month down.

I’ll look at things again in the fall, and certainly seeing how Waverly 5 does next year will be interesting (assuming I’m not dead in a US drone strike by then).

Also I would like to point to fantasy author Delilah Waan’s comprehensive investigation into Kobo’s usage of generative AI and their TOS changes for anyone with questions about all that. I agree with much of her assessment, and that’s why I’ve marginally relaxed on the Kobo stuff, although I remain annoyed with them and wary.

She has a long-form video on the subject, she’s written thorough threads on Bluesky, and has a blog post up here (also, buy her books!). I am so grateful she’s stayed on them and provided clear, reasonable information for authors (and readers)–I’ve had a hell of a month.

(If you’re not on Bsky–first I dealt with a faulty smoke detector that went off in the middle of the night for two hours until I called the fire department, then the fridge died during the 44C humidex heatwave and it took a few days to get a replacement, and that’s the second time I’ve lost groceries in less than three months–it’s been stressful. And also I’m still dealing with Everand’s contradictory statements and weeks of silence which will also be a blog post soon, of which the details I relate publicly will be decided by the actions of the remaining person at the company who occasionally deigns to answer my emails. There is one path forward in which I go quietly and it remains to be seen whether they will step in that direction or not.)

Hopefully I will blog about non-terrible things eventually. I dunno, everything is just…very terrible and I’m tired.