It’s been a tumultuous year for Amazon.com, which suffered a significant hit to its public image as a result of its prolonged and bitter dispute with veteran publisher Hachette. Many authors spoke out against Amazon, in large part because of the company’s aggressive tactics that hurt them most of all, like removing the buy buttons on Hachette books. Even so, one group of writers largely sided with Amazon: those self-publishing on the Kindle platform.
As we noted in our November cover story on Amazon’s publishing wing, some self-publishing stars have been earning $100,000-plus incomes. One such star, Hugh Howey, circulated a petition claiming that Amazon has “granted more authors their independence than we’ve had at any other time in human history.”
Now, however, many self-published writers are furious with Amazon too. According to a New York Times story that came out over the weekend, the writers are finding their earnings severely cut due to Amazon’s recent introduction of a service called Kindle Unlimited, which allows readers access to a wide variety of e-books, and as many as they want, for a $9.99 monthly fee. Writers get a small portion of that, about $1.40 as of last month, if their books are read, according to the Times.
A self-published romance writer named Holly Ward, who goes by the pen name H.M.Ward, explained the problem to the paper.
“Your rabid romance reader who was buying $100 worth of books a week and funneling $5,200 into Amazon per year is now generating less than $120 a year,” she said. “The revenue is just lost. That doesn’t work well for Amazon or the writers.
The Times story also included this notable observation.
“Six months ago people were quitting their day job, convinced they could make a career out of writing,” said Bob Mayer, an e-book consultant and publisher who has written 50 books. “Now people are having to go back to that job or are scraping to get by. That’s how quickly things have changed.”
There’s even talk of disgruntled writers joining a union, the Times reported.
Seattle Weekly asked Aaron Shephard, a San Juan Island writer who has written three how-to books on Kindle self-publishing, what he makes of the phenomenon. Shephard, who has been arguing for some time that self-publishing is turning into a losing game, says writers shouldn’t be surprised. He writes in an e-mail:
What’s ironic is that the self-published authors are complaining that Amazon is devaluing books. And yet this is exactly what most of them supported when Amazon was trying to force lower prices on Hachette and other traditional publishers. Kindle Unlimited is just an extension of that. It turns out these authors were rooting for the wrong side.
What many of them still don’t realize is that the high royalties Amazon has paid them were never meant to be permanent. They were nothing more than a weapon in the war against traditional publishers. But the war is mostly over, so it’s no surprise that Amazon is chipping away at author income, one way or another.
Still, another self-published writer featured in SW’s cover story, Carolyn Jourdan, isn’t giving up hope. “I get a LOT of KU [Kindle Unlimited] activity, often more than purchases,” the best-selling Tennessee author e-mails, “but I don’t have enough data yet to say whether that has helped or hurt my bottom line.”
Given how quickly things are evolving, that will undoubtedly become clear in just a few more months.
