Wide release: a belated announcement

The deed is done. Over the past few months, from February to May, all my book titles left Kindle Unlimited and migrated to the blue yonder of wide release. In addition to Amazon, my eBooks are now available through Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and other digital marketplaces as well as several library networks (including Overdrive, Hoopla, et al.).

I wasn’t very loud about this exit: I told my newsletter and made a single Facebook post as a heads-up. If this comes as a surprise—if you’re a KU reader who had my books on your TBR—I’m sorry.

Mostly, I just wanted to be out and away before I talked about it.

So.

Let’s talk about it.

The pros and cons of exclusivity

As many know, if an indie author wants their work in KU, they have to grant Amazon exclusive rights to distribute the eBook. For several years, I justified this because readers could purchase the file there, then download it and add it to an eReader of their choice. Being exclusive with Amazon gave me a single place to point my audience, and it only required me to learn one interface for digital publishing.

Which left me more time for writing. A definite positive.

However, that justification dissolved back in February, when the ’Zon removed customers’ ability to download purchased files. This tied any eBooks bought through them to either a Kindle device or a Kindle app. They also reinforced that customers were not buying the eBook itself, but merely a license to read it—a license Amazon could revoke on a whim. Meaning, if they de-list a title from their catalog, it could also disappear from the Kindle libraries of anyone who thinks they’ve purchased it.

Further, this means that users can no longer create a backup of their digital library. Amazon’s cloud is now that backup, and if you lose your account there, you lose access to all your purchased files as well.

I have a problem with this on so many levels.

First, I’m a bookseller, not a license seller. If someone buys an eBook, I feel like that file should be theirs the same as if they bought a physical copy. They should be able to store it safely, to loan it to a friend, to mark it up without fear of those marks being overwritten.

Second, I despise having digital media spread across multiple apps, devices, and libraries. Tying Amazon eBooks exclusively to Kindle forces people to purchase or download additional products for access. Whereas before they could side-load to the reader of their choice and keep their library in one place, they now must add an Amazon-controlled item to their inventory.

Third, this type of file restriction encourages piracy. Everything digital can be hacked; disabling downloads won’t stop that. And in fact, every single article and video about Amazon’s file-permission changes that I encountered featured a running theme in the comments section: “If purchasing isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft.”

Many consumers already justify stealing IP that publishers lock behind a paywall. This tightening of digital rights only magnifies that justification.

Which is a huge problem. Reportedly, if Amazon’s bots find KU-exclusive books on pirate sites, they blame the author for breach of contract rather than the pirates for violating copyright. It’s ridiculous.

So taking all this into account, what other choice did I have?

(Answer: None. Wide release was the only logical option.)

Long time coming

I’ve known for a while that I was walking a tightrope. When you have all your eggs in one basket, there’s always a chance the basket will fail. The author-sphere is rife with tales of people who had their Amazon accounts frozen or deleted, often through no fault of their own. For years, I’ve played the “what-if” in my mind: what if Amazon randomly flags my account? What will I do if they shut it down and I can’t recover it?

And the answer was simple: I’d re-publish with a different distributor, starting from scratch, without Amazon’s marketplace to aid me. A nuclear option, sure, but it reassured me that the world wouldn’t end if the worst-case scenario occurred.

Thus, when their eBook policy changed, I already had an exit plan. The change simply acted as my catalyst.

A poor decision

Business-wise, this exodus is not smart. Over the years, KU has paid me roughly 4 – 5x what my book sales have garnered. In the crest of a new release, it was 90% of my income, an easy way to recoup the time and investments tied to publishing. Back in February, when I made the decision to leave, it was hovering around 50 – 60%, a safety net during this extended lull in my writing cycle.

In addition, Amazon accounts for 80 – 90% of book market sales anyway. Distributing beyond is generally a courtesy to Amazon-avoidant readers rather than a path to higher income.

But such is the price of principles. I made this a matter of prayer, and I’m at peace—both with my decision and the timing of it.

Moving forward

The exodus itself finished a month ago. This past week, I finally updated my Books page with specific links to major storefronts, plus universal book links (UBLs) that include some lesser known marketplaces. Additional options exist, though. If you have a favorite eBook source but don’t see it listed, try searching my name on that site.

(Not Google Play, tho. I haven’t uploaded there. Also, if your “favorite eBook source” is a piracy site, repent.)

I intend to take my paperbacks into wide release too, but I have some hurdles to clear for that. Or really, one main hurdle: I no longer have the font library that I typeset most of them from. Meaning I have to re-acquire the fonts. There’s a tiny margin discrepancy between distributors, and I can’t address that from the PDFs I already have.

Plus, y’know, I want to fix the ninja typos that have surfaced since publication.

(And yes, I realize this problem is of my own making because I insist on manual typesetting instead of using a WYSIWYG app. I LIKE the typesetting process, okay?)

The fate of my future titles, whether they’ll have a 90-day term in KU or wide release from the start, remains to be seen. I’m not angry at the ’Zon. Like most corporations, they’re amoral—existing in a paradigm of profit/loss instead of good/evil. They can enforce their contracts how they please on their platform. I’m free not to engage. Although I’ve officially expanded beyond their marketplace, I’m still grateful for the opportunities they provide to indie authors.

With the projects I’m currently juggling, I can see arguments both for and against a KU term. I’m not far enough along to decide, though. It’s always more important to finish a draft than to choose its future distribution.

So that’s where my focus will be: on the writing itself.

(And maybe on some actual marketing for my backlist, so new readers can find my work. That seems like a reasonable, responsible thing to do.)

Anyway, that’s all. Thank you for continuing with me on this journey. Here’s to new horizons!