I love looking through amazon, finding books, movies, and just stuff. They are my go-to vendor of choice…however…
As an author, I must protest at their arbitrary censoring of material (lesbian fiction) and erotica. If someone doesn’t want to read what I write, then scroll on by…my feelings won’t be hurt. For Amazon to censor it though, that really annoys the heck outta me.
Then, there is the percentage game they play. I took this from another’s post, it is not mine, and I’d give credit if I could remember who it was who originally posted it:
A bit of information that may, or may not, be of interest to anyone who has ever wondered about royalties earned by authors.
I noticed on a sales report that some of my books sold on amazon.com only earned 35% royalties (I get $1.75 a sale, amazon keeps $3.25) yet others I receive 70% (same region, same book, same price, sold on the same day)
I made an inquiry as to why and it turns out, an author is only entitled to 70% royalties if the buyer is in the US. So if a buyer, like myself for instance, subscribes to amazon.com but lives in NZ, the author is only entitled to 35% of the sale, amazon keeps the rest.
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So, Amazon, arguably the LARGEST retailer of books in the world keeps taking, and taking, and taking. It’s a few cents here and there, but when you multiply that by the millions of authors out there, it adds up.
Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate that Amazon makes it easy for me to publish a book and get it out there, but they are making it difficult to be seen if you write any erotica, if you are a lesbian (a lot of lesbian literature is put under gay literature…um, I don’t play with the guys, I want a SEPARARATION of that patriarchal idea), or if they arbitrarily feel like it they will recategorize your books, or so it seems.
I don’t want to say they are homophobic, I fully believe Facebook has that market cornered, but I have to say they are taking pennies they don’t deserve and finding ways to take more.
They bought Create Space a few years ago. That is a platform by which authors can publish paperbacks on demand, so they don’t have to keep an inventory. Great concept right? Create Space even had its own ‘store’ to sell your books direct, the author made more money through their store. Now Amazon has eliminated that store because they don’t want to pay out the money and apparently it competed with their main site?
Amazon also owns Audible or ACX where an author can get their book produced as an audiobook. I don’t know a lot about them, but I’m betting there are some similar things in the works for their platform.
Amazon now owns Good Reads, a place you used to be able to get a fair review for your books. However, if you don’t get a fair review, say someone is targeting you, bad mouthing your books, a lot of the time they won’t take down the review. Now that Amazon owns it, how long until they ‘think’ it is competing with their own review process and starts eliminating services that Good Reads now offers?
There are a host of things Amazon owns related to the publishing field, I don’t object because as an independent author, I utilize such things, but…they are too big to fight, they are the big ‘bully’ on the block in some things, and they are nickel and diming us authors to death….
My suggestion to you all, buy publisher or author direct when and if it is available. This eliminates that ‘3rd party’ that is Amazon. In my case I do have them offered so you can buy direct from me.
K'Anne Meinel 