CW: This post is a bit of rant. Feel free to skip it unless you want the details. The tl;dr is that you can no longer get my ebooks on Kindle (but paperbacks are still available on Amazon, for now) because I’m tired of AI and megacorp overreach, and I’m especially tired of it undermining my writing career.
So, here’s what happened: Last month, an article posted on Writer Beware detailed the latest Amazon decision that is impacting authors. They have introduced an “Ask This Book” feature which allows readers to get summaries of the books and “ask questions” about character motivation and scene significance, etc. Essentially, Amazon has created a generative AI chatbot and is blatantly violating copyright laws by dumping every ebook on their site into that system. Every single Kindle ebook will be subject to this new system and authors and publishers do not have the right to opt out.
So, I have made the difficult decision to pull all my ebooks off Kindle because of this. It may effectively end my writing career because, despite everyone complaining that Amazon is evil… nobody buys books from the many other stores my books are available on.
Why Amazon mattered
For many indie authors, this is also the case—we try to “go wide” and give people other options… but buyers just don’t use those other options. And many authors who are wide don’t bother pushing the other sites much because of this—they just don’t generate the sales numbers. Because here’s the thing: Disappearing from Amazon effectively ends your visibility, especially when you write in an already-really-difficult-to-market genre like middle grade.
Part of the issue is that the major sites, like Amazon, are still the best way for a chance to get your book seen by people. Nobody is going to buy a book that they don’t know exists. On Amazon, if enough people buy an author’s book to push it up the lists, other people might also see it. Same with places like Kobo—the more people buy in one place, the more visibility a particular books will get on that place because the algorithms start showing it to other people.
This also works the other way, in that if a books isn’t getting consistent sales, the algorithms just stop showing it to people and it is really hard to get it seen at all again. This is the purgatory in which most of my books exist on the other sites… they’re there but you have to search by title and author name to find them. You will never stumble across them just by browsing.
“So why don’t you just sell direct?”
Now, whenever I start talking about this stuff, someone inevitably asks me why I “don’t just sell direct”. And I have to grit my teeth and pray for patience. Because I do sell direct. Many indie authors do. The problem is, unless you are the kind of person who will check out the links in someone’s social media bio, you probably wouldn’t know that.
And while selling direct is the best way for me to ensure my books aren’t helping to prop up highly unethical megacorps, it’s not great for that all-important visibility. The algorithm thing, for good or bad, doesn’t happen with buy-direct author shops like Itchio and Payhip so having those kinds of shops (which, again, I do) doesn’t really help get the word out to other people who aren’t already familiar with them.
This is where reader behaviour plays a huge role in collective efforts to fight back against AI and megacorps creeping into every aspect of all our lives. Because, while authors are far from the only ones to have issue with the ethics and business practices of Amazon, readers still flock there as the first choice for book-buying.
Authors are not okay
Authors are not okay, folks. Between AI destroying the industry and wrecking people’s careers, and the big spike in piracy since people decided the solution to boycotting Amazon is stealing from people who are literally making pennies (21 cents per day… that’s what I made in book sales in 2025. I calculated it after that article came out), we are not okay.
Please, please, please support authors. If you can buy books in places other than Amazon, please do so. If you can’t buy books, please borrow them from your library. Request that your library pick up titles from your favourite authors (most libraries have a form you can fill out to do that). Leave reviews everywhere you can. Sign up for author newsletters, and follow authors on social media. Repost social media content. Talk about your favourite books—help other people discover that they exist! All of these things matter, and you really have NO idea how much they mean to most authors.
I am ONE unknown indie author, and I am nobody. My protest is utterly meaningless in the face of this ever-expanding AI takeover. Unless all indies do this, and all tradpub authors pressure their publishers to fight Amazon when it does stuff like this, my pulling my books is not going to do a thing to make Amazon stop. All it will do is end whatever tiny little chance I might still have had at having a real writing career.
But I am so sick of AI being shoved into every aspect of my life and not even having the right to opt out of it. This is the ONLY protest I CAN make. So that’s what I’m doing.
