Dax Murray - Fantasy Author

I’ve done some digging into the numbers, and the latest I can find for the breakdown of authors that have their ebooks exclusive to Amazon vs authors who are widely available on multiple platforms is hard to pin down. But the most recent numbers I have been able to find point to it being roughly equal. Written Word Media places it around 37% of indie authors have their ebooks exclusively in Amazon and 34% make their ebooks widely available. The secret third thing being authors who have some books exclusive and some widely available. These numbers are for 2023. I do remember being part of the survey for 2024 but I cannot find the results of that yet.

But you, dear reader, have decided you do not want to purchase from Amazon. This is entirely your choice to make. You, as a consumer, buyer, and reader, have the right to choose where your money goes. You are not a bad person for refusing to buy any products on Amazon. You aren’t stealing food from someone’s table, you aren’t forcing someone into homelessness because you have decided your hard-earned money is better spent elsewhere. Only a third of indie authors have all of their eggs in the Amazon basket. The majority of independent authors have chosen to make some or all of their ebooks available elsewhere. And the authors who have chosen to divest themselves of Amazon are just as deserving of your support as those who have chosen to be Amazon-exclusive. Those authors also have tables that need food and physical bodies that require protection from the elements.

I know there has been a lot of unfair guilting, shaming, and name-calling from authors who are Amazon-exclusive, saying refusing to buy books on Amazon is tantamount to execution and accusing authors who are not Amazon-exclusive of being traitors, vultures, and opportunists. Some of those accustations landing directly in my inbox from an Amazon-exclusive author who told me I picked over the dead caracass’ of Amazon-exclusive careers when I pointed out my book and many other fantasy books are available in Kobo Plus. Yes, I am apparently a monster for believing readers should get to choose where they get their books. I am a demon for informing readers that they have a choice instead of offering my fealty to Amazon.

I might be running out of patience, but I let spite and anger fuel me and this spite and anger at being called a traitorous vulture for choosing to not put all my eggs in one basket is the kindling for this article.

But, if you want to support indie authors and not spend a penny at Amazon, here is how you can do it.

Directly

Purchasing Books Directly

While only about a quarter of independent authors currently offer their books directly, more and more are jumping on the trend. Check out an author’s website and see if they have a shop! Some sell their ebooks digitally, using Shopify or LemonSqueezy as a payment processor and integrating StoryOrigin or BookFunnel to handle the delivery. Some offer their books via Ko-Fi, Gumroad, or Itch.io.

Usually what you can expect, no matter how the author is selling directly, is to get the epub, mobi, and possibly the pdf of the book delivered to your email. You can then add this epub to your reading apps—either third party like Moon+ Reader (android), ReadEra (Android, Apple, AppGallery), etc, or directly into Kindle or Google Books apps. You can also use USB transfer to get these books onto an e-ink device. If you use Calibre Ebook Manager (free, open source, Windows, Linux, and MacOS), you can even use their server feature to sync your ebooks across devices.

Other authors may offer their physical books directly. These authors might use some sort of integration of Shopify or WooCommerce that allows you to purchase a hardcover or paperback directly from them and they will ship it to you. Others may integrate a printing service like BookVault where the book will be printed when you order it and shipped from the printer directly to you. Some authors may offer a combination of both so that you can also order signed books.

This is one of the best ways to support independent authors as they get the largest percentage of revenue per purchase. Many authors will also ask if you would like to join their newsletter at checkout and if it’s an author you plan to purchase from again, I suggest signing up! Many authors who sell direct will offer exclusive discounts to their newsletter subscribers that you won’t find elsewhere.

Other Forms of Direct Support

Many authors also have other means of supporting them either in a one-time tip or recurring support. Patreon, Ream, Ghost, and other platforms allow readers to provide recurring support to their favorite authors and get a lot of bonus content like short stories and lore or get more personal updates and behind-the-scenes looks into the life of their favorite authors. Ko-Fi and BuyMeACoffee allow readers to give one-time tips to their favorite authors. Platforms like BackerKit and Kickstarter allow readers to provide support for in-progress projects. I mentioned newsletters before, but if you subscribe to an author’s newsletter, you are more likely to learn about the projects they are trying to get off the ground and they will let you know the best way you can help them.

These other forms of direct support will let you support many authors, not just independent authors! And while Kindle Unlimited requires that ebooks be exclusive to Amazon, it doesn’t forbid those authors from having direct sales of their paperbacks or from offering bonus content on Patreon. Many Kindle Unlimited authors will offer their Patreons digital copies of their ebooks one week before release—when the book would enter exclusivity on KU.

Other Ebook Retailers & Subscription Services

No, you won’t be able to support Amazon-exclusive authors here. Amazon-exclusive authors are aware of this, they weighed the pros and cons of having their ebooks exclusive to Amazon, aware that some readers do not shop on Amazon. They decided it was more important to them to have their ebooks in Kindle Unlimited than it was for them to have their ebooks available in other stores. That was a business choice they made and it is a business choice they could change if they wanted to. But you have a right to not shop on Amazon—that is a purchasing choice you have the right to make even if you previously purchased on Amazon. They made that choice knowing this, and you can make the choice not to purchase on Amazon knowing this. Nearly sixty percent of indie authors have at least some of their books not exclusive to Amazon. You are not hurting “the majority” of indie authors by not purchasing on Amazon. The majority have some or all of their books widely available.

What about physical book stores? Of course, they are awesome. Bookshop dot org is great and it lets you support independent bookshops. You can always walk in and ask for indie books to be special ordered if the brick and mortar shop doesn’t carry them, too. But Amazon doesn’t ask for exclusivity for physical books, just ebooks. This is focused on ebooks for that reason. Yes, again, I love Bookshop dot org, too. I’m not forgetting about it. It just does not yet offer ebooks for indies. Right now, Bookshop dot org is only offering ebooks for traditionally published books. That will hopefully change.

Ebook Retailers

I am not going to get into every single ebook retailer in existence, but there are many. Here are a few of my favorite:

• Itchio – Yes, it’s originally for indie games. But they do have a book section, and a huge portion of it currently comprises of trans and lesbian books. It lets authors do group promotions where they bundle books together for 1 low price.
• Kobo – ebooks and audiobooks, has an awesome app, and their e-ink devices are all made of recycled plastic, has a built-in integration in their devices for Libby, also has an all-you-can-read-and-listen-to subscription service called Kobo Plus.
• Smashwords – ebooks, frequently has site-wide sales, gives one of the largest percentages of royalties to authors, only has indie books.
• Campfire – ebooks only (for now), has one of the largest percentages of royalties for authors, allows authors to sell bonus content that is integrated into the book, has a digital app that works on Android and iOS, also has a web browser app.
• Barnes and Noble – ebooks, physical books and audiobooks, has their own app and e-ink devices. And, as a side note, while they might not keep a huge stock of indie author books in-store, you can go in and ask them to special order an indie book for you and they will order it, and you can go and pick it up once it’s in.
• Vivlio – A French ebook marketplace with its own app and e-ink devices.
• Tolino – A German consortium of booksellers, including Thalia and Bol.de, to help physical stores offer ebooks, has an app, webapp, and line of e-ink devices.

Subscription Services

• Everand - Everand has ebooks and audiobooks for $11.99. Subscription to Everand also gets you complimentary access to Scribd, which has academic papers, sheet music, and more documents available. USD price is $11.99/mo.
• Kobo Plus - Kobo Plus has three tiers. Ebook only, Audiobook only, and both ebooks and audiobooks. US pricing has ebook only at $7.99, audiobook only at $7.99, and to get both combined is $9.99. Prices may vary on location. New subscribers get their first 30 days free.

Regardless of where you purchase your ebooks, I highly recommend creating backups of your books. We already know that Amazon will delete books from people’s libraries without warning. You can use the DeDRM plugin and Calibre Ebook Manager software (both are free and open source and work on Linux, Windows, and MacOS) to create these backups. Having such backups means that if you choose to switch to another e-ink device, you won’t lose the books you have purchased.

Libraries

I’ve said it before and I will say it again—libraries are not the solution to Amazon’s stranglehold on the book world. Many, MANY countries do not have free, public, uncensored libraries. Heck, even in the United States, there are whole regions of the country without access to a library, especially libraries that aren’t being censored and forced to remove books by authors of color, queer authors, and disabled authors. Libraries can be wonderful when they are free, public, and uncensored. But they can also be tools of oppressive regimes to put forth propaganda.

Regardless, if you have access to a public, free, and uncensored library, you can request physical books by any author that makes their books available to libraries and digital books from any author that has made their books available to libraries digitally. Authors still get paid when libraries buy their books. The more people request a book, the more likely it is that a library will end up adding that book to their collection.

If an indie author does not offer their book in physical format through a distributor that distributes to libraries, that was a choice they made. If an author decides to be in Kindle Unlimited, their ebooks cannot be available via Libby, Hoopla, BorrowBox, etc. That was a business choice they made. They decided it was more important to them and their business that they be in Kindle Unlimited than their books be accessible for free via libraries.

I am trying not to fill this article with a bunch of “this is how I, as an indie author, do this” because that isn’t the point. But I do want to assure you, as an indie author who has made their ebooks available to Libby, Hoopla, CloudLibrary, BorrowBox, etc, that I do get paid. I get paid per checkout on Hoopla, CloudLibrary, and BorrowBox, and for Libby, a library will pay me a royalty that is higher than the regular retail price for 20 consecutive checkouts. It was important to me that my books be available to libraries because “free via the library” is cheaper than “free via the $11.99 KU subscription price.” But that’s just me. Regardless, indie authors who have made their books available to libraries still do get paid. We aren’t losing money if you checkout our books via the library.

Conclusion

I am pretty vocal about my… dislike… of Amazon. My books are still available there but I have put in a ton of effort to make sure people know it’s not the only place they can find my books. You can find my books at all of the retailers listed in this article! And in the libraries! And directly! I have put together a three-part series specifically for authors who wish to leave KU and “go wide.” I support wide authors. I also understand that people make business choices and for some authors, KU might be the best business choice.

But, as Y’shtola Rhul says when calling down a devastating meteor, the gloves are off! I’ve been accused of being a traitor and vulture and an opportunist for mentioning that my books are not Amazon-exclusive. A KU author found my private, personal email in order to yell at me and accuse me of starving her children because if I keep telling readers they can find my books at Kobo Plus, one of her readers might find out about Kobo Plus!!!! And if they do that, then maybe they will cancel their KU subscription, and she and her family will be poor!!! She is mad because I told my readers they have a choice, and my business decision of being wide is hurting her because she made the business choice to be Kindle Exclusive.

That’s not how this works. You can’t guilt readers into shopping at Amazon if their conscience tells them they shouldn’t, and you can’t guilt your fellow authors into changing their marketing strategies because you put all your eggs in one basket.

If you want to leave the Amazon ecosystem, I suggest doing it slowly and taking your time. You don’t have to ditch your Kindle device right away, you can still side-load via USB and use the “Send to Kindle” email address feature to get books you purchased elsewhere on your Kindle. Check out the other stores and retailers I mentioned here and download their apps if they have them. Many of these retailers with apps do have plenty of free books available so you can snag some of the free books and see if you like the interface.

If your Kindle is at the end of its life and you are looking for something new, figure out what you want out of your next ereader. If you are doing a lot of reading across several reading apps, a device that runs Android, such as Onyx Boox devices or the PocketBook InkPads might be for you. If you mostly purchase books via European booksellers, the Tolino ereaders might be what you want. If you absolutely need to have physical page turn buttons, the Kobo Libra might be a good option.

If your favorite authors are Amazon-only in all regards and you absolutely cannot find their books—physical or digital—anywhere else, see if they have a Ream or Patreon or subscription service where they give free copies of their books to members before the books release on Amazon. If the book isn’t on Amazon yet, they aren’t breaking exclusivity by giving it away to their members/patrons. If they do not do that, you can email them and ask if you can be on their ARC team and let them know have left Amazon but still want to support them, and you will leave reviews for their books everywhere that you possibly can.

But as I’ve said several times, the data says that the majority of indie authors are not 100% Amazon-exclusive. You are still supporting indie authors massively if you purchase their books literally anywhere else. Those authors made a choice knowing that by being Amazon Exclusive, they would be missing out on sales from people who don’t use Amazon. That is a them problem, not a you problem, dear reader.

Addendum: Why are authors exclusive to Amazon in the first place?

Amazon is pretty exploitative—of it’s workers across the board, of the small shops that use it, and the authors the publish there. Kindle Unlimited is a program where readers pay $11.99/mo and can read any title in Kindle Unlimited for free. They can read a thousand books a month if they so choose! But, the only way to be in Kindle Unlimited is to sign an exclusivity agreement. This agreement lasts 90 days and is set up to renew automatically.

Kindle Unlimited books are given greater visibility in the Kindle store and are favored in the algorithm more than books that aren’t enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Kindle Unlimited Books also get access to “Countdown Deals,” Which is a marketing feature where you can set your book to free for a certain number of days. If you are not in Kindle Unlimited, it is impossible within the Kindle Direct Publishing interface itself to set your book to free.

Because of how hard it is to set a book to free if you aren’t in KU (it involves uploading your book somewhere else, setting it to free on that storefront, then emailing Kindle Direct Publishing support to ask them to ‘price match’ the book and then waiting 72-96 hours for that to take place, and it involves praying that they will let you set it back to a paid book later, which isn’t guaranteed), books that are not KU-exclusive cannot participate in typical “Stuff Your Kindle” events that require the book to be free and on Amazon.

So it becomes this huge benefit to visibility and marketing to be in Kindle Unlimited. Most book influencers (BookTube, BookTok, BookSky, Bookstagram, etc, with Bookstadon being the huge exception) only read KU books. Most reviewers only review KU books. The entire book visibility system is set up around KU books. If you are subscribed to any author newsletter, you might see them promoting “KU Promotions” where they link to a landing page on StoryOrigin or BookFunnel with dozens of books in the same genre or theme that are also in Kindle Unlimited.

There is a huge incentive to be in Kindle Unlimited. But Kindle Unlimited also pays like crap. Basically, Amazon pools all of the subscription money they get from Kindle Unlimited readers. Then they take their cut. What is left over is divided among authors based on the pages read. They calculate that 1,002,133,735,804 pages were read this month, they got $X,000,000 in subscription fees in the pot (after they take their own cut). Do the division, and each page read is worth $0.004. Yes, it usually comes out to each page read being less than a penny. Last month, each page read was worth $0.0034. So a 500-page book that was read cover to cover would get the author $1.70. Meanwhile, if that same 500-page book was sold for $4.99, it would probably get around $3.40 (70% minus the ‘delivery fee’ that Amazon deducts based on file size… No other ebook retailer deducts this ‘delivery fee’ based on file size. For my longest book, that delivery fee eats about $0.15 of my royalty, and my shortest is about $0.05).

Amazon expects authors to take a massive hit in royalties on the promise of “exposure” via better weighting in the algorithm and access to Kindle Countdown Deals, while knowing that much of the book marketing ecosystem now revolves around Kindle Unlimited.

Many authors, especially new ones, are afraid that readers won’t pay money for a “relatively unknown” and won’t take a chance on a brand-new series. So putting the book in Kindle Unlimited removes that one barrier for many readers and gives authors the sense that they are doing what they can to make their books look most attractive. ‘Free on Kindle Unlimited!’ sounds great! It has the word ‘free’ in it!

I am an author, but I was a reader first. I’ve been a reader since I was five. I used to be a book reviewer, too, writing long-form and in-depth reviews. But most of my books came from NetGalley and the library. I never got into Kindle Unlimited, despite how attractive it looked to me. As a reader, I can sympathize with indie authors who choose to keep their ebooks with Kindle Unlimited; they want to make their books as attractive to readers as possible and Amazon is, currently, the largest ebook retailer.

As an author, I can also sympathize. I had my books in Kindle Unlimited for awhile! It seemed easier than learning how to market on every other platform and hey, I could say it was free! But it’s a “house always wins” scenario, the house here being Amazon. But while I can sympathize with the plight—the rock and the hard place that Amazon forces authors into—I personally can’t make it make financial sense. I’ve taken a lot of time to figure out how to sell books without being exclusive to Amazon and it is slowly paying off. most of my income now comes from my direct sales and my itch.io sales.

I mentioned earlier that I put together a three-part series on how to “go wide” and leave Amazon KU (with a bonus ‘how to market when you don’t have a new book coming out’ post). Each author has to take stock of their own situation and decide what is best for them. And being KU-exclusive may have made a ton of sense financially in the past. But with more readers not just boycotting Amazon for one day or one week, but deleting their Amazon accounts entirely, it might not be the best decision anymore and I am absolutely here for helping authors find their footing after leaving KU! What I am not here for is authors choosing to remain in KU and then trying to browbeat readers into staying locked into the Kindle ecosystem when they don’t want to be anymore and chastizing other authors for mentioning that their books are not Amazon-exclsuive.

By the way, the author who called me a carrion-feeder was mad about me linking to a Kobo Plus promotion for fantasy books and mentioning two of the books in the promotion. Yes, this is what got the KU-excluslive author who was subscribed to my newsletter upset. Kobo Plus authors had the audacity to put together the same kinds of promotions the Kindle Unlimited authors put together. But Kobo Plus does not require exclusivity! (And it pays better since it does pay for re-reads, Kindle Unlimited does not pay for re-reads; authors only get paid the first time a reader reads a book.) It’s not “fair” that there are fantasy promotions they can’t take part in since they aren’t in Kobo Plus… But it is fair that they have a ton of promotions that non-exclusive authors can’t participate in. Anyway, Hunt Monsters, Do Magic, and Fall in Love and Riyati Rebirth are both great books you can read for free in Kobo Plus, which currently has a free 30-day trial.