Jeremy C Kester

Once again, I am leaving Amazon.

Well, not entirely.

What I am doing is stepping away from having my books enrolled in Kindle Select. It was a decision I’ve toyed with on many occasions. Was it better for me to keep all my eggs in that basket or to spread it out? Was it better to keep focused on only one store or run my work through many stores?

In a blog post that was targeted to indie writers like myself posited that Amazon was no longer the sole bastion of indie writers it once was. They argued that the algorithms favored those writers on the Amazon publishing imprints, asserting that in reality, Amazon now was part of the big-bad traditional publishing world (though it does continue to hold a fantastic platform for indie-writers… arguably still the best one).

It got me thinking though: am I doing myself a disservice by keeping all my titles locked into Amazon by having them all enrolled in Kindle Select?

As far as sales go… no. I am yet still an unknown writer, so my sales are negligible. They will remain negligible whether I stay or leave.

Where I am losing out is in versatility. Staying with Amazon Kindle Select locks me into Amazon in 90-day intervals. I can’t jump ship and go elsewhere in a heartbeat like with everywhere else.

There’s only one problem: it’s a lot of work to manage all the editions for each service. Draft2Digital, Smashwords, IngramSpark, NookPress, KDP, etc all have differences in the way they format. Not too bad at first, but when you then have to make changes, it gets arduous. It was why I stopped doing everything and went back to being exclusive to Amazon in the first place.

I decided that though it may take me longer to get everything lined out for each title, but I will get it done. I would rather be able to exercise my independence, going anywhere to publish I wish rather than locking into one vendor. That’s why I am no longer exclusive to Amazon… again…