Let’s start with the progress on books. Born of Chaos is at about 132,500 words, and going strong. I’m excited about what comes next in it!
Now, as I wrote above, the Path Forward. This is in reference to THIS post I made the other day, about feeling like I had no choice but to leave Amazon entirely. As I mentioned in an update to the post, THIS article by the Author’s Guild clarified that my worst fears weren’t the case, though Amazon is absolutely trying to get all the rights they can get away with, including things which are normally licensed, but they feel they can do anyway. Considering the Author’s Guild has been part of the lawsuit against Anthropic and others for theft of intellectual property, I feel confident they’ll do so again if necessary.
So, what am I going to do?
I struggled with the question, honestly. The thought of completely leaving Amazon left me sick to my stomach, because the loss of income would’ve been catastrophic. I’d probably be able to get by, but it’d take time for other income streams to come online. I also talked to my wife, and at this point I have an answer.
I’m not completely pulling out of Amazon, but I’ve already pulled all of my books from Kindle Unlimited, and I’ve started putting them up elsewhere. They’re already live on Google Books (see here), even if a couple of series images haven’t populated. Using a distributor, I’ve started putting up my books on as many other sites as I can, including Kobo, Apple, and Barnes & Noble. I’ll get links to those as I can. The site limits the number I can put up per day, so it’s going to take a while.
I’ve also started setting up a store on Fourthwall (a payment site) to directly sell all my ebooks and as many audiobooks as I have full rights to (everything but Eve of Destruction, Talyn’s Saga, and Through the Fire). The irony is that even selling the audiobooks at $10, I’d make significantly more than what I’d get from Audible. But since I’m setting it up from scratch, it’s going to take time for me to get everything up there. I think I’ll have it up by next week, but we’ll see how it goes. Once I do, I’m intending to set up links for all the books where I can.
Anyway, that’s where things sit/stand at the moment.
Ancient Dreams 
I’m a little confused, are you keeping them on Amazon, just not unlimited (never liked unlimited anyway)? I understand about going to other sites, I just need to know if I need to start looking for another reader or not.
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Correct, on Amazon, but not unlimited. I totally understand the confusion, it’s possible I worded things poorly. I’ve been under a bit of stress over the last week, figuring this out. And for me, Kindle Unlimited has been about half my income, so losing it will hurt a fair bit, but not, oh… like losing 90% of my income would. Which is what would’ve happened if I pulled completely from Amazon.
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thank you for the clarification. by the way check out the title for today’s update I think you mean December 29th
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Whoops! Yet more evidence I was rather frazzled. >_<
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If I can’t buy content on Amazon I’ll only buy DRM-free epub and m4b/mp3 files.
I’m not going to use another DRM-enabled platform, especially just for one author.
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Like I said above, you will be able to get it via Amazon, just not in Kindle Unlimited. Unless they do something worse, I suppose, which would be unsurprising to me.
That said, the webstore I’m setting up will be delivering the books through Bookfunnel, and I’ve disabled DRM on all the ebooks. I’m debating on audiobooks, given how expensive they are to produce.
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It definitely hurts as you were one of the main authors that was why I even used kindle unlimited(and just re-uped for another year) but I completely understand. I am glad to see you also put your books up on Smashwords, I will most likely grab them there or possibly from Kobo… Either way good luck with the amazon escape maneuver.
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The timing could definitely be a lot better, and it sucks that happened with you. I had Kindle Unlimited on a monthly basis myself, so I get it. But I’ve got almost all my books on both sites (and they’re going to be in Kobo Plus and Everand, which I believe are subscription services like Kindle Unlimited). The biggest issue is that the distributor who I’m going through limits the number of new titles to 3/day, so it’s been slow-going. At least I had drafts of about half my catalog already up there, so tomorrow will get the last title processing.
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