The Great Exodus from Kindle Unlimited

If you’re a Kindle Unlimited reader or just follow the reading community, you may have noticed something happening in the last few months.

Maybe your favorite author’s new book isn’t in Kindle Unlimited like it always has been. Maybe you were hoping to re-read one of your favorites and it suddenly isn’t in Kindle Unlimited.

What’s happening?

In short…a lot.

Here’s what’s going on. I’m about to cram a lot of author/reader/TikTok/Amazon drama into one post.

Book Service Wars:

Before we dive deep into this, you should know that Kobo Plus, a similar but more affordable subscription service, became available to North American readers in late April. Before that, it was only available in other international locations. Kobo Plus does not require authors to be exclusive to that platform AND pays authors for time read. In comparison, authors on KU get paid per page read. Kobo authors can also sell on Amazon, Apple, and Barnes and Noble. In short, Kindle Unlimited just got some competition that makes it very attractive for authors to use their service. (More on Kobo plus later.) This had US authors raising their eyebrows and thinking, “I can have my book in a subscription service AND be able to have it in eBook other places?”

The Amazon Empire Strikes Back

Earlier this year, a handful of KU authors were terminated because their books were found on piracy sites and KU requires exclusivity for eBooks. Let’s talk about that for a second. Piracy is not something most authors actively go for. If someone strips the ePub file of a book and puts it on a piracy site for free, it’s not usually the author’s fault. We like this thing called money and want to be paid for our work. However, the powers that be at Amazon decided that authors with pirated books were violating the exclusivity clause and terminated their accounts.

People got MAD. Even though this was a handful of accounts, and we probably don’t know the whole story about what really prompted the bans, people were pissed off. Like…I don’t know what the sci-fi or thriller community was doing, but I haven’t seen authors and supportive readers this pissed since the great Tik Tok return scandal of 2022.

Readers found out authors were being done wrong over the piracy issue, and authors got mad that other authors were done wrong. We could empathize. Some authors pay services to issue takedown notices in violation of copyright. Other authors do it themselves and spend time fighting piracy when they should be writing. Other authors throw up their hands at the endless game of Whack-A-Mole, which is what fighting piracy is. I vacillate between takedown notices and refusing to play Whack-A-Mole. I’ll issue a couple of takedown notices for blatant things. I’ll even fill out a form with Google if I’m bored. I choose to spend my time on other things, though. I only do this if I’m procrastinating editing or doing the laundry. If you issue a takedown notice, that same stolen file appears on another site, usually associated with the first pirate site, a day later.

People were angry, so a petition was created, and A LOT of people canceled their subscriptions to “stick it to Amazon.”

How does KU work? The money readers pay for subscriptions goes into a big pot. Your $10 a month (now $12) and everyone else’s is the pot decides how much money will get divided up every month between the authors/books on KU. In January, the payout for authors in KU was hovering around less than half a penny a page with monthly fluctuations.

With the April update. It became .004 cents per page read.

You read that right.

If an author has a 200-page book, they’d get paid $0.80 for you to do a full read.

With how much work that goes into writing, editing, cover design, etc. of a book, that’s less than sweatshop wages. With editing and cover design running up to hundreds and even thousands of dollars. That’s just not feasible for many authors. I assume you like to get paid for your job. I assume you get angry when your pay goes down or people try to get out of paying for your work entirely. (Which is what piracy is. Stop supporting pirate sites.)

When people pulled their subscriptions from Amazon, Amazon didn’t pull its hair in anguish. Angry readers didn’t stick anything to Amazon. The Amazon empire simply shrugged and reduced the pot.

In their defense, Amazon is a business. If they have a loss, the cut has to come from somewhere. But when readers boycott Amazon, it hurts the author. It does not hurt the mega corporation that answers to shareholders.

There have been a lot of money for soccer cleats, dance lessons, electric bill payments, and car payments lost from Amazon over the last few months.

In short, it was a nice thought that the readers wanted to help us, but it hurt us to the point that many authors threw up their hands and said they’d risk going wide.

If you think Amazon is only hurting the authors here, they’re also raising their prices for readers. A subscription that was $9.99 is now going up to $11.99. Sure, it’s $2 a month in the grand scheme of things. With inflation, everything else is going up, and Amazon does have to pay authors. But when readers are already hearing whispers about Kobo Plus being cheaper, about their favorite authors being banned, and hearing that their favorite authors are taking royalty hits, a price raise doesn’t impress anyone. If they would have done this in January, nobody would have blinked. But they did it during a Kobo Plus drop and amid author outrage.

Revenge of the Author

And here we are. Romance authors, and I’m not sure of other genres, are running out of Kindle Unlimited like Forrest Gump.

Many of us are done. Finished. We’ve seen our fellow authors pole-axed through no fault of their own. We’ve seen our royalties diminish enough to where it hurts, and we are fighting mad at the large-ness of Amazon and how little they seem to care about their authors. If they didn’t require exclusivity, it wouldn’t be so terrible. But some authors are starting to feel trapped. It’s terrifying when your livelihood depends on a scammer NOT stripping your ePub file and putting it on a pirate site. It’s terrible when a big chunk of your income relies on Amazon not having a bad month.

I have four pen names. One romance. Three erotica. I’m going to leave my erotica pen names in Kindle Unlimited. Why? Even though I’m mad about low royalties, it just makes business sense because that niche and genre do well there, and it’s what my readers expect at this point. I’ve also checked around and erotica is pirated less than mainstream genres, so I don’t have as much to worry about when it comes to a ban.

My romance will be moved immediately because it doesn’t do shit no matter where I put it. Ha! Take that Amazon! (The only exception is that All I Wank for Christmas will be in KU for one run. It’s because it’s on pre-order, and I have already marked the box for KU before this hubbub shitshow all started. I asked to be let out of KU enrollment and was denied. Apologies to my wide readers, but my hands are tied with Amazon. It will go wide after the initial three-month KU contract and will be under pre-sale in Smashwords and Buy Me a Coffee before release.)

Are other authors staying? Some are. Some do well in KU and some authors are too ingrained and do earn a good amount of money. The big fish even make Kindle Unlimited bonuses the way some of us get Kindle Vella bonuses. Amazon throws money at some people. Those authors aren’t leaving.

Other authors will go wide for a couple months and come back when they aren’t angry. The pendulum swings.

Other authors AREN’T leaving simply because going “wide” on all major retailers can hurt their bottom line more than the KU royalty hit, at least at first. Promoting to all major retailers when most books are purchased through Amazon requires different marketing and time to get rolling. KU authors have allied with other KU authors for newsletter swaps and social media mentions. To pivot to wide release means you have to pivot your readers to get in the habit of paying for books and you need to find readers that don’t have Kindle Unlimited. That means new alliances with wide authors. More social media featuring wide books so those authors and PAs will feature yours. I deleted several group promos in Bookfunnel that I had for the end of the year. Why? They were KU group promos. I need wide group promos now. I’ve had to stop myself from posting links to Amazon and post to Books2Read, a service where you can find a book and click on the store link you want, Amazon included. I’m in the process of changing my existing links on my website. I’ve had to redo my marketing to figure out how to market at Eden books (paid newsletter spots this summer) or how to promo at Kobo (applying for promos, which I’ve never had to do.) I’m going to use paid promo newsletters that allow me to enter more than just links to Amazon so that buyers can access my books via Apple and Barnes and Noble. Hell, all of this will be done after the switch is complete since I’m choosing not to market heavily until I can direct my readers to one way of reading.

Social media is even different. KU authors do well on Tik Tok. Wide authors should target Facebook readers, in my opinion. Instagram seems to hover over both types of reader. But yeah, I’m dialing back on Tik Tok because it’s KU heavy. I’ll still post, but I’m certainly not going to use marketing dollars to boost over there.

Don’t believe me that it takes a different mindset? Take a look at the testimonies on the Facebook group Wide for the Win, and you’ll hear how wide is lucrative when you invest time and start advertising with “wide” thinking. It can be done, but it often takes months to get going at wide retailers. Look at it this way…would you be able to quit your job and earn peanuts for six months as you got going in a new job? Some authors can’t do that. I can only afford to do it because I’m keeping my lucrative erotica catalog in KU as I switch over and get started in romance wide.

All authors need to start thinking about what is best for their bottom line. If it’s staying – stay. In fact, with several leaving, that may raise the pot for people that stick it out. (But a lot of that will depend on how many subscribers stay with the price change.)

With all that’s going on, more and more authors are rolling the dice and moving on. From what I’ve seen on Facebook book forums, readers are looking for options, either out of want to support authors or grumbling about the price hike. At least…they are now. This could all blow over by next month. I also have a feeling that the extra $2 a month for a subscription is worth it to most KU readers that can read a book a day.

A New Hope:

To make this work, wide authors that were incensed and betrayed enough to leave now have to roll up their sleeves and do more than simply pull away from KU and stomp off mad. It’s the stereotypical publishing world equivalent of taking your ball and going home. If we do that, we better be prepared to play with some new kids or be fine by ourselves.

I’m convinced this will take a collective effort across indies and people that support them.

Authors and small publishers need to educate their readers on other options now and promote more affordable options that don’t require exclusive rights to their work. Authors will have to take to their own newsletters and social media and direct their readers to other CONVENIENT and AFFORDABLE options. Those are musts. Our readers want convenience and affordability, and we should want that for them. Amazon made it very easy for them to find a book at the click of a button and have an all-you-can-read buffet at their fingertips. If we don’t make it easy for readers, they won’t follow.

What are the options?

We all know about Apple and Barnes and Noble, but here are a few you may not think about.

Libby or Hoopla: If authors are “wide,” that means their work is more than likely available to be purchased by library systems. Want to help out an author? Recommend their book as a purchase at your local library. If the book sells enough, is a bestseller, or enough people suggest it, libraries will buy it for the online collection or even a paperback or hardback for their shelves. Most libraries have a “Suggest a Purchase” button on their website. And yes, there is something called library pricing that hovers about 3x more than regular eBook pricing for Libby. A library pays more for the book so they can check it out over and over. We absolutely get paid. When you request our book to your library, you are supporting us. Hoopla is different, and I think my dashboard says I get something like $0.26 a checkout over there. That may seem small, but I don’t have to be exclusive.

Eden Books: One romance option is Eden Books. Click here to go there. This online bookstore started in 2019 and was started because K Webster had a book banned on Amazon. If you’re mad at Amazon or want to make a point, why don’t you do it and help a female-owned small business at the same time? You can get romance, women’s fiction, and a lot of the “good” kind of erotica you can usually only find over on Smashwords.

Smashwords: Let’s talk about Smashwords for a second. That’s another fine option since authors can do early access to books for loyal readers and they often run sales and coupons exclusive to Smashwords. It’s super easy to download, and you can pay through PayPal. I like this site and will often offer coupons on stuff over there. (The Swingyards has been there for over a year.) If a favorite author is wide, they are probably there. Watch for coupons or their semi-annual sales. I always drop the price of my books to 50% off during their July and holiday season sales.

Kobo: But the ultimate revenge may be Kobo Plus because it really couldn’t have dropped in the US at a better time. As I mentioned, it’s an all-you-can read buffet like Kindle Unlimited BUT it’s also cheaper. You get 30 days free (like KU) and then get all you can read for only $7.99 a month. You can get an endless buffet of audio for $7.99. But get this: You can get BOTH endless books and audio for $9.99, essentially the same price for KU (the old price) but you get audio too. No pricey extra Audible subscription that allows you one credit a month. For audio listeners that don’t have audio through a library, it’s heaven. Click here to be taken to Kobo Plus. I implore readers to get the free trial first to see if the books in Kobo are of interest. I really hope people don’t pull the trigger and leave KU for Kobo Plus if the authors and books they read don’t exist in Kobo. Some authors even say they would love their readers to have KU for the Kindle Unlimited authors AND a subscription to Kobo Plus to get the wide authors. It would cost $20 a month to have almost every published book at your fingertips.

Tech considerations – If you read on a phone, Android device that isn’t a Kindle, or an iPad, you’re fine. Just download the Kobo app. If you read on a Kindle, you may have issues downloading from Kobo or not be able to access it at all. Hey, their device, their rules. Kobo does make its own device similar to Kindle, so that’s also an option if you end up liking Kobo and are looking for a device specific to reading.

If authors going wide can take on educating how other platforms can be cheaper or even as easy as Amazon makes buying books, we just may have a shot and make Amazon at least scratch their heads and wonder if they should maybe extend an olive branch to authors and stop requiring draconian exclusivity. That will be good for all authors, even KU authors. Even though I’m moving wide with romance, I still have my erotica in KU. Also, I want my romance KU friends to not have to lose sleep over the fear that they’ll get their account banned because of piracy. At the very least, Amazon can program their bots to recognize a pirate site when they see it. Even if something does get flagged, it would be helpful if the human customer service reps could recognize the mistake and restore accounts. I had an author friend get a book banned after she updated something on it, and the bots flagged it because it had been pirated and was what Amazon considered “freely available elsewhere.” She got the book reinstated, but it took her five days of lost royalties and sleepless nights. We shouldn’t have to undergo this.

Will Amazon ever really hurt over the (mostly) indie author exodus from KU? Honestly, I think Kindle Unlimited has been a loss leader for them for a long time, so I don’t know if it will ever actually hurt them and make them cry in their soup. If it does hurt a twinge, they are big enough to shrug and pour another brandy over cigars safe in their Amazon Death Star. They simply may not care. Bezos, God love the man, always prioritized the book business. Books were important to him because that’s how he started Amazon. With the new leadership, we don’t know if books are really the priority.

But let’s just say there comes a time when Amazon does care and wants these authors and their readers back?

That’s easy. They need to get rid of the draconian exclusivity requirement, especially if their bots can’t even recognize when a book has been pirated. A little human common sense could go a long way.

Oh, and The Flower Festival Fling is now on all major retailers. Click here to read it on Kobo Plus and here to grab it on Eden Books. Winning the Witch, Rocks, and The Cuffing Season Contract will soon join them, so catch them in KU now if you’re interested.

Happy reading…however you do it.