Amazon has recently emerged as a target of boycotts and pressure campaigns, and one of the major questions people have asked is how can they refuse to give Amazon money while still supporting the various authors who depend on Amazon for (at least part of) their earnings?
Well, there just might be a way... but it takes dedication and a lot of reading on your part!
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| Nickel and dime works pretty well if we all do it! |
Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!
Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!
Ever Wonder How Your Gym Makes Money?
If you've ever had a membership to a gym, you may wonder exactly how these places manage to make any money at all. After all there's all the equipment, the staff, amenities, cleaning... where does all this cash come from?
Well, gyms basically bank on you signing up for a membership in order to get access to everything they offer, but then being too busy, too avoidant, or too lazy to actually use it.
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| Except this guy... he's there all the damn time. |
It's a pretty basic formula. If there are thousands of members to a gym, but only a hundred or so of them show up regularly to use the equipment and amenities, then the gym gets to collect all the extra money from people who paid for (but who don't fully utilize) their access. This allows the gym to fix and repair equipment, pay employees, and provide extra perks while still pocketing a lot of profits.
Kindle Unlimited works the exact same way.
You see, when you sign up to Kindle Unlimited, you're paying that $12 a month for access to all the books on the program. Whether you read them or not, the company doesn't care. In fact, the more people who buy a membership but don't utilize it, the better for them, because then Amazon gets to keep all of the money instead of sharing it with their authors.
That last part? The part about Amazon paying money out to authors? That's the important part.
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| It ain't much, but it's something. |
Every time someone who buys into the Kindle Unlimited program reads a page, the author of that book earns a small fee. It's literal pennies per page. But if you were to read my short story collection The Rejects, along with my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife (the only books of mine currently in the KU program), that would put a handful of dollars in my pocket. It would also mean that you've read more value in books than you paid for the Kindle Unlimited subscription that month.
You can think of this as you giving Amazon a net loss on your use of the program as long as you read more pages than the $12 you paid in. This allows you to get access to a massive number of books, help authors, and stick it to Amazon in your small way because they have to pay the authors more than you paid in, so you helped creators by taking a little cash out of Bezos's pocket.
As With Any Protest, This Takes Numbers
Even if you are a voracious reader (or listener, as there are also audio books in the program), there are only so many hours in the day you can read. And even if you manage to completely abuse the numbers so that author payments are taking out far more than you put into the KU program, no one person is going to change anything.
However, what if hundreds of people made it their form of protest to ensure the authors they supported got paid, and Bezos had to foot that bill? What if thousands of people did it? And not just once, but every, single month?
I'm not going to be the person to tell you that is going to bring Amazon to its knees. However, there is no silver bullet when taking down a goliath. So while you should definitely go to independent business websites to order your products whenever possible, you should shop independent bookstores, use your library, and avoid paying as many fees to Amazon as you can in order to siphon off its power, this is one more patch on the quilt that allows you to direct your ire at the company rather than the creators who have sort of been forced to depend on it to earn at least a part of their living.
If you think you have the skills, and you want to put your reading time to good use (especially if you like to multitask and read or listen while commuting, riding your exercise bike, etc.), then sign up for a 30-day free trial of Kindle Unlimited today! Full disclosure, as an author, I'm part of the affiliate program as well, so I do get credit for anyone who signs up, and anyone who reads my books through the links in this blog.
Just wanted to let folks know that I have some skin in this game, and that while I want to facilitate this unique form of protest, I also hope to be one of the authors folks support throughout the process! And, lastly, we still get paid if you just use the free trial... so blitz through some books (mine or other authors') during your first month, and then bounce if that's all the energy you can dedicate. Every shot fired helps!
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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!
That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
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