Kindle Unlimited/Kindle Vella

There has been a lot of discussion in the indie author space around Amazon and how they have been treating indie authors in particular. The main focus of this discussion has been around piracy and the punishing of authors for the actions of those pirating our work.

I'm not here to tell you that you're a bad person for pirating a book. I can understand wanting to read something and not being able to afford it. I get it. There are discussions out there about piracy and how it affects authors. I don't want to get into that one right now.

What I'm here to talk about today is the way Amazon treats authors enrolled in Kindle Unlimited who are bound to the exclusivity contract. It appears this exclusivity requirement does not apply to all in Kindle Unlimited, but overwhelmingly applies to indie authors. When we enter our book into Kindle Unlimited, we cannot sell our book on any other ebook platform for the time we are enrolled in KU. I believe KU is an amazing place to sell books for Romance as a genre in particular. While I love the idea of Kindle Unlimited, I've heard from others (so I can't say for sure that this is true) that Kindle Unlimited makes it easy for entire novels to be scraped the moment it is posted to KU. This means as soon as a book is live on KU, it can be taken and posted to pirate sites. If Amazon finds that book on any other site that is not Kindle while you are enrolled in KU, they can terminate the author's account and withhold all royalties that haven't been paid to the author yet. The author is then responsible for proving their ownership of the book, where the author can only hope Amazon will reinstate their account.

Authors have asked Amazon to come up with a solution to the issue so we can remain in KU without risk of punishment or at least for Amazon to acknowledge that it is not the author's fault that our books are being pirated. Amazon, however, does not appear willing to help nor acknowledge their role in this.

Because of this, I will not continue posting to Kindle Vella, and for the foreseeable future, I will not enroll future books in Kindle Unlimited.

Why am I including Kindle Vella? I was excited about it at first, but the format is still Kindle, meaning the risk of piracy is high, and Kindle Vella is also under a contract. If the Vella story is found anywhere else for free, I would be in breach of contract. Official copyrighting with the United States Copyright Office requires a completed manuscript; copyrighting each chapter individually wouldn't make sense. And yes, I own the copyright the moment I put the first word to the page, but proving I own it becomes more complicated without official copyright. Without that copyright, I run the risk of Amazon denying my claims of ownership, needing to hire a lawyer etc... it would get very messy.

Please accept my apology for going back on my word regarding both Betrayed and Solace being released on Kindle Vella. I'm undecided if I will contact Amazon to remove both from Kindle Vella, but don't be surprised if they disappear from the Vella catalog.

I have some decisions to make here. I'm not sure if I will continue to use Amazon as my publishing platform or not. There are other options out there, but KDP has been good to me, so whatever decision I make will not come easily.

As always, I appreciate you all.

-Jamie Avery King