I got into indie publishing about 5 years ago with my debut novel, Kingdom of Ashes. Back then, Amazon was already trying to dominate the industry, offering small presses and indie publishers all sorts of benefits if they published exclusively through Amazon and didn’t make their book available on any other platform.

I never used this option because I wanted to give readers a choice where to buy my books. I know many people are boycotting Amazon for ethical reasons, and I didn’t want to exclude them. Amazon’s exclusivity policies were mildly annoying, but I could live with them. But then, Amazon’s reach grew longer, and so did its ability to mess up indie authors’ publishing plans.

When I first started publishing, Amazon already owned the print-on-demand service CreateSpace and the book cataloging space Goodreads. In the following years, Amazon absorbed them completely and tried to take over every aspect of book publishing, marketing, and distribution.

My issue is that Amazon is taking over indie publishing without putting in the effort to become good at this. They are very bad at printing and distribution, and they are destroying other platforms that did a better job.

Throne of Blood will be the first of my books published entirely through Amazon. It will also be the first time I will have no author copy before publication and will have no option to see and approve the paperback before it hits the markets.

But let’s start at the beginning…

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