Five Ways to Push Back on Amazon's Dominance (Patreon)

In the publishing industry, Amazon is the 800-lb gorilla. They’ve also become a giant in several other industries, and are, IMO, far past the point where they should be subject to regulatory action by the US government. The conversation about Amazon as a bad actor and how despite that they’ve done some good is one worth having. Even with those caveats in place, I think that Amazon is a net negative to the industry and that they should have much less power in the world of books and reading.

It won’t be easy, but there are concrete steps any one person and their community can take to oppose this dominance. I am going to talk about how writers (and readers to a certain extent) can help make a future in publishing that is less dominated by Amazon.

If one or more of these steps is impossible for you, that’s okay. You know your finances and your needs better than I do. But if you’re in a position where making a choice is feasible and you would like to see Amazon reined in a bit, here are some approaches to consider.

0) Understand How Big Amazon Really Is

Amazon isn’t just Amazon.com. It’s Amazon Web Services, it’s Kindle, Alexa, Kindle Unlimited, Amazon Prime, Prime Video, Amazon Books stores, Prime Music, etc.

Beyond that, the following companies are all Amazon subsidiaries:

· Audible

· Whole Foods

· Zappos

· Woot

· Ring Inc. Home Security

· CreateSpace

· Book Depository

· Comixology

· Goodreads

· IMDB

· And more

Amazon is big enough that it can be actively difficult to have nothing to do with them. But at the very least, we can be informed and aware of when we are choosing to engage with an Amazon company. Raising awareness of Amazon’s dominance and wide presence across many fields is also good because it can help people realize just how scary they can be as a corporation.

1) Link Wide to Break the Auto-Go-To-Amazon Habit 

Self-promotion is an inevitable part of being an author, especially in the social media age. Most authors, when tweeting out a link to their books, will automatically Amazon. It’s the biggest store, most people are already Amazon shoppers, and sometimes authors are even using the Amazon affiliates program and can get another payment when a reader buys something else in their visit.

But every time we automatically and unthinkingly link to Amazon first and only, we’re re-affirming Amazon’s dominance in the market. We are implicitly telling readers that they should expect to get your books from Amazon.

I’m not saying to never ever link to Amazon – instead, think about a rotation of linking – maybe you tweet out an announcement with a link to Amazon, one to a local bookstore, and one to some place like Barnes & Noble or Waterstones, or Chapters/Indigo. 

This extends to author websites as well – it’s great to have buy links to retailers included in your website’s “Books” page, so that a reader who lands there has the easiest possible path to buying any of your books. If you list several storefronts for each book, you’re making it easier for a reader to buy your book full stop AND you’re pushing against that automatic habitual flow of book traffic toward Amazon.

2) Act Local

If you have an independent bookstore near you, see if they’re interested in acting as your partner for orders of signed books. Then you can direct readers to that store’s website with the added benefit of getting the book signed. If you want to really sweeten the pot, offer personalized messages, bookplates, or something else to enhance the appeal of getting a signed book from an independent store. This makes some extra work for you and will likely cost the readers more, but it adds a personal touch.

Additionally, having a strong relationship with an independent store is likely to have other benefits – you’ll have a better chance of hosting events with that store, of getting featured in the store as a local author, of being top of mind when they’re thinking about authors to invite to any events they’re facilitating, and so on.

Pre-Order campaigns through a bookstore

Indie bookstores have figured out how to survive and thrive despite Amazon’s increasing dominance, and working with them lets you share in and add to their success in making a space as community curators, advocates for local authors and local topics, and partnering with the community (schools, local festivals, etc.)

3) Minimize Your Financial Dependence on Amazon

It’s incredibly hard to avoid doing business with Amazon at all if you’re a writer. If you’re traditionally published, your publisher is *going* to sell on Amazon (with only the rarest of exceptions). But there’s a wide range of activity in terms of how much you depend on Amazon for sales.

If you’re self-publishing through Kindle Unlimited (abbreviated KU), you’re on the All Amazon All The Time end if that continuum. Sometimes that’s what’s financially necessary. When it isn’t, I think it’s absolutely worth it in the long term to go wide – selling your books at all of the major ebook retailers as well as direct on your website with good ecommerce tools. Kindle Unlimited has its advantages, but you’re totally at Amazon’s mercy as a KU author – they determine the payment structure, they can and have totally upended how compensation works in ways that have sown chaos for many authors. And on a more long-term basis, the more of the Reading world happens on Amazon and specifically on Kindle Unlimited, the more the book world looks like the music world, where Spotify dominantes and musician compensation has plummeted.

The same rules apply in audio – if you’re exclusive with ACX (Audible’s self-publishing system) and selling on Audible, you’re only giving Amazon more ammunition with which to bury the opposition. Luckily, ACX has non-exclusive options, and there are other audio distributors, including tools through Draft2Digital and selling direct on your own store (as above).

The last bit here that some folks may not know is that you can create and sell your own mobi versions of your ebooks. It’s not as convenient for readers as buying on Amazon – it’s always harder to end-run around a dominant player. But you can sell your own mobi files and help readers side-load their mobi files onto their ereaders.

4) Starve Amazon of Data

Amazon dominates bit just on volume of sales, but in the data they collect. Like Facebook and Google, they sell advertisements and can rake in ad money because they have a treasure trove of customer data and a massive user base.

Every step you take outside the walled garden of Amazon starves them of a little bit of data. What music you like, what books you’re reading, where you buy your toiletries, where and how many of what book you sell to who, and so on.

Reading on Kobo or Apple deprives Amazon of reader behavior data. Buying your audiobooks from Libro.fm or borrowing them from your local library does the same.

Plus, the less Amazon knows about you, the less they can sell to you as a target for ads.

5) Mass Mobilization and Regulatory Action

Even though I believe these steps are useful and make a difference, it’s very hard for un-organized or small-scale boycotting/habit-changing like the above to have a real impact on companies the size of Amazon. Amazon isn’t the only giant corporation in publishing, and it’s hard to feel great about giving your money to any big company that treats its workers poorly or thrives on exploitation of any time. But, I strongly believe that it’s worth it to be deliberate where you have the time and space in your budget.

In order to make an impact on the level of what’s needed to end Amazon’s negative impact on the industry, what we really need is Something Big. That can look like mass mobilization in terms of direct action pushing for better labor conditions for Amazon workers, it can look like pressuring Amazon to stop providing services to ICE, and so on.

Another major option for taking on Amazon at scale (in the US at least, because that’s where I live and the system I know) is congressional oversight-slash-anti-trust action. Fortunately, there are major presidential candidates talking about bad behavior by large corporations, congressional candidates/other would-be/incumbent lawmakers, and a growing base of support for regulatory action in order to prevent future abuses by companies like Amazon. 

If you want to get involved on the mass mobilization scale in addition or instead of the small individual choices above, there’s probably a group doing so near you. They might be political candidates, organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, or groups fighting corporate influence on specific issues like Everytown USA. 

I really think we’re at an inflection point, where more people are aware of the impact and interconnectedness of these giant corporations. Where there’s a growing chorus of voices pushing for major reform to at the very least bring our labor and business conditions into line with other major developed countries. To keep our world from becoming more cruelly cyberpunk that it is already. And if we make a more balanced industry, that presents better opportunities for a wider range of creators to thrive.