On January 1st, 2026, I will be unpublishing all my fiction ebooks from Kindle Direct Publishing. If you have been interested in my books and prefer to buy from Amazon, now’s the time to get them before they are gone.
That said, I’d prefer you didn’t. All of my stuff is available through other retailers, including Smashwords, where you can download a clean epub or mobi file and upload it to your Kindle. (Smashwords End of Year Sale is going right now, so you can even get my books at a discount there if you buy now.)
Unfortunately, I know my leaving the Zon — that many authors leaving the Zon — is not going to have any impact. Amazon has proven time and time again they simply don’t care about authors. What will make a difference — the only thing that will make a difference — is if readers start leaving Amazon in large numbers.
I’m asking you today to consider doing just that.
Why You Should Leave Amazon
- You don’t own your books — I’m far from the first to point this out, and I won’t be the last. But with Amazon all you are buying is a license to read the book. A license that can be revoked at any time, with no warning. More than one person has logged onto to Kindle to find a favorite books just… gone.
- Amazon is an evil corporation with a capital ‘E’ — Do I really need to go into this one? From the way they treat their workers, to how they have withheld royalties to authors, to their ‘Kindle U’ walled garden meant to make them an ebook monopoly, to so many other things, Amazon is evil. We know this. It’s time to act on it.
- Amazon is a reader trap — I’ve talked before about how Amazon is an author trap. It’s also a reader trap. It uses a variety of tools to create the illusion that you have to buy from them, that you don’t have choices. You do, don’t let anyone take them from you.
You Can Save Your Library
One big reason people give for not leaving Amazon is they already have so many books there they don’t want to lose. In other words, sunk cost fallacy.
First off, just because you start buying books elsewhere doesn’t mean you’ll lose access to your Kindle books. You can keep reading you Kindle books as long as Amazon doesn’t fuck you over.
But you also don’t need to let Amazon hold your books hostage. There are ways to jailbreak your Kindle books. These may not be available to everyone, but they should be an option for most folks.
I managed to download and save my Kindle ebooks years ago using Calibre. You can still do that, though it’s a bit more of a hassle thanks to Amazon’s perpetual updates. Here’s a guide to two ways to get your Amazon ebooks that still work last I heard. Both require Calibre, which is a free ebook library organizer.
You Can Get Books Lots of Places
There was a time when Amazon was one of the only places to get ebooks, but that time is long gone. In fact, there are good alternatives to Audible and KU now as well.
Check out Where to Buy Books Other than Amazon to get started!