If you want books to exist, stop pirating them.
This sounds like drama, but it's not.
Not only is it well documented that pirating contributes to publishers not buying more manuscripts from an author (Maggie Stiefvater's experiment being the most famous), now we have evidence that Amazon's Kindle Unlimited algorithm is registering pirated copies of books online as the book being "offered" somewhere else, and punishing the authors for it.
And I don't know how much you know about Kindle Unlimited, but the thing is, if your book is in KU, you have to check a little box that says you're not offering the book anywhere else for sale. At all. So when the algorithm is finding the pirated copies, it's pinging it as, Oh! The author lied! The author misrepresented their sales strategy! ACCOUNT DELETION FOR AUTHOR. NO ROYALTIES FOR ONE THOUSAND YEARS.
Miette jokes aside, that's actually what's happening to very popular self-pub authors. Ruby Dixon just had her account deleted, her 15+ volume popular KU series taken down, and Amazon fighting her over the KU Pages royalties she'd already earned on those books. Now, Ruby's got her account back because she's popular enough that people shouted at Kindle executives very, very loudly, but what about other authors? This could ruin someone's career.
Well, why not publish wide, I hear you saying. Why stick to Kindle Unlimited? After all, Amazon sucks.
Here's the thing. Whether we like it or not, Amazon has a massive corner market on books, and for authors who are self-publishing, it is by far the most accessible and cost-effective method, PLUS, it's a great way to be discovered by new readers.
Because readers don't have to pay for individual titles under KU (they pay for a subscription, and then Amazon pays out authors based on how many pages of the book someone read), they can give new authors a try. They can take a chance on a book they're not sure they'll like. And Amazon tends to promote KU titles more aggressively because it's good for their business.
My little $0.99 short story, Swelter, is on Kindle Unlimited, and I can tell you that a good 85% of my royalties from it come from KU pages, not from people buying it. And that's for a story that costs less than a dollar and is not a big investment and has pretty good word-of-mouth in the f/f reading community.
Self-publishing is expensive, and time consuming. I'm getting away with it pretty cheaply right now because I am also a professional editor, and I have friends in the business who are willing to trade in kind rather than be paid. I have a really wonderful friend who is doing my ebook formatting for free because I beta read and do proofing for her. But if I were paying for all the services that I'm trading for, as most authors have to do? I'd be well over $1500 sunk into this little ebook coming out in a week that is going to cost $3.99 and be free to read on Kindle Unlimited. And that's not counting marketing. Because yeah, you have to pay for marketing. Hell, I had to pay $35 upfront to a popular site to be considered for their marketing campaign, and would've paid another $65 if they'd accepted me. (They did not, so I'm out that $35 without even a marketing campaign to show for it.)
And the thing is, I'm currently gainfully employed. I'm salaried. My spouse is also salaried, so I have enough disposable income to spend what I've spent on this ebook (which is still about $600, even with all the things I'm trading for). Most authors? Especially most self-publishing authors? Don't have that.
So Kindle Unlimited, for all its flaws, is a way to get more diverse voices in the business because you don't even have to buy an ISBN. Amazon assigns you an Amazon Sales Index Number (ASIN) and you're good to go, as long as you're not listing it on any other sites. Hell, they even have tools for you to make your own cover art if you don't want to pay someone to make it for you. They do a lot of their own internal promotion on Kindle. Readers can try you out for little-to-no personal investment on their part and maybe discover that they love your writing, and you've gained a whole audience. It's a great return-on-investment for self-published authors.
So that's why a lot of self-pub authors choose Kindle Unlimited. And a lot of authors will do a limited run on KU in order to get some early word-of-mouth and discovery readers, and then publish wide later. (That's my current strategy with Welcome to the Show, if it does well. If it's not doing well, I probably won't sink the money and time into expanding its availability.) But if this happens, if Amazon shuts down their account over "KU membership misrepresentation," then even if the book has been published wide and is available on other platforms by then, Amazon is going to dispute their KU Pages royalties and try to take them back.
So by pirating books, not only are authors losing "potential" sales (I know, there's a whole argument there), they could be losing real, actual sales that they've already sold.
2. If you see someone requesting where they can read a book "for free", speak up.
3. If you see someone providing links where people can read a book "for free" (if it is not provided by the author for free), speak up.
Thanks, and have a good day.
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