Amazon is not a friend of the book or its authors
As host of Reader’s Corner, I am a book hound of the highest order. Hunting down books that work for the Reader’s Corner audience and then reading them for the interview takes up quite a bit of time in the supposed retirement phase of my life. Until COVID restricted my ability to get out and about, I visited local bookstores regularly and always enjoyed dropping in on an independent bookstore when traveling to see if I might have missed a new release.
Over recent years, Amazon has played a significant role in my search for books and authors, but the more I read about the challenges authors are facing these days making a living writing books, the more I realize the convenience and cost savings that Amazon provides also contributes to what the Authors Guild calls a “crisis of epic proportions for American authors.”
The Authors Guild is a professional organization of writers that defends and promotes the rights of authors to write without interference or threat and to receive fair compensation for their work. In the latest survey of its members, the 2018 Author Income Survey shows how authors’ incomes have fallen dramatically in five years. The median income from writing-related work fell to a historic low in 2017 to $6,080 down 42% from 2009. The survey also found that just 21% of full-time authors derived 100% of their income from their books as many have been forced to augment their writing income with income derived from other sources of employment that take them away from their chosen profession. Literary authors experienced an even greater decline in earnings.
COVID restrictions have only exacerbated the financial challenges authors face as their speaking engagements and book tours have been canceled and they lose income from freelance writing. Some have lost income when their book contracts were canceled. But even before COVID takes any blame for reductions in author income, the Authors Guild points the finger at the biggest bookseller of them all, Amazon, as the culprit that is changing the writing landscape, and not for the better.
According to the Guild, Amazon accounts for 72% of the online retail book market and that includes both e-books and print books and nearly 50% of all new book units sold in the United States. Amazon now looks like a 21st century version of those trusts that President Teddy Roosevelt busted in the early 20th century. For starters, Amazon created the Kindle and pegged the Kindle book price at $9.99, which may have accounted for the actual material costs, but ignored the research, writing and editing aspects of the writer’s work. And when it is not undervaluing the work of authors with Kindle, it employs negotiating tactics with book publishers that squeezes out other suppliers and eventually results in lower royalties for authors and the size of the advances authors use to make a living and work on the next book.
According to the survey, royalties to authors are down by 11% compared to 2013 data and many authors are reporting little or no royalties in the last few years. In the starkest of terms, the Authors Guild warns that full-time writers and literary authors, other than the blockbuster authors, are on the verge of extinction.
Over recent years, I purchased Kindles and ordered many books for it. I visit the Amazon website regularly to search for books and, in some cases, order from Amazon. However, evidence of the negative impact Amazon has on author income and their future works should cause anyone who cares about our ability to access the widest range of writing to reconsider old habits. As authors struggle to make ends meet, readers have to wonder what they are not seeing on the bookshelves these days as authors are forced to find other ways to supplement their income and thereby reduce their writing time.
Will I still use Kindle? Yes, but how to use Kindle is the question. Rather than buy new books for the Kindle, here’s an alternative approach for Kindle users. Forget the dollar savings the Kindle offers and think about paying a fair price for the author’s creative thought, research and writing reflected in the price of a hardcover or even paperback. Can you still use the Amazon website and the Kindle? Sure, but not to buy the Kindle version, hardcover or paperback at a price Amazon’s monopolistic grip forces out of publishers. That’s exactly how author income suffers as publishers pass along the price reductions to writers.
Instead, search for your next best read. Then use Amazon’s handy and free option that doesn’t give Jeff Bezos one thin dime. Simply find your book of interest on the Amazon website, click on the Kindle box indicating the price of the Kindle version and then click on “Send a Free Sample” box under the purchase options. The first few pages of the book will automatically arrive on your Kindle. You can read the Sample and decide if it’s for you. At that point, instead of clicking on the “Buy Now with 1-Click” box, visit your local bookstore and buy the book at a price that fairly compensates the author. Here in Boise and Caldwell, Rediscovered Books even has a COVID 19 protocol offering curbside service so you don’t have to go into the bookstore.
In just a few clicks, you will have managed to support your independent bookstore and fairly compensate authors for their creativity and writing skills. Just as important, you will be supporting and sustaining a rich literary tradition in America that must not shrink in size at the hands of one of the wealthiest men in America who fails to appreciate the role authors and their books play in building the intellectual capital of a nation.