Leaving Kindle Unlimited

I have been considering this for a good few months, but I have officially decided to remove my books from Kindle Unlimited.

 

This will take effect over November and December 2026.

 

There are many things that compound this decision.

 

I am not happy with how Amazon treats the authors that use them, especially when it comes to KU. This includes how they do not take action against pirating sites. Amazon's response is punitive action against the author who is the victim in the middle. They close your account, without notice, keep all unpaid royalties and ban you from selling with them.

 

If all your metaphoric eggs are in one basket, it can be much harder to mitigate.

 

Amazon has also been taking what I feel is unreasonably harsh action against (mostly indie) authors and reviews. ARC reviews especially, and any they feel might be fake.

 

I am all for removing paid for reviews, but Amazon is using AI bots to sweep and remove, without notice, genuine reviews. Again, this hurts indie authors far more than bigger ones.

 

Exclusivity to them is now more like a Sword of Damocles - time to think bigger.

 

I am not leaving Kindle - it makes no business sense to do so. It is the largest ebook distributor in the world, but leaving Kindle Unlimited gives me a lot of options. I can put my books on any site, and sell direct from my website if I choose.

 

I am also in talks to be one of the founding authors at passion-press.a new reading app for Romantasy. This is an exciting project being created by a female, UK indie author, it will be a no AI platform as well.It might be goodbye to KU, but it opens the world for me.

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I'll keep you posted as to all the new ebook distributors as they come online.