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So a bunch of lovely people bought my books on Amazon. They paid their money and got the book, fair and square. Now, Amazon's saying hey, as of the 26th of February you won't be able to download this book anymore.
It's not just my books either, it's ALL of them. Everybody's books! Every author! From the 27th of this month, you won't be able to read a book that you've bought legitimately unless you already have the file downloaded, or want to use Amazon's shitty ereader software.
When you bought "Foxbutt," the deal was that you could load it and read it on any ereader, computer, mobile phone, ereader software, whatever - but after this bullshit, the books you've paid for will only work on Kindles specifically, or the terrible Amazon-branded ereader app for your phone.
"But Phoenix, how is this not just theft?" oh it IS theft. Very straightforwardly theft. But Amazon is an American company, so y'know good luck getting a court to tell them to stop.
Given that Amazon figures it can just straight-up steal from my readers and leave me to figure out how to make them whole again, I guess I'll be spending this week making some kinda system to deal with it, but in the meantime if you bought any of my books from Amazon please forward your receipt to me via the email address on my site and I'll send you the epub.
This is why I've been going so hard on the coupon codes and discounts for buying from anywhere but amazon.
Pay $1.99 for "Foxbutt" and you can read it on any ereader that currently exists or will exist in the future! Or on your tablet or phone or computer! Or in your web browser! Or print it out! Glue the pages to the wall! Sew them into curtains! Confuse your neighbors! You've got the file, you bought it, it's yours!
Or pay $2.99 and read it on a kindle (so long as Jeff Bezos says it's okay)
I guess I'm not done talking about this...
I resent having to correct the fraud that Amazon is pulling on my readers, I resent the hoops that we have to jump through to read the books we've paid for. Piracy gives us no such hoops, literally just click on book, download an epub for free and read it.
And yaknow what, ebook piracy is popular. REALLY popular. Of course it is, if you buy an ebook from Amazon then you have to either own an expensive Kindle device, install shitty Kindle software, or jump through hoops messing around with a bunch of different software to convert the file to a format that non-Amazon machines can read, but if you just go on libgen or Anna's Archive, then you just get the book file and can read it on whatever.
Here, check this out. This is old, it's from 2016 when far fewer people knew about libgen or z-library or whatever, but just look at this chart:
https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/where-do-consumers-get-their-e-books-from
That's 16% of people who replied to this website's survey with "I pirate everything."
Those are raw numbers, not adjusted. In other words, it's not 16% of ebook-reading people who pirate, it's 16% who pirate SO HARD that they'll say YES when someone asks "Sooo... done any crimes lately? It's OK man, you can tell this stranger"
Statista reckons 191 million ebooks were sold in the US in 2020 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/426799/e-book-unit-sales-usa/)
Anna's Archive sends 580,000 books a day (https://annas-archive.org/faq). That's over 200 million epubs downloaded a year, from ONE pirate site, never mind libgen or zlib or torrents or forums, that's JUST Anna.
And Amazon reckons - in this environment, where ebook piracy is already more popular than buying - that the best way to make authors more money is to make it HARDER for folk to read what they've bought.
So yeah, I'm bitter. Amazon fucked my customers and left me to mop up the mess. Buy my wholesome furry porn on Smashwords instead. Or just gank it off libgen for free lol
Every time someone learns the lesson "Steal books because if you buy them legit you'll get fucked," authors lose money. It's not like we have any money to begin with, we're authors for fuck's sake, but that's absolutely the reality of trying to buy ebooks.
Either you get an epub straight from the author or some shop that doesn't do drm, or you steal it, or you get fucked. Time and time again.
Between amazon's monopolistic fuckery and publishers panicking and flailing around doing silly DRM shit while trying desperately to justify their continued existence, the Money Folk have managed to foul things up to the point where most ereaders can't read most legitimately-purchased ebooks, but almost all ereaders can read pirated ebooks.
Yeah this is a sensible fucking industry isn't it, all very normal, good for both readers and writers alike
Yup. I still buy ebooks - but only from places that sell them with zero DRM, in open formats, so I can read them on whatever-the-hell device I'll have in forty years' time.
Publishers (and Amazon/booksellers) destroying the usability of their products with DRM are trying to speedrun the music business's failure to capitalize on new sales channels in the digital age.