And the hits keep coming
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Honestly, I'm at my wit's end at this point.
So, once again, my KDP account with Amazon has been terminated. This time there was no explanation, no email saying I violated any terms of service, nothing. Just one day I went to check my account's bookshelf and discovered it was terminated. Not only that, but they haven't paid me my royalties for the month of December (royalties from Amazon are paid two months after the month in question) and I honestly don't know what the end result of that issue is going to be. Now, on top of everything else, in addition to every single KNEP (kindle unlimited) page read from January basically vanishing, every single one from February has also now completely disappeared.
So, basically, Amazon is royally fucking with my livelihood here and there is going to need to be a significant change regardless of what I get settled with them. For starters, I'm afraid that from this point forth I won't be able to offer my books through Kindle Unlimited. It kills me not to because I know so many people have read and enjoyed my work using that service, but if Amazon is going to keep stealing my page reads from me I have to simply remove that option from them. Additionally, once the existing problem of my account is fixed, it is highly likely that all of my other books will also be available for purchase only and not through the Kindle Unlimited program.
What this also means is that I will very likely begin offering my books through other book companies as well, either individually like Kobo or Nook, or through a publishing service like IngramSpark or Lulu. Either way, I need to make a change because I've had enough of Amazon giving me nothing but the runaround and stealing from me.
So, to those of you who have enjoyed my book via Kindle Unlimited, thank you so much for choosing it and I really hope you'll purchase an actual copy once it's taken off Kindle Unlimited. To those who have purchased copies, I thank you as well and hope you'll continue to enjoy the work that I'm putting out and encourage others to buy a copy for themselves as well.
I'll try to keep you updated on what is going on so you'll know where my work can be found once these changes take place.
Update
So I just now received an email from Amazon, after I sent them a nice big letter about this and my KDP account has been reinstated. I'm still waiting to hear back on the issues with my Kindle Unlimited page reads, but I'm pretty sure that I'll be taking my books off Kindle Unlimited regardless. After having this happen two months in a row, with a pretty strong certainty that I'm not going to be getting my royalties for my KNEP page reads, at the very least (still haven't gotten my December royalties yet, remember?), I simply can't trust Amazon to treat me fairly anymore.
What that means to my readers is, unfortunately, there is a strong possibility I may have to increase the price of my books since to keep them off KNEP means my royalty percentage is lower. If I have to do this, it will probably mean a price increase of approximately $4 per book, though that's not a definite number since I need to play around with the numbers a little. It really breaks my heart to have to do this because one thing I prided myself on was putting out good, quality, entertaining, and thought-provoking material at a reasonably low price that nearly anyone could afford.
Additionally, once things get settled with Amazon on my existing issues, I'll be working on setting up and publishing on Barnes & Nobles "Nook" library and Kobo's library as well. I'll be sure to let you know if and when those go live.
My hope is that those of you who have enjoyed my work so far won't mind paying a few more bucks for my books (and I have plenty more waiting to be published) and will encourage others to do the same.
Once again, I'll try to keep everyone here updated on what's happening.
Update 2
Well, I checked my reports this morning and my KNEP reads for February are back, thank God, so not I just have to work on continuing to fight to get January's back once more and get my royalties sent to me. Unfortunately, this doesn't change things for me when it comes to keeping my books available to Kindle Unlimited. I really get the feeling I got lucky this time just getting February's reads back, I still don't know if they'll give me January's. So, starting next month, as long as things don't go sideways again, all of my books will only be available for purchase, at a slightly higher price I'm afraid. As I said before, I hate that I've been forced into doing this, but I really don't have any choice in the matter anymore. If there's a chance Amazon is going to steal KNEP page reads, and thus money, from me under an excessively vague explanation of a supposedly fraudulent account accessing my book(s) (they were never even close to being clear about that), then I have to protect myself. On the plus side, this means that I will also be looking at listing my books on Kobo and Barne & Noble as well so people that don't by from Amazon can get them there.