Why I Pulled My Book from Amazon KDP and Self-Publishing Elsewhere

I wish I had done this sooner

After having my book published on Amazon KDP for nearly three years, I’ve pulled the plug with them. Now, I’m relaunching my book with Draft2Digital and hoping for the best.

In 2019, I mustered the cojones to hit my first fantasy book’s “Publish” button. I nearly puked seeing it live with an ISBN attached to it. I lost sleep for 3–4 nights, riddled with anxiety, nervousness, and worry all at the same time.

In the beginning, I had some views and a few purchases (primarily by friends and family).

Then…nothing.

In three years, I’ve made about $24.52.

Let me pause here to clarify one thing: I do not write for the money. However, I write because I enjoy it and want to know that readers enjoy my storytelling. Since I am not making any money on my book, I know I’m not getting any readers, which means more to me.

I’ve been feeling bummed about not having book readers. I even gave my book away for FREE for a short period with little-to-no views. I could hear my subconscious laughing at my misfortune that fed my belief that I was a failure and an awful writer.

One thing didn’t make sense to me, though. On the one hand, I have received so much praise on Medium for my content, which I am insanely grateful for and has helped my confidence immensely. Not long ago, I almost gave up on writing and nearly deleted everything I ever wrote.

On the other, my book and serialized fiction is getting nowhere. So, where is the disconnect between my writing and the reading market?

Sitting at my desk, I wondered why I was performing well content-wise on one platform and garbage on another. There were two answers that I boiled my answer to:

• Medium is about articles/blogging. KDP is about stories. People may not be that into fiction anymore and prefer reading blogs.
• There is a problem with my choice of platform.

I can’t do much if the answer is that there is more demand to read articles other than keep writing on Medium, which I have every intention to do, and I have no plans to stop soon. However, I can control where I self-publish.

As a self-publisher with years of publishing on Amazon KDP (and having done plenty of self-marketing) for my book, I have lost faith in their platform.

I can see hands raised in the crowd and confused looks. Telepathically, I can hear the question: “Amazon is the #1 distributor of books and ebooks. How is this possible?”

My deductive reasoning is that Amazon KDP is not the “Go To Publication” (for me) anymore. I can’t say that this reasoning will fit everyone, but a solid percentage of folks can relate.

Amazon KDP’s Exclusivity

When you publish with KDP, that’s it. There is no putting it on Apple, Kobo, etc. The KDP Select will help distribute your books to libraries and other countries and allow your book to be read for free by those with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. However, that’s as far as Amazon’s reach goes.

Feeding the Algorithm

It doesn’t matter if you’re on social media, writing on Medium, or self-publishing on Amazon; We are at the mercy of algorithms. It’s true that I have pulled my book from Amazon and will still need to feed the algorithm somewhere else. However, it makes me smile that I can now branch out more without Amazon’s exclusivity, and it’s one less place where I need to feed a company’s algorithm.

When a significant portion of writers publish on Amazon KDP, I have a full-time job, I don’t have the money for paid advertising…How can I compete with that? The only way is at the mercy of beating the algorithm.

When I hit my publish button, I didn’t know it, but I was lost in the crowd even before my book hit a single Kindle reader.

Benefits Publishing Elsewhere

A reader on one of my Medium articles suggested publishing future books somewhere else other than Amazon. This was something that was starting to tug at the back of my mind. However, there are so many options to choose from now! This particular Medium reader suggested Draft2Digital.

Thank you Maxwell Jordan for the recommendation!

So far, I’m impressed with Draft2Digital, and I can tell my book will reach a broader audience than it ever has with Amazon KDP.

I’ll be doing a later article comparing Amazon KDP to Draft2Digital and providing an outline of steps that I will be taking to have a (hopefully) successful relaunch of my book. So keep an eye out for those if you’re interested!

If you’re interested in preordering The Queen’s Awakening — Retribution, here’s the link to where the ebook will be distributed on March 25, 2022!