A week in the life of an indie author during the Amazon boycott
I'm a little bit Alexis
Hi, I’m Amber Eve — author of smalltown romantic comedies, and my long-running blog, Forever Amber. If you’d like to know more about me, start here. If you’d like to hear more from me, meanwhile, hit the button below…
For the benefit of those of you who aren’t chronically online/surgically attached to their Threads feed, this week, people on the Internet have been boycotting Amazon, in a bid to stick it to The Man and show Jeff Bezos just how bad his life would be without their monthly ‘Subscribe and Save’ foot cream order.
I’ll be honest: it kind of feels like the last straw, really. Not because of the foot cream thing (Although it is really good foot cream1, tbf), but because boycotting Amazon means boycotting Kindle Unlimited: and boycotting Kindle Unlimited basically means boycotting ME — and the thousands of other indie authors who rely on KU for our income. And all while having absolutely no effect whatsoever on Amazon/Bezos.2
I … just was not prepared to be boycotted this week, guys? You know? Like, I knew it probably wouldn’t be a great week for me, because it’s my birthday week, and I hate that, but this? This is a whole other other level of anxiety for me: and I speak from some experience here, trust me.
Of course, it’s very possible that I’m worrying about nothing. I mean, that would be very on brand for me. Worrying is what I do. It’s practically my hobby at this point. As much as I’d like to think that this current boycott will blow over without having too much of an impact on me and my fellow authors/illustrators/editors, though, I can’t deny that, even without the boycott, a lot of authors have been noticing a drop in sales / pagereads lately — me included. Maybe it’s the state of the world. Maybe it’s the fact that so many people are struggling financially right now that they just can’t afford to buy books. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Who knows.
Whatever the reason, though, there’s no denying that this is a tough time to be an indie author — and, actually, to be a human in general, really, because I’m very, very aware that my situation isn’t unique, and that I’m far from the only person struggling right now. While self-publishing obviously isn’t the only industry being affected by — waves hands — all of this, though, it IS the only one I’m remotely qualified to speak about … so, with all of that said, here’s a diary of my week as an indie author, during the latest Amazon boycott…
Friday, March 7th
It’s the first day of the boycott, and I spend most of it trying and failing to come up with some plot ideas for my next book; a process complicated by three things:
I think I’d like to write something other than romance, but I’m not sure what I’d write instead — or if I’m even capable of writing something else instead.
This really doesn’t feel like a great time to be thinking about releasing ANY books AT ALL, tbh: especially given that these boycotts are supposed to be happening every month until … I have no idea, actually. Until Bezos is dead? Until fascism has been defeated? What is the actual end game, here, anyway?
Just can’t be bothered, really.
I’m only half-joking about that last one: for a while now I’ve been feeling generally burnt out and panicky at all times, which makes it really hard to muster the energy for anything, let alone a new book project. I know the received wisdom for people feeling like this is always to take some time for yourself, start doing yoga, and go for a ‘nice’ walk, but I desperately need to earn money to survive, so taking a break to concentrate on self-care isn’t really an option, sadly. And also: I freaking hate yoga…
(I do go for a walk/run every day, though. It has not helped. I’m starting to suspect that ‘a nice walk’ is NOT, in fact, the magic bullet everyone seems to think it is…)
One thing I do know is that I’m probably not going to be releasing the book I’ve just finished until the end of the year now; partly because it’s a winter-themed book, and I don’t think Spring’s a great time for that, but also because releasing a book at a time when people are actively avoiding buying books from the only place I currently sell them3 doesn’t seem like a great idea either, really, does it?
I spend a large part of the afternoon reading posts from other indies on Threads. Most of them are straight-up panicking about the boycott, and saying they’re probably going to have to stop writing altogether if it continues. By the time we sit down to dinner, I’m starting to feel ill. Am I actually ill, though, or is it just the effects of the non-stop anxiety? What a cliffhanger to end the night on…
Saturday
Am definitely ill and not just worried, although fortunately it seems to be just a head cold, rather than anything more serious. As an added bonus, the symptoms help distract me from The Panic slightly, because now I still feel terrible, but it’s a different kind of terrible. Well, they do say a change is as good as a rest, don’t they?
We go to visit my parents, who’ve prepared a lovely birthday meal, complete with champagne and cake for me. (My birthday isn’t until Monday, but that’s a work/school day, so they decided to celebrate today instead…)
All of this provides some additional distraction, but I make the mistake of checking Threads again before I go to bed, which means I lie awake for most of the night panicking again. Trump. Putin. Amazon. The fact that I still don’t have a single idea for the plot of my next book. Which one to worry about first, though, I ask myself?
Sunday
Wake up to brilliant sunshine and a feeling of spring and panic. My cold has almost cleared up, though, so I do some cleaning, then we go for a walk to what we locals call ‘the pond’, with Max, his friends Archie and Owen, and Archie’s mum, Tracy (hi, Tracy!). It’s warm enough that the kids immediately pull off their socks and shoes and go for a paddle in the freezing (and, to be totally honest, murky…) water:
Rather them than me.
Max comes home absolutely caked in mud, but happy. The sunshine and fresh air makes me feel a bit better, too, and as we walk home, I find myself wondering if problem with my daily walks is that, when people recommend a walk as a cure for stress, they normally specify that it should be a ‘nice’ walk, and mine are not normally ‘nice’, because they invariably involve the wind blowing straight into my face, and my fingers almost falling off from the cold? Maybe all I need is some sunshine? Maybe spring will bring about a change in my fortunes, and my mood?
In the evening, we splash out on a takeaway we can’t really afford as a birthday treat for me, then, once Max is in bed, Terry and I watch Disclaimer, which is about a woman who discovers someone has written a book about her deepest, darkest secret.
Wish I knew someone with a deep, dark secret, so I could write a book about it…
Monday
Wake up with a crushing feeling of doom hanging over me, then remember it’s my birthday today, so that’ll be why.
GOD.
I hate this.
I mean, I hate ANY reminder of the passing of time (See also: New Year’s Eve), but this year feels particularly terrifying, partly because I am WAY OLD now, and will most likely die soon, but also because I currently feel like I’m living my life in reverse, and that, rather than things getting better with age, they’re just getting worse. Also, I’m running out of time to do anything about this, so that sucks, too.
I … don’t exactly start the day on a high note, let’s put it that way.
Once I’ve taken Max to school, I walk to the post office to send a Vinted parcel because I’ve started trying to sell off my old clothes again, and Terry decides to come with me, so we can brainstorm some plot ideas for the next book. After the unexpected warmth of the day before, the weather has reverted back to ‘relentlessly cold and windy’, which means that by the time we get home, an hour later, my fingers are so numb that when I attempt to type a reply to my sister-in-law’s ‘happy birthday’ message, I end up sending her a sticker of Max and his friends wearing Santa hats instead. And we still don’t have a plot for the next book, either.
Back at my desk, there’s an email waiting for me from an old ghostwriting client asking if I’d be interested in doing some editing for them. I absolutely would NOT be interested in doing some editing, but it’s not like I’m going to survive on the £42.70 I made from my books yesterday, so, naturally I reply in the affirmative, and just hope that something miraculous will happen between now and the ‘editing test’ they’re going to send me, which will save me from having to actually do it.
Max gives me a Taylor Swift themed birthday card. Inside, he’s written, “I love you more than you love Tay-Tay”. It makes me cry.
Tuesday
I take Max to school, then, a few hours later, I have to go back for him as he has an earache, and is going to have to see the doctor.
While we’re waiting for the appointment, I make a start on the trial edit the client who contacted me yesterday wants me to do before they’ll start sending me ‘proper’ work; because, yes, you effectively have to “audition” to edit for someone — a situation which makes me feel a lot like Alexis from Schitt’s Creek getting ready to sing ‘A Little Bit Alexis’.
Within a few minutes of this, it’s clear to me that editing ghostwritten books (Which is what these are) is going to be the exact opposite of fun for me. So now I’m simultaneously terrified that I’ll fail the trial and they won’t give me any more work, AND terrified by the prospect of them actually giving me more work, which I then end up having to do for the rest of my life, if I can’t figure out how to sell more books.
This is the sad dichotomy of freelancing, though; I desperately need it, but I really don’t want to do it. And it’s also all kinds of stressful, really, because every time I do work for someone other than myself, I get super-anxious about it, and worry that I’m somehow going to get into trouble, or be told off. I have no idea why I’m like this (I was a straight A student4 who was always the teacher’s pet at school — that’s one of the reasons everyone hated me — so it’s not like I have a long history of being ‘in trouble’…) but … yeah.
I just want to be able to write my little books in peace, without ever having to interact with another person again in a work-related capacity. Is that REALLY too much to ask?
In the afternoon, we take Max to see the doctor, who can’t find much wrong with his ear, but prescribes a spray for it, anyway. On the way home, I find myself thinking about how wild it is that the school called me just after 11am to say Max wasn’t feeling well, and, just a few hours later, he’s already seen a doctor and picked up a prescription, completely free of charge. The fact that there are countries in the world where Max’s earache would quite possibly have ruined us financially this month does not escape me…
Wednesday
Max is feeling much better today, so I take him to school, then go for my usual run. This is my second run of the week so far, and when I consult my Fitbit, it tells me I’m ‘at risk of overtraining’. This makes me laugh for the first time this week month, and also allows me to briefly feel like I’ve achieved something. I have ‘over-trained’. I can’t be a complete failure if I’m the kind of person who ‘over-trains’, can I?
Unfortunately for me, even with the run, I’m still only at 9,189 steps by the time I clock off for the day, which mean I have to spend quite a bit of time walking around the house so I can hit 10,000, and get that gratifying notification from my wrist, which is like a little round of applause, and therefore extremely important to me at this otherwise low point in my life.
Oh, I also finish the trial edit, even though it takes me all day, and Terry tells me they client is taking me for a mug by expecting me to do this. There’s a line in the manuscript in which the main character gets a fright and ‘jerks off a log’, though, so that makes me laugh for the second time, because I am secretly 12 years old.
What a time to be alive.
Thursday
After warning me about ‘over-training’ yesterday, this morning my Fitbit informs me it’s time for me to ‘get back on track’ with my fitness, which is disappointing, because I was planning a rest day, to compensate for the so-called over-training, and now I’m not even sure I WAS ‘over-training’. Did the Fitbit LIE to me? Can nothing be trusted any more? Instead, I grudgingly go for a not-so-nice’ walk in the cold once I’ve dropped Max off at school. It is no fun at all, but I do feel relieved to be home again afterwards, so at least that’s something.
At home, though, it’s crunch time: I absolutely HAVE to come up with at least SOME kind of idea for my next book, which Terry strongly feels should be released by the start of summer, otherwise the winter book will end up being my only release this year.
But it’s no use. My mind is completely blank. Is it writer’s block? A mid-life crisis? The Amazon boycotts? Maybelline, again? Or is it just that I’ve used up all of the ideas I had for books, and that’s it; I will never write anything else again now?
Honestly? I’m not sure.
I tell Terry that’s it, I’m done: I am quitting the book writing game. I just can’t see the point of trying to continue with this when everything is so clearly set against me. I will now copyedit Scottish historical romance for the rest of my life, using a weird faux'-Scots dialect that the client steadfastly insists on, even though I’ve explained that no one speaks like that, and it doesn’t actually make sense. This is my plan, and I’m sticking to it.
Friday
Actually, no, scratch that: we’ve got an idea for a book. So, instead of quitting, I think what I’ll do is write the book, and maybe also completely revamp my blog, adding an online store through which I can sell physical copies of my book, and possibly also ebooks, if the Amazon boycotts do take hold.
That’s my new plan, and I … well, I may or may not stick to it, depending on how things go.
What a rollercoaster ride this week has been.
In other news, the client informs me that I have passed the editing test with flying colours (They didn’t actually say that last bit, but I could tell they were thinking it), so at some point in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be doing that, too.
So I am maybe not entering my best era, as my Taylor birthday card optimistically informed me, but I can certainly say that I’m entering my copyediting era. Which, OK, is not nearly as good, and I don’t expect anyone will be making greeting cards with that slogan on them, but I guess I’m going to have to take these small wins when I find them.
Until next week,
Shameless affiliate link
KU is a marketplace service which is a loss leader for Amazon and primarily benefits the vendors in the marketplace — i.e. authors — who are therefore also the people who are mostly impacted by a boycott. As for Bezos, he currently owns less than 10% of the company — and, crucially, is already a billionaire — so trust me, your KU subscription isn’t keeping him afloat…
Yes, there are obviously other places indie authors can sell books; the problem is that none of them are nearly as profitable as Amazon, and, even if they were, getting into those markets takes time — which I don’t really have. Also, you have to give 3 months notice to take your ebooks out of Kindle Unlimited, so even if I did that TODAY, it would still be 3 months before I’d be able to start selling ebooks elsewhere.
Other than maths. I got a C in maths.
I hadn’t heard about the boycott either but appreciate hearing about it from an author’s perspective. Also, I really enjoy your diary-style posts, so would love you to write a book in that style. Not sure if Bridget Jones has effectively cornered that genre but I think you could advance the concept!
I hope you find THE idea you are after, because I love your writing xx