Business Musings: Go Wide or Run Away or Amazon Fail – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

For more than a decade now, I have fought with writers old and new about relying solely upon Amazon. I’ve written blog after blog recommending that writers go wide, and yet many writers never listen.

Most of them give me the same song and dance: Amazon is the biggest retailer in the world. It’ll never go away.

I have not gone back in my blogs to see when I started writing about going wide. I do know that I actually used the picture of eggs in a basket several years ago to encourage writers to go wide. And if you look at any of those old blogs, particularly from 2011 or 2012, you’ll see the kinds of statements I mentioned above littering my comment field.

I kept saying that someday Amazon will change, and that change will hurt writers, particularly those who tie their entire writing career to Amazon. The writers who have gone exclusive through Amazon via Select are really going to be in trouble.

And the trouble has already started.

Business Musings: Go Wide or Run Away or Amazon Fail – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I’ve opted for wide distribution from the start. Each person is free to run their business as they see fit, but none of this bodes well for KDP-exclusive authors.