The Storyteller's Dilemma

Maggie Shayne
4 days ago
6 min read

This is stuff I'm not supposed to discuss with my readers. I'm discussing it with you anyway. I don't want to just tell you where to find my books, I want to tell you why, because it impacts you directly as a reader. This is stuff you need to know, I think.

I've been making my living writing fiction since 1993, and that's a very rare and fortunate thing. I'm deeply appreciative of this. But there are all sorts of pitfalls one doesn't see from the outside, and I thought you might enjoy hearing about the biggest one.

Amazon is starting to feel to me like a Monopoly

I do not want to put any more money into Jeff Bezos' already overflowing pocketsts.

However, when I took most of my series out of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program based on those feelings, my income dropped like a rock and my husband had to take a second job. My ethical and moral stand was making our lives hell.

You see, when you put your books into KU, you're not allowed to publish them anywhere else in ebook format. Paperbacks can go elsewhere and so can audiobooks, but not ebooks. At my request, my publisher took most of my books out of that exclusive program, but left them up on the 'Zon itself, and, free of the exclusivity deal, she also distributed them to Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and others. We advertised, talked with the retailer, got into their promo spots, and so on. And I nearly went broke.

I don't want to lose my house or for my man to work his life away and I do enjoy being able to buy a gift for the grandkids every once in a while, so I had to reverse the decision and allow my publisher to put several series back in.

My hope is to continue promoting and building my work on the alternative retailers to the point where they become a viable option. It's just not the case at the moment, not for me, but it's only not yet.

This is the full scoop on what books are where until further notice, just so you are fully informed.

Where my books are right now

Wings in the Night: I couldn't put Wings in the Night back into KU. It's my baby, my life's work, and it has to stay wide. It turns out that Kobo has a subscription program, too, and they do NOT require exclusivity. So we can have Wings in the Night in the Kobo subscription program and all other retailers including Amazon (just not KU) at the same time.

This means readers can read it free, just like they could if it were in KU. The Kobo Plus subscription gives you unlimited ebooks AND audiobooks, for the same price the KU charges for ebooks only. (Kobo also offers an ebook-only option for even less.)

Shattered Sisters, Danger After Dawn, and all the Brown and de Luca Novels remain Wide:

When I say wide, that's shorthand for, "it's available at all retailers."

The romantic suspense and thrillers do better wide than the other sub-genres, so we were able to leave them and continue trying to build sales at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, and Amazon. .

All those series (Brown and de Luca Return, Shattered Sisters, Danger After Dawn) are also available in the Kobo Plus program, so you can read them free. (You do pay for the monthly subscription at $7.99/month.)

Also still wide, all my stand-alone (non-series) novels and short novels. These are not in any subscription program.

Everything She Does is Magic
Spellbound
Magic by Moonlight
Witch Moon
Talk Doggy to Me
Unmasked
The Widow's Timeless Wager
Ms. Terwilliger Goes Rogue
Night Vision
Zombies! A Love Story
Holly and the Humbug
Solstice
Get Home Before Moonrise
Miranda's Viking
Stargazer

Meanwhile, as I said, some of my series remain in KU and some that had been removed, have been put back in.

Right now in KU:

The Texas Brand
The Oklahoma Brands
The McIntyre Men
The Texas Brand: Generations
By Magic
The Portal
The Immortals
The Fatal Series

All of this is such a recent change I haven't even updated the website to reflect it yet. That's on my very packed to-do list and I hope to get at it today.

The previous monopoly

For most of my career, up to 2014, the monopoly in the publishing industry was Harlequin. There was only one other place publishing category romances, and that was Silhouette. So Harlequin bought them out. Same strategy, different players. Buy out the competition instead of competing. Terms for authors at Harlequin were terrible, 6% of the cover price on the first 100,000 copies sold, but only 2% if they sold through their wildly popular mail-order club which was–wait for it–a subscription service.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Subscription services are just a way for authors to get paid less for our work, and for the middlemen to keep more. But again, it doesn't matter what's right or fair or whether I like ti or not. It's who has the power and the money vs a bunch of starving artists.

So it is what it is, and all I can do is make peace with it. Nobody can blame readers for wanting to get their books as cheaply as they possibly can. I shop around too, before I buy and I look for the lowerst price just like everybody else. I get that.

How I'm working toward change and you can too!

I canceled my Amazon prime membership.
I found other sources for my "subscribe and save" items, (things on recurring order.)
I get my audiobooks from Chirp.com instead of Audible. They have amazing sales and you don't have to pay a membership fee. Kobo also has audiobooks. So does Apple and so do many other retailers, so we can shop around.
I get my paperbacks and hardcover books locally or from Bookshop.org which gives profits to my local indie bookstore. You can select your local bookstore when you make your first purchase.
I shop around and purchase my needed items elsewhere if they are of equal price or anywhere close to the same price. And I buy as much as I can find from local stores and shops.

I'm also promoting the heck out of Kobo Plus, Kobo's subscription service, and here's why.

Subscription services aren't going away. Fighting them is futile.

If I must have my books in a subscription service (and apparently I must) I'd prefer the version with the more author-friendly terms.

If we can support other booksellers to the point where they thrive into actual competition again, (they were once,) then we'll have real alternatives to Amazon. Bezos will be forced to offer more competitive terms. For example if there are five other successful book subscription services that are not exclusive, and pay authors more, and cost readers less, then KU might lose both authors and readers. Not wanting to let that happen, they might have to remove the exclusivity clause and offer better terms to authors and subscribers alike. All these changes mean is a tiny bit less profit for they guy at the top, who already has more weath than most nations.
Competition benefits everyone. It'll make Amazon into a more efficient, healthier company that's better for its customers, its vendors, and the world as a whole. And it'll be super good for businesses like Barnes and Noble and Kobo!

That's the full scoop on exactly how things are changing and exactly why. I want to keep writing stories until croak, and I'd like to keep being able to pay my bills, too. I'm walking a tightrope between conscience and self-preservation.

I'm comfortable where I've landed for now, because it's in service to the long-term goal. It's a compromise. Now it's time for me to make the very best of it and dive back into the book-in-progress. This one's a gift, you guys. To me and to you! I'll tell you the story of it, someday. Maybe at the end of the series when the final book comes out. (This is the fourth of eight planned.)

Now that the holidays are done I can dive back in, full-throttle. I'm SO ready.