Wow. I never thought it would come to this.
I’m leaving Amazon.
I’ve never not published on Amazon in the nearly 14 years I’ve been published. It feels a little like cutting a part off, but that part was slowly rotting, desiccating while I watched. Still it’s a sad and frustrating feeling.
I’m stepping into the unknown, and that’s really scary for me.
But it’s also a decision full of relief. Let me tell you why, starting with an allegory. It’s called the Frog in Boiling Water.
It goes like this. If you want to cook a frog (I’m not French so I don’t have this desire), you place it in a pot of water and turn on the stove. If you try to cook the frog starting with boiling water, it won’t work because the frog will just jump out and disappear.
But, if you turn the heat up slowly, little increments at a time, the frog will stay in the pot and slowly boil to death.
This is what Amazon has been doing to authors. Oh, I could list myriad things, but I’ll only give you a few
- Making KU reads equal $0.0004 per page
- KindleVella chapters being worth $0.12 but only at 2500 words and after the first 3 (then 10) episodes were free
- Hiding romance books in the ‘book dungeon’ because adult
- Allowing book stuffing to get the lion’s share of KU reads
- Allowing ebook returns (when they don’t for digital music) even after the lawsuit saying they had to stop
- Deleting 5 star reviews because of false reviews and review bombing
- Allow generational AI to replace Narrators for audio books
There were many more little increases in the heat for the author frogs in the Amazon pot, but most of us rolled with it. We worked hard and had brought up problems with the company. Some were addressed, some were ignored, and some were given lip service and nothing else. And we rolled with it.
But then came the latest onslaught and the heat was cranked up higher.
Two things happened last week. First, Amazon announced to authors that if they hadn’t clicked the “DRM” (digital rights management – which back in the day didn’t do shit to stop piracy) on their books, they would now allow people to purchase and download our books as PDFs.
We’d already learned over the last decade that PDFs are the pirate’s go-to source for copyrighted materials, and now Amazon was going to allow customers to buy our IP that way? Unfuckingbelieveable. So, we would have to update all the old books, and at least 35 of mine didn’t have DRM.
Second, Amazon sent out an email to us authors that there was a new feature for readers being implemented as of January 2026: ‘Ask This Book Feature’.
This is a program that allows the readers to ‘ask’ questions of the book they reading through generational AI, and Amazon will feed our books to their (probably) proprietary Large Language Model (LLMs) to train it on our words “so the readers can have a continuous experience with all books.”
Hold the fuck up. I’m supposed to just let Amazon steal my Intellectual Property to train their LLM and give them that data for free? And then they can eventually become a “publishing’ company, shutting the authors out completely with the use of our writing? HELL NO.
The water just got too hot for this frog. So, I’m jumping out, jumping off, disappearing off the Zon and taking my IP with me.
This is my personal choice, and every author will have to make the same. Some people can’t leave because the Zon is their main or only form of income, and leaving would take that to zero. For some, not even this is enough to make them jump out of the pot.
There will definitely be a lawsuit or three, and more than likely, the authors will win. But even if the Zon loses, they still have all that mineable data. I don’t have a lot of faith that the Zon will treat authors right. Look at their owner/CEO.
I’ve started the process of removing my books from the Zon, but it’s tricky. The Zon won’t let you delete the book entirely, only “unpublish”. That means the data files full of mineable writing are still there.
So, what can you do as an author who wants to leave?
For the practical folks, here’s what I’m doing. I’m going into each book and modifying the blurb (because they’ll use that, too) down to one line, and I’ve made a new content file (“manuscript”) that reads like Yoda giving an announcement:
TITLE
No longer available this title is.
LLMs and generational AI are plagiarism software stealing IP. Please for my books look elsewhere.
On other online retailers the books available are.
Sorry for the inconvenient fishhooks.
https://siobhanmuir.com
Then I’m resubmitting the books to update. When they go live, THEN I “unpublish” them with the latest content.
Note to everyone who has bought my books on the Zon: Do not “update” the content, or you will lose the books you’ve purchased.
I’m taking all the books down before New Year’s Day – the holiday tales and the newest ones, and the LGBTQIA+ titles will stay up until the end of the year – but most of them are coming down over the next week. Some are already down, but don’t despair, you can still get my books!
Right now, there’s a big ole End of Year Sale going on at Smashwords.com, and all my books are at least 50% off until January 1st. The great thing about Smashwords is the books are delivered in whichever digital format you need. Even if you have one of those old Sony ereaders, you can get the version of the story you need to read it.
So head on over to Smashwords and get all the books discounted (some are FREE, too!). This is a great time to get some of my books you haven’t read yet.
Okay, this post is long enough, but I just wanted to let y’all know what was going on and why I might seem to disappear off Amazon. No surprises, just determination not to lose my whole career to feed bezos. It’s my work, my Intellectual Property, and I can’t agree to let him steal it and tell me it’s good for the readers. Thanks for reading and I hope you visit the sale! Happy Holidays.