Cornelia Quick

This is a slightly political post, which isn’t the norm here at Cornelia Quick Industries: we’re typically all about the smut, and having a good time with sexy fantasies, and while you can probably guess at my general politics, I certainly don’t begrudge my readers for how they vote. I mean, if we can’t be united by our love of dirty stories, what hope is there for humanity?

As part of the ongoing protests against the outsize role of billionaires in American and global political and economic matters, there’s been a call for a boycott on Amazon from March 7 to March 14. People are encouraged to spend their money locally when able, and to avoid doing business with Amazon and its subsidiaries.

And while I fully support the goals of the boycott — I am not fan of billionaires, particularly the oligarchical types insinuating themselves into our democracy — it should be noted that the boycott probably does less harm to Amazon (which gets most of its profits from selling enterprise cloud computing services these days) than it does to small businesses who use Amazon’s platforms to sell their products. That includes indie authors, who use Amazon to distribute their books to a larger audience than we would be able to find through other platforms.

There are certainly good cases to be made against using Amazon to sell indie books: Amazon has monopolistic practices that harm authors in terms of pay rates, exclusivity rules, and distribution, and they can change their algorithms and rules on a whim and do great harm to an author’s bottom line. I’ve seen my own income from Amazon sales and Kindle Unlimited rules fluctuate wildly when they tweak their systems. It’s a precarious position. But because Amazon is by far the largest ebook retailer — and even for my books that are available on other platforms, Amazon is by far my biggest income source — it’s a difficult platform to avoid, especially if you’re still in the infancy of your publishing career. There are some big indie authors who are able to make a go of it selling directly to their audiences, but most of them had their start as successes on Amazon.

I’m not, though, going to urge you not to participate in the Amazon boycott. What you do with your book-buying dollars is entirely up to you. In my own case, I haven’t bought a physical book from Amazon for years because I’m blessed with four great independent bookstores within a couple miles of my home and a public library with an awesome inter-library loan system. And I’m able to get a lot of the ebooks I want through the library, too, though I also indulge in Amazon purchases from my favorite erotica authors. But not everyone is as fortunate as me in having so many ways to get their reading fix.

Should you wish to avoid Amazon during the boycott period (or even after!), but you still want to support independent authors, please consider finding their work other places, like Smashwords, or see if they’re selling their books directly. In my case, I’ve got several books available on Smashwords, and also in my Payhip store. Quite a few of these books aren’t available on Amazon at all: if you want to read Quentin Quick‘s transgressive stories, or Dorothy’s Double Delight, you’ve got to get them through Smashwords or Payhip.

There’s a Smashwords sale going on through today, and I’m going to mark down my books there after the sale as well to give you a discount on your smut through the Amazon boycott. My Payhip books are $1 or $0.99 (or included in discounted bundles), so they’re always a great deal.