I posted here about Amazon behaving oddly with my KDP account. I have since got wind of more information about Amazon and some recent choices it's been making.

Firstly, I subscribe to the I Heart SapphFic newsletter. They spotlight sapphic fiction and queer authors, and keep the lights on through user donations, author ads, but mostly Amazon Affiliate links. Well, turns out that Amazon has recently taken to removing queer books and books they guess are steamy from their Affiliate Program.

Amazon has also "suppressed their findability" as I found out via a newsletter from Lissette Marshall, a romantasy author. Lissette and several other romantasy authors made a charity anthology to fight book bans (the proceeds go to PEN America) in response to these changes at the Zon and other tech giants. The anthology, Romantasy Rebels, was banned twice by the Zon, and the second time, they terminated the KDP account of the author uploading it.

Not only was Romantasy Rebels unavailable a second time, but my good friend Vela Roth, who had volunteered to host the anthology on her account, lost her entire livelihood between one moment and the next.

Between you and me -- I don't think I've ever been so angry in my life.

The upside is that, as always, the bookish community stands up for each other! Thanks to friends with helpful connections, from Amazon reps to legal advice, we've managed to reverse the (unfounded) decision on their end and get Vela's books and our anthology back 🔥 (But my goodness, it was a long, long 24 hours that I hope to never experience again.)

Reading that and imagining myself in Vela's shoes, I feel indescribable. Anger, terror, and I don't know the words for what else. Vela Roth is in Kindle Unlimited, and she's a full-time romantasy author, which means her entire livelihood was on Amazon. And Amazon just deleted it all, just like that. I'm so relieved that the bookish community was able to help her and that her books and livelihood are reinstated now. Quoting Lissette again:

Amazon fuckery took down our charity anthology twice, and almost ended a wonderful author's career in the process. In addition to all else, the experience has been a frightening reminder of just how dependent indie authors are on a very small number of tech companies who don't particularly like spice, or marginalised people, or, you know, democracy.

So, yeah. That's what's going on. I feel better about having to unpublish Bloodhunt Academy now, because it was a queer book and Amazon is clearly not a home for it.

As for Romantasy Rebels, it's being sold wide (so it's on all the major ebook retailers, not just Amazon) and will be available until the end of the month. Proceeds will go to PEN America. There's also a charity auction organised by romantasy authors, called The Books They Can't Burn, and its proceeds will also go to PEN America. The charity auction has a variety of items that one can bid on, including ebook omnibuses, signed special editions, Zoom chats with authors, etc. I even saw a fight scene consult with a martial artist, how fun. It looks like several people are bidding on everything so I'm glad it's going well!

Was reading a fic and laughed out loud at it.

Am delighting myself writing Dollshops & Deathmages. I'm halfway done and happy with how it's shaping up.

Had an excellent peach kombucha to drink.

Have the house to myself for a glorious while, because my relatives are travelling.

Am enjoying a k-drama tremendously. Undercover Miss Hong. It's halfway aired, let's hope the rest of it is just as good. (You know those silly Hollywood action movies where there's a guy doing some kind of secret operation, and women who are in the narrative all have crushes on him, and he's too busy doing Important Stuff to notice? Imagine if it was the heroine doing stuff too Secret and Important to pay much mind to the men growing feelings for her, and you have Undercover Miss Hong. Trust k-drama to make something assuming *I* am watching the way other media industries make things assuming men are watching. And it features strong female friendships!)

Three out of the five things I have put down here are related to stories. 역시, whenever I'm happy, stories are usually at the heart of my happiness.

I'm participating in a cozy fantasy anthology with several other cozy fantasy authors from the FaRo discord. It's kept me writing throughout the whole rigmarole with Amazon and Wise, and since the deadline is approaching, I'm prioritising it over drafting the rest of Project Fang/Bloodhunt Academy. My contribution to the anthology is titled Dollshops & Deathmages. If it sounds spooky-cute, it sounds about right!

My colleagues at the FaRo discord are also helping me figure out how to get Amazon to behave. They say going wide is a separate matter. That I shouldn't have to have a distributor like D2D take a cut from my Amazon royalties if I can help it, since I'm already facing Amazon's retailer cut and Wise's conversion+payment processing cut. Most wide authors go direct to the big retailers like Amazon and Kobo because the bulk of their income is made there and you don't want more cuts on that income than you can help. They use D2D to distribute to Smashwords, libraries and smaller retailers, when uploading directly to another platform is more trouble than it's worth.

I do think this experience has put me off KU. I initially decided on KU after I was laid off, and that decision made me feel less insecure at the time. Not anymore, though. Now I feel more insecure putting my eggs in one basket because the basket has flaws. Guess I'm going wide, although I've yet to plan exactly what that will look like.

In other news, I tried out Fika as an alternative to Substack for my author newsletter. So far it's promising but lacking in some features I can't do without. I have less than a 100 subscribers now, but once the cozy fantasy anthology launches, it's going to be used as a newsletter magnet and I'll have to keep signups more organised. Fika doesn't show you which of your subscribers do and don't open your emails, nor does it show you how many opens a specific newsletter you sent out got (only your overall open rate). That won't help me trim inactive subcribers, and it's kind of important to do that so email services know I'm not spam. The technical term is sender's reputation. Substack shows me individual subscriber opens and clicks, plus stats per post, which will become necessary once I have a load of signups from people who wanted the anthology but don't necessarily want to stick around for news of what I'm writing next.

Last time, I asked for email service recommendations and switched to Tuta. It's great, and has made checking my email feel less anxious because no ads or clutter. Thanks to everyone who recommended it, yarnofariadne and octahedrite off the top of my head.

This time I would love your recommendations for newsletter services or Substack alternatives. Ease of use and economy are the main things, because I can't pay for a newsletter service. Perhaps it makes it easier that I don't need advanced features like list segmentation and so on. Mostly, I just need a welcome email that is sent to all incoming subscribers, individual subsciber stats, and good deliverability (don't want to end up in spam). Ideally would let me have a subscriber count of 1000 or so without having to pay a monthly fee, because I foresee quite a jump in subscribers once the anthology is out. (And ideally wouldn't be expensive in case I crossed the free range. Saw Ghost.org's pricing and balked.)

I'm okay with continuing with Substack in the absence of anything else that fits. I'm not going to monetise it, so it isn't going to benefit the shady guys at the top. But it's not ideal, given the shady guys at the top. And there are readers who don't want to touch Substack with a ten-foot pole.

Hence, I'm asking for recommendations! I think there might be something out there that I just haven't heard of.