{"id":15682,"date":"2014-12-28T15:49:49","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T20:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=15682"},"modified":"2014-12-28T22:06:02","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T03:06:02","slug":"amazon-shifts-from-liberator-to-owner-of-indie-authors-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=15682","title":{"rendered":"Amazon&#8217;s playing field not so &#8220;level&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nobody\u00a0is blameless in this state of the\u00a0<strong>eBook Revolution<\/strong>\u00a0piece from\u00a0<a title=\"Amazon goes from liberator to controller\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/12\/28\/technology\/amazon-offers-all-you-can-eat-books-authors-turn-up-noses.html?_r=1\"><strong><em>The New York Times<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0about\u00a0<strong>Amazon&#8217;s Kindle Unlimited eBook subscription service<\/strong>\u00a0severely limiting author&#8217;s dreams and draining their bank accounts.<\/p>\n<p>After &#8220;<strong><em>democratizing<\/em><\/strong>&#8221; the publishing landscape\u00a0<strong>Amazon<\/strong>\u00a0quickly turned the\u00a0<strong><em>level\u00a0<\/em><em>playing field<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0it had created into a\u00a0<strong><em>corral<\/em><\/strong><em>\u00a0<\/em>for anxious\u00a0<strong>Indie authors<\/strong>\u00a0who had\u00a0jumped at the\u00a0captive readership that\u00a0<strong>Kindle\u00a0Unlimited<\/strong>\u00a0promised.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the price of admission to this <strong>select<\/strong> club was their &#8220;<strong>independent<\/strong>&#8221; status when the authors agreed\u00a0to the online retailer and former publishing champion&#8217;s demand for\u00a0<strong>exclusivity&#8230;<\/strong>a demand made only of the independents who participate in the program.<\/p>\n<p>As soon as these indies wise up, abandon\u00a0<strong>Amazon&#8217;s &#8220;tilted&#8221;\u00a0<\/strong>playing field<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>and once again\u00a0distribute\u00a0their titles to the other eBook retailers then we can rebuild the open market and maybe even\u00a0experience again\u00a0some of the excitement that fueled the first heady days of eBook publishing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nobody\u00a0is blameless in this state of the\u00a0eBook Revolution\u00a0piece from\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0about\u00a0Amazon&#8217;s Kindle Unlimited eBook subscription service\u00a0severely limiting author&#8217;s dreams and draining their bank accounts. After &#8220;democratizing&#8221; the publishing landscape\u00a0Amazon\u00a0quickly turned the\u00a0level\u00a0playing field\u00a0it had created into a\u00a0corral\u00a0for anxious\u00a0Indie authors\u00a0who had\u00a0jumped at the\u00a0captive readership that\u00a0Kindle\u00a0Unlimited\u00a0promised. Unfortunately, the price of admission to this select club was their &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/?p=15682\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,4,5,8,15,13,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15682"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15686,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15682\/revisions\/15686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ebookrumors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}