June 22, 2023 Note: The following article was published in January of 2019, and a lot has changed since then. Amazon’s power has continued to increase. The African American Literature Book Club can no longer actively boycott Amazon, because too many of the authors we want to support give Amazon exclusive rights to sell their books. When authors give Amazon exclusivity we simply send out visitors to Amazon to buy the book.
The original article follows:
Amazon Affiliate Program is Terrible:
Last year Amazon commissions dropped for 8% to 4%. Earlier they reduced the cookie duration (the amount of time I’d earn a commission for a referral) from 30 days to 24 hours and if the person logs off Amazon the cookie’s duration ended immediately.
Amazon also actively pushes eBooks (making it more difficult to discover paperback alternatives in a search). For a Kindle eBook priced at $0.99 (an Amazon product they push), I earm a little less than 4 cents — provided the order is made less than 24 hours after the customer clicks the affiliate link. For promotional giveaways and kindle unlimited orders I earn nothing for my refferals.
Amazon’s eBook Monopoly
Because Amazon’s affiliate program is so poor, I make very little money on eBook commissions. As a result, I’ve already decided to no longer add Kindle ebooks to AALBC. The only exception I’ll make are for clients paying a fee to have them added or promoted on the website.
As an indie bookseller, I have no interest in strengthening Amazon monopoly on eBooks — especially when demand the exclusive right to sell a title through their KDP Select program.
New Fee to Add Kindle eBooks to AALBC
AALBC will now charge $25 to add Kindle eBooks the website, provided all the relevant metadata (Price, ASIN, Pub Date, Title, Description, etc) is also provided. Up to three Kindle eBooks may be added for this price. Here is an example of a Kindle eBook on AALBC.com: Loving Me for Me by Naleighna Kai, which is a 2-time AALBC Bestselling book (Kindle eBook).
If there is a print version of a book, these will be added to the site for free, all one needs to provide is the book’s ISBN13 — Provided the author is already profiled on the website; currently more than 3,600 authors are profiled on AALBC.
