Here is a link with specific ways to unhook yourself from Amazon's tentacles. Remember, besides all the damage "A" has done to the book business, the company also allows the NRA to broadcast its wares.

 

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-stop-giving-amazon-your-money-1823468097

 

Please let me know how this works for you. I was never hooked in, so I don't have to unhook, but I am on Goodreads, which is owned by Amazon.

Thank you @Wendy Jones  - I guess I'm not amazon dependent as I thought... but I am also on goodreads. 

Personally, I don't use Amazon any more I let my prime membership lapse back when I was collecting information on a proposed boycott of the Amazon bookstore.

 

I read the article.  I think it would have been better if it attempted to explain why we should stop giving Amazon all our money.

 

From a business perspective, I still use Amazon by providing buy links to their website.  Honestly if I were not an Amazon affiliate I would not make very much money selling books as crazy as that sounds this is the situation we are in today.

 

Speaking of Goodreads (which Amazon owns).  I reluctantly began a test of adding Goodreads reviews to AALBC.com pages. @Mel Hopkins here is an example for your novel, Sleeping with D-Man.  I say reluctantly, because Amazon owns Goodreads, but I'm also trying to increase engagement on the book pages too, and I want to see if this will help.

 

The crazy thing is that I have to pay people  to write book reviews,  but Amazon gets a deluge of them on both Goodreads and the Amzon.com site. Of course most of these reviews are not very good, are biased, or are sponsored (thought this is not made plain to the reader).

 

If an authors asks I will post an excerpt of a reviews we've published on Amazon platforms but as a policy I don't gave Amazon, Goodread, or any massive corporate site content for free. 

 

Amazon (and the massive social media sites) make a bazillion dollars off the content we give them for free. They need to share the wealth, and they don't.  This is how I define digital sharecropping.  The problem today is that actual sharecroppers knew they were being exploited.

 

 

 

26 minutes ago, Troy said:

I say reluctantly, because Amazon owns Goodreads, but I'm also trying to increase engagement on the book pages too, and I want to see if this will help.

 

@TroyThank you! I was hoping you used Yawatta's review.  Not because of the stars but she really read the book and dissected it!  Also, even though Amazon snatched up  goodreads the authors and readers seem extremely passionate about books.  

 

No problem. Yeah I just wish I could pull some the the passionate Black folks.