This question lands in my inbox at least once a week. “Keith, are your books available on Kobo? Apple Books? Google Play? A small independent bookshop my dad runs in Devon?” The short answer is no. The long answer needs a couple of paragraphs and a chart.
The less-short answer
My books are sold exclusively through Amazon. Nowhere else. If you can’t find them on a particular platform, the absence isn’t a glitch or an oversight on my part. It’s the deal I made when I signed up to Kindle Unlimited, and Amazon enforces the exclusivity terms of that deal with all the warmth of a High Court bailiff.
The long answer, part one: Amazon’s exclusivity rule
Kindle Unlimited (KU) is Amazon’s all-you-can-read subscription. Readers pay £9.49 a month and read as many KU books as they like. For authors, the price of admission is exclusivity: if you enrol a book in KU, that book cannot be sold on Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, my own website, or anywhere else digital. Print copies sit outside the agreement, but everything in pixels has to live on Amazon and only Amazon.
The long answer, part two: why I tolerate it
Here’s why I sign that exclusivity contract every renewal cycle.
As you can see, just over half my income comes from Kindle Unlimited subscriptions: specifically, the per-page-read royalty Amazon pays from a monthly fund based on how many pages KU subscribers actually read. Direct eBook sales sit at 42 per cent. Paperback brings up the rear at a touch over 2 per cent, which says everything you need to know about the reading public’s relationship with paper.
Take KU off the table and I’d have to find another 56 per cent of my income from somewhere else. For an indie author writing in a small niche, the “somewhere” on Apple Books and Kobo combined would be statistical rounding error. Bigger names with mailing lists in the hundreds of thousands can sell through every platform under the sun and survive. I can’t… yet.
What KU actually does for readers
For anyone who hasn’t tried it, Kindle Unlimited is a fair deal. £9.49 a month, no per-book cost, and you’ll find my entire catalogue in there. If you read three or more of my books a month (or one of mine and two others), you’re in profit on the subscription alone. If you read less than that, you’re better off buying outright.
The honest trade-off
I know this annoys some readers. There are those who’ve spent years building a library on Kobo, and those who’ve stuck with Apple Books because they prefer the interface. Then there are those who hate Amazon itself, or Jeff Bezos, or both. I get it. The honest truth is that I’d rather level with you about why my books are where they are than pretend it’s a grand statement about platform politics. It isn’t. It’s the maths. I can’t afford to lose more than half of my income.
Could this change?
I review the arrangement every renewal cycle. If the maths shifts (Apple suddenly paying decent royalties to UK indies, KU page rates falling off a cliff, my own readership growing big enough to support a wider rollout), I’ll change my mind. For now, the KU deal is the difference between writing full-time or supplementing my income by working weekends as a shit Gary Barlow impersonator.
If you’ve read this far, thanks for caring enough to ask. If you haven’t tried Kindle Unlimited, the free trial covers nearly everything I’ve written. Whichever route you pick — Amazon ebooks, Kindle Unlimited, or audiobook on Audible — I appreciate you sticking with me through the small print.