The Eternal Struggle of An Indecisive Mind

This is just a ramble/rant about KU and of my own struggle as a tiny indie-author trying to figure out how to get eyes on my books. It doesn't contain much advise or any solutions but perhaps you can relate...

Oh, dear lord what a tough start to the year - in so many aspects of the world, but for the purpose of this post, I'm sticking to incredibly slow and borderline-impossible indie-author business.

The last few months I've been going back and forth on whether to keep my books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited or not. I've never really sold a whole lot of books outside Amazon, and KU has a huge chunk of worldwide ebook readers. It allows a lot of people to test and take a chance on an unknown indie-author such as myself which is pretty neat. It sounds easy, but it comes with a few catches and, of course, you still have to find your readers.

I've had my books on KU for almost two years now (sep 2023 till now) and my page-reads have been wonky, unreliable and not great to be honest. On average I've had under a book read per month (400 page reads). So not even 1 book sale.

Let me just pause to shout out a HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who've ever read or considered reading just one page of anything I ever wrote. I truly and deeply appreciate each and every one of you taking a chance on my stories! <3

Alright, back to the rant.

"Why this low page-read?" I ask myself. "Other authors are getting much more than me. What am I doing wrong?"

I bang myself over the head with this question over and over finding a lot of answers but not many solutions

My entire "marketing strategy" (lol!) is "be online on social media", and news flash: I'm not online all the time. I'm not good at being online all the time, and most importantly, I don't want to be online all the time.

But that issue is for another blog post! Today, is about KU.

After deciding that 2025 was the time to go wide again, I took three of my titles off KU in January and added them on other stores. Then in February, after seeing post after post from authors I adore getting great page-reads, I figured "nah, I'll give it one more chance!" and put them back on KU, thinking that now I'd really do that marketing thing much better than before, despite not having done any changes to my daily routines.

And so, the Amazon boycotts started. Which, honestly, I'm all for! I'm not a fan of that company or the man behind it. I loathe how dependent we (as a society) are on these big corporations that will just crap all over artists, humans, and our Earth. And before I get too high on my horse of moral, yeah I have a Kindle too (10 yrs old, still working!), and yeah I get most of my ebooks through the kindle store, and yeah, my books will still be available through KDP.

There is A LOT to be said about Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing, and Kindle Unlimited both good and bad. It's paved the road for a ton of indie authors and for many it's still the way to get published and find readers. But when you enroll in KU you give Amazon exclusive rights to sell your ebook. And I hate that! (I think most authors do tbh). I'd like at the very least to be able to offer my ebooks from my own website or Ko-Fi store. I feel like I'm already giving so much of myself to these Big Corp people. They own my time and my money. They probably know more about me than I do myself, so fuck them if they own my book as well! I could rage about this for hours. I will not.

I have the deepest respect for authors who've been able to create a readership within Kindle Unlimited and I hope and cross my fingers that it will continue like that for them.

I know many authors have no choice than to be on KU if they want visibility and anonymity. So for any readers who may have found this post who are enrolled in KU - Please do not cancel it! Continue reading indie authors' books on KU! Support the small artist. We're struggling and we need you and the world needs us! The more you read, the more the big corp is losing on your membership. READ AS RESISTANCE!

But for me? I do have the choice of not being on KU. And I think I need to make that choice.

Besides the rant above, the amount of marketing, the intensity of marketing, and my own stupid mind really doesn't cope well with KU.

I can't stop comparing my page-reads to everyone else's which is idiotic because the authors I'm comparing myself to write a different genre than me, have different marketing ways, a different reach, audience, etc. The common denominator is that we are indie-authors... But it's putting me down. I want to cheer on other authors' success instead of thinking their success as my failure. Because it's NOT. It's not a competition. We're coworkers. And I like my coworkers!

Lately, I've struggled a lot with this, and it's enough. I want it to be fun and giving to be part of the indie author and writer community.

So, I'm doing my own intervention! I'm putting my foot down to stop my own idiocy and indecisiveness by saying "No, Karen! Stop! KU isn't for you. Maybe in the future, maybe never. But for now, get off, chill out, move on."

I don't have the energy to keep worrying about this and I'd like to get back full control of where I sell my books.

Either way, I'll lose a reader or two. Some from KU, or some from other platforms, but the mental toll I've felt while being on KU is not worth the outcome of sales. And in the end, that is what matters.

What matters is that I feel good about my work every day, every week, every month. What matters is that I find my way of being an indie author and be okay with it being what I make it to be.

I will not be renewing my books on Kindle Unlimited. I'm putting my books wide and will be grateful if I'm able to scrape in a couple of sales a month.

Writing is still worth it for me. I love it! And I think publishing has been fun so far and I want it to continue to be that!

The bottom line of this post: Karen needs to chill and get off Kindle Unlimited before she burns out on marketing she's unable to do or breaks down while comparing her own unique author journey to that of others.

The Palace of Winds will be available on KU until March 22nd and April 2nd.

Heir to The Sun, Now and the Hour of Death, and Drowned Hearts will be on KU until May 30th.

Thanks for reading!

Come back in 3 weeks when I've changed my mind again, lol.

✌️🏳️‍🌈

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