From the author: My next book is The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation: it’s a Big Tech disassembly manual that explains how to disenshittify the web and bring back the old good internet. The hardcover comes from Verso on Sept 5, but the audiobook comes from me – because Amazon refuses to sell my audio.
Tangental but somewhat related, one of the most popular modern fantasy authors (Brandon Sanderson) recently did something similar where he released/is releasing 4 books this year funded via Kickstarter due to not wanting to work with Amazon.
It actually currently holds the record for highest funded Kickstarter project ever. Granted, it helps if you are an established and popular author already, but id be curious to see if this trend expands.
I hate that its Kickstarter though.
Yeah, he sells it really well. “Stick it to the man, down with Amazon”. Sorry, but you’re one of the biggest authors around, you do not need some common schmuck barely making it through their monthly fees to carry your business risk. You can have ~any publisher you want in the world, and trivially have them release that book not on Amazon if you wanted to.
And that’s sadly the same in board gaming Kickstarters. Sure, the tiny mom&pop games that could never happen outside of Kickstarter exist. But the vast majority is big names and publishers using it to offload their business risk onto the consumer so they can have 0% risk 100% reward.
If the “I just want to get back at Amazon”-statement had truth behind it, the book would be sold independently. But not kickstartered. Shoulder the business cost in creating the product, then make the profit selling it.
If you actually read the post, you’ll see that there’s no “business risk”—the entire audiobook is already recorded. He’s just using Kickstarter as a platform to sell pre-orders.
I hope the trend grows. Amazon needs to be abolished, divided, whatever it takes to destroy their monopoly.