Why We Are Moving Off Kindle Direct

So this is probably a bad idea but after much deliberation, we have made the decision to pull all the books previously available for purchase through Kindle Direct Publishing from the platform. These titles will be available for purchase on other platforms in the coming months but the decision-making by Amazon over the last few months and years have put us in the position where it does not make sense to offer the titles through the platform or on their shop.

I started to have an issue with the platform in the early days of ChatGPT when several articles ran on CNBC and other business news sites talking about this great new AI moneymaking opportunity. Using generative AI tools and the stock cover creator built into KDP, it was relatively easy to create a book in minutes and then publish it. The wide adoption by people who wanted to make a quick buck off ChatGPT functionally destroyed the credibility of self-publishing on Amazon overnight since the layout of the KDP cover creator was immediately associated with mass-generated AI slop. Amazon countered this by requiring authors to mark whether or not AI was used to make any of the materials in the book.

The issue with this is that there is no check in place to make sure someone is not lying about using AI. To my knowledge, Amazon was not implementing any moderation guidelines to make sure that people weren't just saying the contents were generated by humans so what was the point? This didn't solve the problem and this was the first time I encountered the impact of this AI slop. Even on free deals, I could not move copies of books.

Since then, Amazon has tried to entice authors into submitting their work to help train whatever generative AI they are using by offering AI-read Audible options. You put your book into the program and it spits out an AI-narrated audiobook. They also are employing generative AI for books in a series where they will read and analyze your books to summarize it for people who are buying later books in a series, something the author should just be able to do themselves.

We will be publishing through Draft2Digital, starting with Swan Song coming out on July 1st, 2025. The rest of the series (Duet, The Muses, Echo Alpha, Echo Delta Part 1, and Echo Delta Part 2) will be released on the first Tuesday of the month. Other books like In The End, Succession Planning, Sizzle Reel, The Temple Outside Time, and others will be released on the third Tuesday of the month starting with In The End on July 15th, 2025.

All of this is leading up to the release of Echo Omega, which is finally going to be released on January 20th, 2026.