The problems with self-publishing on Amazon

Amazon has long been hailed as the saviour for self-publishing authors, providing access to not only a huge marketplace to sell books but also to a complete range of publishing, printing and logistics services. It was only when we delved into the 'economics' of it all that it felt more akin to daylight robbery ... As we worked through the plans for launching our first book, Willow the Wonderer, it became obvious to us that ignoring the conventional wisdom on the internet was the way to go. Here's why we didn't self-publish and won't sell on Amazon.

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There is no such thing as a silver bullet

There are thousands of articles and blogs on the internet hailing Amazon as the saviour for self-publishing authors. Amazon seems to have thought of everything we need - a platform for producing and distributing eBooks, another for paperbacks, print-on-demand services (for paperbacks), warehousing if need be and shipping and all the logistics around that.

All writers have to do is produce their work. Sounds like a dream right?

The problem starts with Amazon's very crowded bookshelf

Did you know that Amazon has 33 million book titles on sale — 33 million!

That’s one crowded bookshelf…

Say you are first-time writer, without a large platform or following of your own i.e. not a celebrity or influencer. What do you think are the chances of your book being discovered on Amazon?

This is where the internet will once again direct you to hundreds of blogs that tell you how to ‘rank’ on Amazon. Get reviews they tell you and make sure you get the category right and don’t forget the meta data and so on.

To be fair all these are good tips and probably worked well enough - in the early days.

But Amazon like every large platform or marketplace has been focusing on developing another revenue stream ... Advertising.

Generating advertising revenue creates an incentive to limit 'organic' discovery of titles

Amazon's annual advertising revenue grew by 64% to $7.95 billion in Q420. This was higher than growth in any other segment, per its quarterly earnings report. Unlike Amazon's other revenue streams, advertising is also 'capital light'.

Is it not possible that with the shift in focus to advertising, Amazon’s algorithms are now optimising for ad-spend? We saw the same thing transpire with Facebook and Instagram once they switched on ads — organic reach has plummeted to below 5%.

Anecdotally, the experience of self-published authors on Amazon that we spoke to corroborated this.

As soon as they start spending on advertising, they see book sales come through. They stop advertising, sales taper off. The sales volumes tend to correspond to their ad spend in a strangely stable and predictable manner.

So should self-published authors be content with this additional cost - at least it is delivering the volumes right?

Not really. This additional cost simply exacerbates the problem of 'economics' for the author...

The high economic rent for 'theoretical' reach that publishers pay

For every print book sold on Amazon, ~40-60% of the retail price is taken off as their service charge, in effect the sales commission they charge, with the remainder being the royalty - before all other service charges and taxes are applied (more on that later).

The sales commission they take depends on how broadly you'd like Amazon to 'distribute' your book, with 40% being the charge (60% gross commission) for keeping it exclusive to Amazon and a 60% price tag if using Amazon to make your book available to other distributors and booksellers, in a service they call Expanded Distribution.

It's important to once again note that the 'distribution reach' being promised is largely theoretical; unless you pay for marketing there is a good chance you won't be seen...

To us at least, it seemed that Amazon was double-dipping; the only way to get your book noticed and purchased on their platform is through advertising and when you do sell, you pay them a hefty commission for the privilege.

An aside on eBooks - a compelling proposition for anyone with reach

If someone is content with just publishing an eBook via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) then there is the promise of it all being 'for free', except for the 30% that is taken off at the point of sale of course.

The 70% in royalties is admittedly still a compelling proposition but this too only materialises when the book sells amongst the millions of self-published eBooks on KDP. Queue more advertising spend.

[2024 update: This problem is only going to increase with the advent of AI - Expect junk AI generated books to flood the eBook space.]

Incidentally, most of the blogs singing Amazon's praises tend to be written by early adopters of KDP who self-published eBooks, in the good old days before advertising. And good on them, I say. Being an early adopter is the best way to maximise value from these 'new-age platforms'. For late comers like moi, it's best to do the sums before 'drinking the kool-aid'...

Even more fraught economics

The moment you decide to print, an avalanche of additional costs comes your way. As one self-published author told us, "nothing on Amazon comes for free".

Amazon provides a range of printing services, although they only cater for paperbacks. Recent additions include print-on-demand services that create a sense of comfort that you are not taking on unnecessary risks on inventory. Then there is the full service offering around warehousing and logistics to get your book into your customers' hands.

If someone is providing a service, it's only fair they charge for it. The thing to be aware of when sourcing these services from Amazon though, is that you are paying quite the premium...

As a startup publisher with no volumes to boast of, we have been able to obtain considerably cheaper quotes for everything from printing (hardcovers too) to warehousing and even shipping directly from third parties.

It appears that in spite of their gigantic scale, and therefore unit cost advantage, Amazon isn't passing on the benefits to its self-publishing authors or indeed other merchants. Guessing they are the ones that are really paying for all those 'free' services Amazon offers to all their prime members not to mention Jeff Bezos' extravagant yet brief jaunt to space.

Factor the above in and the average self-published author (of print books) on Amazon would be lucky to see even a dollar come back on a book that consumers happily pay twenty bucks for - and that's before the cost of advertising mind you.

This is a wider issue faced by all writers

The average writer represented by large publishing houses today ends up with no more than 10% of the book's retail price.

The publishing industry has started to point the finger at Amazon, calling out their enormous market power - estimated at 40% of all physical books and a staggering 90% of all eBooks sales in the US alone. They claim Amazon uses this to manipulate book sales across their platform, using predatory pricing and other anti-competitive tactics, driving down the returns for other publishers and authors.

The sad outcome of all this is that most writers can no longer make a living out of their craft.

[2024 update: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US is starting to finally take notice - taking Amazon to court for anti-competitive practices (including price gouging) on its 'online marketplace' - although they have been long exploiting publishers through similar tactics.]

So what have we chosen to do?

To begin with, we made the decision to ignore the 'conventional wisdom' and not use Amazon as a platform to either self-publish or indeed, sell our books. The point of this blog is that I can justify this decision on purely cold, rational, economic terms - with both an author's and publisher's hat on.

We also did not have the option of traditional publishing available as most publishers had closed up shop to new submissions back in 2020, whilst COVID was ripping through the world.

So after much consideration of our purpose, values, goals, focus areas and critical success factors, we decided to start our own ‘story making’ enterprise and Wise As Stories was born!

This may be my bias coming from a strategy background, but unless you have clarity on these five factors, don’t incorporate!

My own approach to strategy development has been very much influenced by Henry Mintzberg's seminal article on 'Crafting Strategies'. One of the things that resonated with me strongly when I first read this (fifteen years ago!) was the importance of balancing a set of deliberately formed intentions (queue the five factors) with ideas that emerge organically, as you take actions to execute on the intentions (or otherwise).

Our overall commitment remains to do things in the world of books and publishing differently.

From where we stand, the world doesn't need more celebrity authors...

We need lots of different faces and lots of different voices telling us lots of different stories. And we need to create a different model that gives these writers, thinkers, artists and illustrators a fairer share of the value that they create.

Our human civilisation will be richer for it.

2026 Update: So how have we fared?

Since I first wrote this article in 2021, the world has all but changed – and with it, the book business has only become harder.

Over the last six years we have worked tirelessly to test many different strategies and tactics. Unfortunately, in spite of our best efforts (and having books that are consistently rated five stars by our readers) cutting through the "noise" in publishing has time and again proven to be an insurmountable challenge:

There are simply too many books being published.

The children's book space also suffers from the very particular problem of "junk reads". These are books that are published off the back of popular children's TV series or movies. They often have no author and illustrator credits, as are simply a rehash of a television episode.

These cheaply produced books crowd out supermarket shelves and are unfortunately what children are drawn to, on account of little else than familiarity. Parents also gravitate towards these sort of books are they are often much cheaper (as low as $1.99 for paperbacks) and easier to get their children to engage with (as they already know and love the characters). Franchises like Disney Princesses, Bluey, Marvel, amongst others dominate the space.

Then, there are the celebrity children's picture books ...

These are particularly irritating as most of which are ghostwritten crap that get pushed from the massive platforms commanded by celebrities. The celebrities appear to do well enough from these (otherwise they would not sign up) but like everything in publishing, it is not clear how well these books do for the publishers.

These problems are not caused by independent or indeed, self-published authors. Rather, large publishers, like Penguin and Scholastic, much to their shame are guilty on all three counts:

• Publishing too many books - not all of which can be said to be quality literature

• Pushing cheap junk reads from licensed TV shows and movies

• Pushing celebrity titles.

For a while there, we were getting some traction from using paid digital marketing to promote our book. The margins were always tight but it seemed to be working. Since 2022 however, large tech companies like Meta went all in on AI, and to fund this expensive venture, they have been steadily jacking up the cost of advertising through their channels.

Other tech companies are in the same boat – It is no longer economical to do paid ads for books through either Facebook, Amazon or Google.

Amazon as usual has been particularly aggressive in the digital marketing space, having all but flooded Google's shopping channel with their ads so no other punter can get a look in. As the company with the deepest pocket in publishing, they can afford to play nasty games like this.

The end result for authors is that unless you have a large platform like a celebrity or popular TV series, selling children's books is an uphill task.

So what should an aspiring author do in 2026?

My advice – if you want to be an independent author (or work independently in any field in the arts) start building your own platform.

Find your niche, build your community and go from there. It will be a longer road but it will be a rewarding one.

And who knows, maybe one day you will write a book that has what it takes for people to start talking about it, and from there, it will take on a life of its own.

Just remember, when a big publisher comes knocking at your door to ride your self-publishing success, negotiate hard. If they can give celebrities millions of dollars upfront, they can extend the same courtesy to real authors.

P.S. We still have not even contemplated publishing our books on Amazon ...

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Written by Reeta Dhar. Cover Art By Darren Pryce.

Revised edition written and illustrated in Schio, Italy

Revised edition first published by the Vitalis Magazine in July 2026

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