Amazon’s Download Debacle
Written By: Sierra Cassity
As of February 26, 2025, Amazon has cracked down on readers ability to download the books they have paid for. That’s right, the biggest online book seller in the world, responsible for roughly 80% of all book distribution has effectively eliminated readers ability to own the books they buy for their ereaders. The retail giant with humble beginnings as an online bookstore in 1995 has slammed and locked the door on authors and readers faces as they head to the bank.
In the past Amazon has been under fire for their unfair royalty rates to authors. Specifically on Audible. The regular, popular, going royalty rate for authors is usually in the 80/20. Authors make 80% while the distributor makes 20% of the total book price. Amazon currently pays their authors 35% royalties.
Brandon Sanderson, a large fantasy/sci-fi author, renowned as the best writer in the genre today, took on Audible when he learned authors made between 25-40%. In Sanderson’s statement to his fans he wrote, “I felt that the industry was taking advantage of authors because of their lack of powerful corporate interests to advocate for them. While video game creators and musicians get 70-80% of a sale…Audible was paying as low as 25%...”
Sanderson did something then that changed the power dynamic, he told them no, he would not release four of his projects through audible. Sanderson provided a large spotlight on a system that favored itself over the people making it run, the authors. Audible in response, presented a new royalty structure. Now Audible gives authors 50% royalty and is more transparent with their monthly statements and where the other half of the money goes.
Amazon kindle and book sales remain unchanged, with it’s 35% royalty rate and quarterly payment schedule. This is only a small portion of the larger problem. Amazon is also renowned for its exclusivity traps and the massive market domination it holds.
Amazon controls 67% of digital book sales, making it one of the most tempting places to put your books when publishing. When publishing through amazon authors have two options, be exclusive to kindle and receive a marginally larger royalty rate (70%), but you can’t put your book anywhere else, ever. On top of this authors are incentivized to put their own money into the system again and again to keep their book/s trending.
Anyway, back to the downloading issue at hand. Before now, readers have been able to buy a digital book and download it to whatever device or USB they wanted to. In other words, that digital copy of the book that they bought was theirs to do with what they pleased.
Now when a reader buys a digital copy of a book on Amazon, they are essentially paying to borrow the book. It will never really belong to the buyer. Amazon has the power to pull that book off its virtual shelves at any time and it would essentially disappear from your ereader without a trace or warning. This also give Amazon the power to go in and drastically or minimally change the book without the reader knowing that the book they had bought has been altered since they paid for it.
There are examples of Amazon removing authors works without notice and for seemingly no reason. I will not name them here because I do not have their permission. And I won’t bring Amazon’s removal of 1984 by George Orwell in 2024 into the equation because the third party that was selling that book didn’t actually have the rights to do so.
Someone could try to make the argument that Amazon is trying to protect authors from potential plagiarism. But the problem with that argument is that stopping downloading doesn’t have any effect on piracy. There are so many safeguards in place when authors write books to protect their art, including the digital trail that would be left from purchasing their book in the first place and downloading it that ultimately, it’s not a strong argument and completely falls apart.
Ultimately, Amazon is doing this simply because they can. They own the market and know that no matter what they do readers and authors alike will still flock to them making them billions of dollars a year.
What can we do? As authors we can move away from Amazon. It’s okay to still use it, it does have the largest retailing reach and can be a great way to build your audience. But don’t make it the cornerstone, build a website for yourself, sell locally. Doing these allows you to have control over your product. Not to mention you have the potential to make more than pennies for a book. (For reference, on Kindle, my book, Return to Earth makes .82 for every read through in royalties.)
As readers we can shop in person. Actually, owning a book is always a better option when you’re paying money for a book. You can support authors through their websites and directly through their publishers or publishing branch if they have been traditionally published.
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Tangent:
Have you guys heard about Meta using copywritten books without permission to train AI?
