I’ve been seeing a lot of talk on social media about boycotting Amazon in an effort to “stick it to Bezos” and to retaliate for the company rolling back their DEI. And while I wholeheartedly stand behind both of those points, as an indie author, I also rely on Amazon for my income.
I don’t think people realize the negative impact that these boycotts actually have on the people who they are intended to support.
Let’s look at the “stick it to Bezos” point. Jeff Bezos only owns 8.58% of Amazon. He may technically be the largest shareholder of the company, but over 90% of the company is owned by others. He stepped down as CEO in 2021. (Source)
As of February 2024 Jeff Bezos had a net worth of $189.8 billion. His income from Amazon was approximately $31.06 billion. (Source)
Book sales overall account for less than 10% of Amazon’s total income. (source)
74% of Amazon’s operating income comes from their AWS services (Source) For those who aren’t familiar, AWS stands for Amazon Web Services.
On February 28, 2025 there was a coordinated 1 day boycott of Amazon. Did you hear the results of that? I saw conversations about it on social media and the general consensus was that “any dip in their profit will be considered a success” Do you want to know what happened? They had a 1% INCREASE in sales that day. (Source)
The reason for this increase? My guess is because even though people were opting not to spend money by shopping on the Amazon website, they were still utilizing (possibly at a higher frequency) other websites and services that are hosted on AWS.
Now back to the Indie Author aspect
As an Indie Author who at the time of this writing only has 3 short stories published, I don’t personally make a lot of money each month on Amazon. I do, however, still rely on that income. That money is how I pay for book cover designs, editing, etc.
As you can see from this chart showing my last six weeks of Kindle Unlimited page reads, I am losing readers left and right. I generally have very consistent page reads, with just an occasional low or no read day.
Nothing has changed on my end, if anything, I am marketing more efficiently since I launched my private reader group and started focusing more intentionally on my newsletter. I have been working on building relationships with readers and seeking them out more effectively.
Unfortunately, people don’t realize the consequences of these boycotts. They are not having the negative impact that we would hope for. If anything, Amazon is making more money, while we indie authors (and other small business owners) are losing our already limited income.
There are a lot of folks who just ay “take your books off Amazon and publish them somewhere else,” except that’s not a realistic option for a lot of us. Other ebook platforms, like Kobo and Apple books, are great and all, but they just don’t have as large of a readership as what we have on Amazon, and even though readers are leaving Amazon, they aren’t all switching to those other services.
In fact, there has been an uptick in social media influencers promoting websites where readers can download pirated copies of books, meaning the authors get zero compensation for the distribution of those books. This is both unethical, and illegal, but these readers don’t seem to care that indie authors are lowing their entire income as long as Amazon isn’t getting a few pennies.
Alternative options for selling physical books have their own setbacks, such as large upfront costs for printed books, ISBNs, etc.
In conclusion, If you want to boycott Amazon, that is absolutely your right, and I wholeheartedly understand and support your reasoning, but please consider continuing to support indie authors by keeping your Kindle Unlimited subscription and/or purchasing their books through Amazon if they aren’t available direct from the author.
We appreciate you a lot more than Amazon is going to miss a few pennies of their overall revenue.