one identity crisis at a time, baby

This was going to be a series of Instagram reels before I remembered I was not built for on-camera work. Day job-induced laptop screen fatigue really had me thinking like an influencer for a minute there but, no, we’re staying on the blog so I don’t have to tame my hair or explain to some of you fuckin’ animals the medical nature of my Cookie Monster eyes.

Anyway, the short of this song-and-dance is what it says on the label: I’ve decided to opt out of my book contract to do this thing solo instead, but I’ll be skipping Amazon when I do it.

I’ll still be editing for Turn the Page Publishing, as well as writing a novella trilogy for them, but I’m rereleasing What’s Your Vibe? and How to Survive a Teen Sex Comedy on my own again this year (release dates TBA, and dates for books 3-4 TBD).

Why? I don’t know, guys. Because I feel like it.

As much as I’d like to share the deep-dive introspection that led me to the Realization that I want to do these books pure indie-style, it doesn’t exist. I’m thankful to the publisher for letting me out of my contract, and further thankful that I still have opportunities to work with them, but as for the why…

Well, I’ve already said it: Because.

(I think also and maybe I’m just tired of my personal track record with the neurodivergent urge to overexplain? I don’t actually owe you people the innermost workings of whatever wee beastie is driving my thoughts and feelings process.)

Was this a bad business move? I don’t know that, either—you can never really know if the choice you made turns out better or worse than the other option, it’s a real “The Road Not Taken” out there—but I don’t think so. My renewed happiness and excitement for WYV and TSC tell me I made the right call, though.

If I had to offer an explanation, I think my reason for signing the contract was flawed to begin with. At the heart of it all was the supposition that if I got a book deal, people would be more supportive. Surely this professional validation would make the people in my life take my work and my goals seriously, they’d read my books, they’d engage with my posts, they’d talk to me about my writing like it’s my job and not just some bullshit I’m doing.

But people show up for you if they want to. That’s it, nothing else to it. And if the only way I can get their support is through their lens of success, or their (mis)understanding of how creative industries work, well, then those are relationships I need to reevaluate or otherwise make peace with. I’m not going to let them dictate what I want to do anymore.

Because, man, I can’t tell you how close I’ve been to just posting my books to Archive of Our Own and calling it done (and, yes, fun fact, you can publish original works to AO3). I just want to share my stories with the people who’ll love them, who will find something that resonates, or some solace or comfort or joy in what I have to say, and what they might be able to figure out about themselves through that.

But, hey, I could use a little extra income, and I love having my paperbacks, and realistically I don’t want to have to explain AO3 to the IRL folks who are blissfully unaware.

So, nah, you won’t find WYV or TSC on the archive. And you won’t find them on Amazon, either.

(Unless first editions are getting resold over there, but that’s out of my hands and none of my business.)

We all know how far up AI’s ass Amazon is. They’ve got AI books on their shelves—nevermind the rules and restrictions indie authors have to abide by to gain traction and avoid shadow banning, but of course let’s give these fuckin’ poseurs a spotlight—and an AI “tool” (sure, we’ll call it that, depending on what kinda tool you mean) they downloaded to everyone’s Kindle without consent or option to disable—which essentially reads the book for you and reports back.

Either read the goddamn book or don’t, guys, but don’t use this “feature” and say you read it.

Regardless of where I publish, the fact is you’ll be able to convert the ebook for Kindle readability, but at least Amazon won’t get a cut of my profits. And if you use that AI tool, man, just… don’t buy my books if you need some robot dingus to read them for you. I need the money but I don’t want yours.

It’s the principle of the thing.

Honestly, I’m just fed up. Pissed off. Tired. I’m sick of the “technological advances” that are streaming services and digital products and not actually owning what we buy. The digital books and movies we pay for can be edited or removed whenever and for whatever, all at the whim of publishers, studios, Amazon, doesn’t matter if you preferred the original or if you paid for that series, it’s not yours and they can take it away without reimbursing you. Meanwhile AI’s stealing creative works and dumping all our water and turning everyone into a dumbass with nary a concept of independent thought or critical thinking skills.

I don’t. Want this.

And, amid a stream-of-conscious brink-of-a-meltdown to myself a week or so ago, I realized with fantastic clarity that I don’t have to participate in the shit that pisses me off.

No, keeping my books off Amazon isn’t going to change any of this. It’s not going to pop the AI bubble or really do anything effective at all. But if I’m this Over It, I can’t in good conscience publish my work there. Even if I didn’t share any of this with all you fine cats and kittens out there, I think folding to Amazon publishing would just. Eat my soul alive.

I need this soul. It’s where the books come from.

As Richard Linklater said to The Hollywood Reporter in 2023 (regarding the changing culture around moviemaking, cinema, and art in general), “In your own area, you just have to persist and do what you can on behalf of the things that you believe in.”

So this is me persisting, I guess. Cutting out the noise and believing in whatever I find underneath it.

Is nixing Amazon another bad business decision?

I don’t know.

Probably? (Eh.)

Whooooooo gives a shit?

I can’t bring myself to care, and I’m not trying. Yeah, sure, I want visibility and extra cash, but god damn, at what cost? Bestseller lists are curated, awards are kinda bogus (reading is subjective, ffs, how do you decide what’s definitively The Best?), none of this shit’s honest, personally I feel like if my stuff ends up with mass appeal then I really lost the point somewhere along the way.

I get why authors and readers use Amazon—it’s made itself a necessity, or at the very least it’s presented itself that way so successfully we’re all convinced it’s true.

Anything I traditionally publish will end up there, and I’m not immune to a Kindle purchase when I want to support a KU author. But. When it comes to my indie books, I don’t need Amazon, and more importantly I don’t want it. I didn’t build my platform there, I had no intention of utilizing Kindle Unlimited anyway, so what’s the point? I have Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org and library potential and et cetera, so what’s my incentive?

Nada. Zip. Zilch. Except for that aforementioned visibility, maybe, but relying on that’s a fool’s errand. The market’s oversaturated, AI books are moving in (not forever, but for now is enough to turn me off), and Amazon categorizes popular books in places they don’t belong just to keep those optics up.

I’ve consistently seen hetero romance as top sellers in LGBTQ+ just for what I have to assume is the inclusion of a gay best friend, which is bonkers infuriating to me as a queer author who writes queer stories, and also just as a person with common sense in their brain. And “BookTok Sensations” (barf) are often included in niche categories that aren’t the most relevant, but it’s easier to get a #1 spot because the category’s niche and people have already heard of/are flocking to buy the book, so the competition’s not exactly… competitive. Dig? Like, okay, you’re an Amazon #1 bestseller, but the category’s “Contemporary Romance > Dark Romance > Motorcycle Club > Vigilante Justice Thrillers > Women Detectives” and there’s only like ten other books labeled as such, and also there’s not even a female detective, it’s just an FMC who asks a lot of questions about the MMC’s possible criminal enterprise, so what does that even mean?

(Note: That’s not a real category but it does contain elements, and trust me when I say the reality gets just as weird.)

(Note 2: The reason I’ve clocked this is because BISAC and book categorization is a big part of my day job; I’m not just saying things.)

It’s whatever makes Amazon the most money, it’s catering to already well-known authors, it’s numbers over quality and substance, and the rest of us can go fuck ourselves.

The game’s rigged, baby, and I’m not playing anymore. Why adhere to a system that doesn’t make sense to me and waste my energy trying to understand it, when I could just do my own thing and absolutely groove along my way to self-fulfillment?

[“Hold On” by Wilson Phillips plays in the distance]

ヽ(⌐■_■)ノ♪♬

Pursuing any creative venture is always gonna be hard. But I don’t have to be mad about it all the time, and this is how I’m going to change my perspective.

That about does it. If you jive with anything I’ve said here, you can follow me across the internet to stay tuned into my coming-soon book releases, and whatever the hell else I decide I need to say.