Removal of my Books from Amazon

Hey y'all, this ain't a fun one, so I'm gonna get straight into it.
After much consideration and debate, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw the sale of physical copies of my books from Amazon. This wasn't an easy choice to make; as I've outlined before, Amazon warehouse is my largest source of sales, though I was never happy about this. Now that I am removing my work from there, I can be more blunt, and say that when copies of my books are bought on Amazon, I get literal pennies per copy, compared to almost the full price of sale when you buy from another retailer. This sucks not just for me, but for you too, because it drove up the price of my books! If I was selling exclusively from Lulu.com, Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall and Each Separate Dying Ember would have been up to £2 cheaper for you, which I know can make a huge difference in a tight spot. I intend to drop all copies from now on to that price as soon as possible, though it will take some time as I do not have 100% control of everything on that end (Lulu is very good and i maintain most control, but as my distributor, they have management on how long it takes prices and distribution to change, nothing sinister). I have always been acutely aware that my books are a little more expensive than most people are comfortable with - if I'm in a book shop, I still make a face if a 400-page paperback is more than £11.99 - and would have had a lower price before now, except that if Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall had been any lower than its current price (£12.49), I would have been making a loss on every copy sold on Amazon. Comparatively, I will still be making a decent profit by dropping the price to £11.99 for copies sold on Lulu.com. Amazon is able to manufacture paperbacks at a lower cost than Lulu due to unsustainable ecological practice and unsafe work conditions, yet insist on taking at least £7 from every sale just in profit. This drives up the prices because they won't allow me to price my books lower on other websites (i would if i could), and allows Amazon to encourage people to buy from them rather than independent retailers because it's a "trusted household brand" and because they can offer free shipping and faster printing/delivery.

So, that's a positive of this change, and positives are good to focus on! By going completely independent, I am able to reduce the cost of all my books, past and future. I'll be blunt, I am emotionally exhausted right now from having this debate; I recently made a post on my personal Facebook page about it and I don't really want the same soapbox negativity on my writing blog, so I won't be going into much detail.
Amazon keeps unsafe work practices, drives out independent retailers to crash the economy, and its CEO is soon to become a trillionaire, paying no taxes on that whatsoever, while millions of people around the world are starving on the streets and dying in hospitals due to artificial scarcity created by the rich. Etc. etc. Shitty and negative.
If you're feeling shocked and confused right now or think I'm exaggerating, I encourage you to take a quick search online for Amazon human rights violations, unsafe work practices, warehouse deaths, etc. And I don't mean "well this article that Amazon pays for says that's not true", I mean actually look for a few different sides of the story. And if you can't be bothered, then just take my (and millions of other people's) word for it, and shop elsewhere. It takes little to no effort on your part and has a huge positive impact on other people's lives. Buying my books direct from myself or Lulu, for instance, gives me a huge step up and the chance to actually use my writing to supplement my income and be a happy person who doesn't slave away under capitalism because the only jobs available for a disabled working-class Zoology graduate are minimum-wage... Well, you know. I haven't used Amazon in almost a year, and it has had no negative impact on my life since to take that extra twenty seconds to find the same video game in CEX, household appliance in the local small-business market, and book from a more ethical retailer. However, I know that with every purchase, I am supporting the second-hand technology industry, putting food on a local person's table, or promoting sustainable book manufacture.

You might be questioning why, up on my grand soapbox, I have not made this change sooner. It's something I've grappled with myself. Part of it is moral, part of it is practical; although I make more money selling one book on Lulu than I do five on Amazon, I generally still sell more on Amazon due to its wider reach. While my books are available on such a large retailer, it can be reviewed and found randomly, whereas people never just "stumble across" Sylvestus while browsing Lulu. Every potential sale is a chance to break big, as it were, so maybe it's better to lose some money in the hopes of maybe one day a film executive coming across it in the Amazon "you might also like..." section, right?
Further, Amazon's stranglehold on book distribution described above means that I cannot remove my books from Amazon without also removing them from Barnes & Noble and Goodreads, among others. This is bad. This is bad and not fun or good. I am fine with my books being on there, and I wish they could stay there, and for a while I reasoned that it wasn't like Jeffrey Bee's-arse is actually profiting from my books so much as I am losing money...
Except that, like, he is. While my books are available on Amazon, and I promote that, Amazon is getting £7 straight to untaxed offshore accounts for every copy sold of my work. Hence, as memes go around on Facebook and Instagram about how he's making a trillion dollars while people literally die in his warehouses trying to get people's make-up and fairy lights sent to them on one-day delivery, I have made this decision.

There is a small compromise to balance the two sides I've presented, which I'll again be blunt about. Amazon Kindle currently has a stranglehold on ebooks, and like with the physical copies, I cannot make my books available to its competitors - Kobo, iBooks, and a few others - without also making it available to Kindle. Using my Kindle and buying books on it is something I am still guilty of, for cost and efficiency and to reduce carbon emissions by book manufacture etc., although I am trying to reduce that and buy second-hand physical copies or borrow from libraries where I can, or find other ways to support authors.
So, while I am removing all of my books' physical copies from Amazon (and, by unfortunate extension, other retailers except Lulu.com), all of them will still be available in ebook format for Kindle as well as iBooks and Kobo. What's my moral stand on that? Well, I look at it this way. While the issues of unsafe warehouses and human rights violations is no longer valid when it comes to digital copies of books, some money still will be going straight to the CEO's profit. But it's significantly less money than from the physical copies. Amazon still takes its significant cut, and my ebooks would be slightly cheaper if they could be sold only on Lulu, but it's way less of an issue than for the paperbacks (like £1 difference per copy sold, rather than £6). And... I get it, y'know? While it has been far easier than you'd expect to cut Amazon out of my life in most ways just by altering my shopping habits (if i can't buy in person in the ways listed above, i just go to ebay or straight to the retailers' websites and can always find the same items at the same price, knowing that the profits go straight to the business now), I just can't afford to buy a Kobo Reader right now and start using that instead. So, honestly... I haven't been comfortable with people buying physical editions of my books on Amazon for a long time, but I'm okay with people going there for ebooks. And it allows my work and name to still be available for that fantasy film exec one day to stumble across.
A jackdaw can dream, eh?

Tl;dr - due to Amazon's Just Entire Thing Right Now, I am removing the paperback editions of Each Separate Dying Ember and Sylvestus Vol I: The Fall from Amazon, and the paperback of Vol II: The Rise, anticipated to come out early 2021, will never be made available on there. As an unfortunate side effect, this means they will also be removed from other distributors. Paperback editions will now only be available direct from Lulu.com, or by emailing myself at emberfell@outlook.com. However, the ebooks of all my books will still be available on Amazon Kindle, as well as other distributors (and Lulu.com). This is a good thing for everyone, as it means that you will have to go to a different website for your paperbacks, but you will pay less money and I will get more money and the economy will be happy and we will get into The Good Place.

The only other note I have is that removal of distribution from Amazon will take 6-8 weeks from time of writing, and the price changes for my books a little longer as a consequence.

So, it's a happy thing overall! We just had to skate through some negativity to get there. Stay safe, enjoy your sustainable shopping ✌️