How @Amazon is putting the screws to the little guy

So, I'm not a best selling author - clearly. :) I don't write to become a millionaire, or even a thousand-aire. I write simply because of the love of writing and hoping people will be touched by my stories. Obviously since my books are for sale and not for free - I'm hoping to make -something- on my books, but I have absolutely no illusions that I'm going to be rolling in the cash.

I currently am running a .99 promotion for my first book - mainly to expand my readership as my reviews and sales have hit a bit of a slump.

What's the big deal right? Yeah- thats what I thought too- until I got this Nasty Gram from Amazon

Here is the problem with this. First- without marketing and marketing schemes (like reduced cost books) it is nearly impossible to get new eyes on your book. In order to do that, you need to utilize E-Book deal emails to help find those new readers.

Unfortunately with Amazon's new "Kindle Unlimited" and "KDP Select" either you are beholden ONLY to Amazon and you can't sell on any other platform- or you sell everywhere else but you can't put your book on sale, do countdown deals, pre-orders or any of the other multitude of marketing schemes that those authors who are part of Unlimited and Select are privy to.

And if as an author you DO decide that the other platforms aren't nearly as important as Amazon and you decide to be beholden to them- you're pretty much screwed out of true profits as you are forced to accept whatever "share" of the profits they deem you worthy of.

It's pretty sad, in my opnion that Jeff Bezos and the bean counters at Amazon decided to turn their backs on the independent authors who essentially put Amazon Kindle on the map for indepenedent publishers in the first place.