As of July last year, I moved almost all of my titles out of wide distribution and put them into Kindle Unlimited. My income jumped fivefold and I was suddenly making three figures a month (yes, I know that’s ridiculously low, I’m working on it).

Cut to November and what I kept hearing from reputable sources was that Amazon, which up until now has been the 800 pound gorilla in the indie publishing game, was losing interest in selling books and was thinking of shifting authors away from Kindle Unlimited (which is partially funded by them) to Kindle Vella. People who rely on publishing to pay all of their bills were going wide; more importantly, they were selling directly from their website.

Which got me to thinking. Amazon has an excessively stupid rule where any title that costs more than $9.99 can only earn a 35% royalty instead of the 70% one, which impacts box sets. I will be putting out at least three box sets this year with Esposito County Shifters (5 books), Paladins of Crystal (5 books), and Olympic Cove (6 books). But if I sell them through Amazon I would either have to break each one up into two in order to make the money that I should be making on them or bite the bullet and accept a 35% royalty. Yeah, no.

So I have signed up for a Shopify website, which I’m in the middle of designing. Almost all of my titles currently in KU end their periods in February, but three of the Esposito County Shifters titles end in January. Once they’re out, I’m going to do an experiment and set them wide, then launch the Shopify store and put those up as the first books. When Shifter Woods: Claw is published I’m not putting it in KU, and once Shifter Woods: Growl is out of KU on February I’ll put the box set on sale on my Shopify site and all online retailers.

Except Amazon. the ECS box set will contain five titles and retail at $14.99. For Amazon I’ll split the box set into two and sell Howl, Snarl, and Growl as one set priced at $8.99 and Claw and Roar as one set priced at $5.99. If that works, I’ll start moving all of my other titles out of KU and put them wide as well as sell them directly.

If nothing else, 2023 is going to be interesting.