A bombshell dropped over the weekend that has the potential to shake indie publishing to its core.
The troubling development involves mega best selling newpub author, and fellow Dragon Award winner, Nick Cole. This ongoing story broke on Sunday night when readers noticed the popular Galaxy’s Edge and Forgotten Ruin series by Cole and his co-author Jason Anspach missing from Amazon.
Here is Nick’s official statement:
We don’t know anything concrete. This happened on Saturday night on a 3 day weekend.
That sounds suspiciously like a hacker got into Amazon. Also, a few other people have had it happen to them.
But the times are crazy due to the leftists strangling everyone’s small business and acting like some kind of woke mafia within major corporations and so it must be considered, that until Amazon says different, this was some kind of Purge.
We are hoping Tuesday morning sees a resolution. Until then our cash flow has been destroyed, our customers are upset, and potential new customers are being lost forever.
It makes you question being exclusive on Amazon. In the light of this, it seems foolish to have all your eggs in one basket. Galaxy’s Edge has already held emergency meetings to discuss remedies that benefit the reader, and the company, by going in new directions.
Perhaps this is the next evolution in the Indie Revolution.
Of course, Nick is the one best positioned to know why Amazon pulled his books. But even his vantage point isn’t definitive, thanks to the shabby state of the internet.
Was it a hack?
Or Death Cultists in middle management on a witch hunt?
This screen grab from a KDP search for “Galaxy’s Edge” may hold a clue.
It turns out that Disney launched their own Galaxy’s Edge series under the Star Wars banner in 2019 – two years after Cole and Anspach’s 2017 publication date.
Now, those who know a little about publishing may object that you can’t copyright a title. That’s beside the point. Megacorps aren’t concerned with aesthetics. They care about brand. Disney slapped the Galaxy’s Edge moniker on a novel series, a Marvel comic, and a theme park attraction. If you’re in Disney’s marketing department, you want every search for “Galaxy’s Edge” to turn up Disney products. You want that name associated with your brand and only your brand.
Somebody else got there first? Does that somebody have billions to spend on IP litigation? Screw him.
Let you accuse me of reverting to economic reductionism, this isn’t about money. Disney has all the cash and collateral they need. What they care about is uncontested dominance of the cultural narrative. They do not want anyone jamming their signal, especially not a couple of straight, white, Christian men.
Is maintaining narrative control important enough for priests of the Devil Mouse to have their coreligionists at Amazon declare a fatwa against Cole and Anspach?
To ask the question is to answer it.
Whatever the reason for Amazon’s interference in Nick’s business, it looks like he’s right about one thing: Amazon exclusivity is, by fits and starts, turning into career suicide.
If it’s malicious hackers, that means Amazon lacks sufficient security to safeguard their partners’ business.
If it’s Death Cultists conducting an internal purge, that means upper management can’t keep the crazies on a leash.
If it’s malfunctioning algorithms, that means Amazon’s whole system just plain doesn’t work, and relying on it is the business equivalent of playing Russian roulette.
Nick is also right about changing market conditions forcing another newpub evolution. Based on experience and research from me and others, some hybrid patronage system appears to be what’s next.
In the meantime, get your physical copies of Galaxy’s Edge while the getting’s good.
And if you like Stormtroopers in Afghanistan, you’ll also dig MS Gundam meets Tom Clancy.
Disney delenda est.
Amazon delenda est.
Death Cult delenda est.
When it comes to corporate cancer, Teddy Spaghetti is usually vindicated.
When the Castalia House stuff got dropped from Amazon (seemingly in response to Vox Day’s spoof on Scalzi’s Collapsing Empire series) the books vanished, but the audio books did not. If I recall correctly all signs strongly pointed to a rogue Amazon employee with an axe to grind against Vox Day who did not have access to the audiobooks.
I really doubt that this was a hacker, or at least not a hacker in the sense of forcing access into Amazon’s computer systems. Social engineering sounds more plausible, but probably an outside source would not have a hard time finding an Amazon employee who would be glad to help out.
Here are the three theories that seem most plausible to me:
1.) An individual Amazon employee wipes out the books based on his own grudge against Nick Cole or conservative indie publishing in general. The Disney stuff is not involved.
2.) A Disney representative reaches out unofficially to an Amazon employee to remove the books. The employee may have been bribed or may have had his own grudge like in scenario 1.), but wasn’t willing to act until he was pushed.
3.) Disney contacts Amazon and asks them to remove the book. Amazon is uncomfortable doing this openly, since Disney has no legal grounds for doing this and Amazon (despite their woke leadership) still likes being thought of as a market where everything is available. They decide to take the books down in a way that looks identical to previous cases where a rogue employee acted, so that they have plausible deniability.
If scenarios 1.) or 2.) are true, probably Amazon will try to help but likely the books will have been removed from their servers rather than just made unavailable, so Nick Cole and Jason Anspach will have to resubmit everything (and Amazon won’t streamline the process for them.) If 3.) is true then Amazon will probably stonewall and if resubmissions are attempted they will say that they are uncomfortable selling the books under this title because of the existing Disney series.
Here are the relevant posts from Vox Day on Amazon pulling his stuff, for comparison:
The first pull, which was reversed and only affected the one book:
https://voxday.net/2017/03/20/amazon-pulls-corroding-empire/
https://voxday.net/2017/03/22/tortious-interference/
https://voxday.net/2017/03/22/back-with-vengeance/
The full take down two years later:
https://voxday.net/2019/01/31/amazon-takes-down-castalia-house/
https://voxday.net/2019/01/31/lies-lies-lies/
https://voxday.net/2019/02/01/reinstated/
I can’t find a later discussion that gave reasons for why it was probably a rogue employee, but note that Amazon talked through all sides of its mouth, claiming that the action was justified due to potential reader confusion but also that they had done nothing and the removal was on the publisher end.
The books appear to be back up, at least if you search “galaxy’s edge nick cole,” so this was probably either a rogue employee/hacker or an attempt at stealth delisting that backfired on them.
I’m increasingly unwilling to use Amazon, both because of the woke cult, and because they are simply becoming incompetent (like Google before them.) That we have to play these head games show that, whether this instance is intentional or not, they are unreliable, unprofessional enemies of civil society.
I’m cutting Amazon Prime before the renewal, and the only reasons I am waiting that long is that I can’t get my money back and the kids like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood (the original, not the garbage all-animated skinsuit, which is not as awful as many skinsuit projects, but is still skinsuit garbage.) It is a struggle to decouple from these Clown Cultists (because they are everywhere, in charge of everything), and I follow a corollary rule to “Don’t Give Money to People Who Hate You” and “Rule Zero”, namely: “If you have to give money to someone who hates you, give it to the smaller guy who can do less damage with it.”
Are you contractually incentivized to keep offering only on Amazon? I haven’t bought a Niemeier book since the first Combat Frame XSeed (which I liked) and I’d really like to buy more, but the Amazon woke-itude, incompetence, and DRM make me leery to buy ebooks I don’t need from them. Same for Adam Lane Smith’s ebooks. Even just a simple GumRoad storefront to deliver ebook copies would elicit several sales from me, at least. I really like Silver Empire’s storefront, even if they don’t have many books by the authors I am interested in (I still purchased several possible candidates, to support the enterprise, but haven’t touched what I bought yet to see if they are my cup of tea.) It doesn’t have to reach their level of complexity, though. I know in the past you have said you are not particularly tech-savvy.
Good for you!
I don’t have contractual obligations to Amazon. I’ve been gradually working toward removing my dependence on them–this web site is one step toward it. The process is rather expensive, and as you said, I have Boomer tech, so your patience is appreciated.
I wasn’t thinking obligations. I just know that some online marketplaces take less of a cut of each sale if you are exclusive with them, and I didn’t know if Amazon was that way.
For all that–quite a few years ago–my wife started a “Sell with Amazon” resale business, it only lasted a month before she realized the huge amount of time only was destroying her mood, and I learned absolutely nothing about Amazon’s backend policies.
It is definitely good to hear you are planning to decouple!
God bless!
Matthew
I have the same sentiments. I really want to avoid buying kindle books. In fact, I cancelled a preorder when the authour distributed his upcoming books to other platforms. I then preordered from the alternative platform and got the ebook today.
My preference to buy directly from the publishers and authours whenever I can. They get paid directly and I choose my preferred format.
I also buy from small independent bookstores.
xavier
One of the perks of supporting Brian’s Indigo efforts is a DRM free version of whatever book he’s working on. Directly funding people whose work you like is better than giving Jeff Bezos more money to donate to causes you might disagree with. Patronage may be the next big thing in publishing.
I’ve been talking with some other authors about this, and they agree that neopatronage is the future of newpub. A shift to direct marketing will be an intermediary measure, in all likelihood.
It seems like only yesterday that Milo Yiannopoulos made fun of patronage as a form of ebegging. Then again, he was speaking to Carl Benjamin…
I’d like not to depend on amazon as well. Until I can afford my own cyber storefront, publishing wide through an aggregate site like draft2digital is a small, first step.
I suspect it was due to Amazon’s trademark enforcement program which is an almost entirely automated system. Some Disney lackey probably updated their phonebook sized list of trademarks to include “Galaxy’s Edge” (which I don’t think they actually own as a word trademark) which then caused Nick’s book to get whacked.
IMHO it’s more likely to be multiple layers of incompetence; Disney employee adding a trademark they assume Disney owns, and Amazon’s lack of sanity checking on their trademark enforcement (probably shouldn’t yeet things that have been there for years without human review).
At a certain point incompetence is indistinguishable from malice but that and my belief that mens rhea is a bullshit concept aren’t germane to the topic.