Please Support Independent Authors

I applaud you speaking with your wallet - one of the best ways to show retailers how satisfied or dissatisfied you are with their products, services, and/or philosophies.

As an independent author who solely publishes via Amazon - their free ISBN, Kindle Unlimited network, and built-in distribution network makes it really easy for a startup to well, ‘get started’.

If you’ve decided on a TOTAL Amazon boycott, as opposed to boycotting Amazon products, services, or the ‘Bez’ himself, please consider the small businesses that rely on Amazon-related services.

It was described to me by another small business owner- think of Amazon as a shopping mall and Bezos as the landlord. When you boycott the mall, and are deemed successful, you’ve in essence only hurt (or worse - put out of business) every small business INSIDE the mall, yet the landlord just relies more on his other properties’ income. Your boycott was a blip in his revenue stream.

Those hurt small business owners however have to try and restart from ZERO.

And please also consider that Amazon is so much bigger than simply buying things online from Amazon.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) currently holds the largest market share in the global cloud infrastructure market, estimated to be around 30%, meaning a significant portion of the worldwide web's cloud services go through AWS.

This means that if you’ve decided to boycott - and chose to boycott Amazon specifically - but you’ve bought all those products from a different online retailer, chances are that Amazon is STILL making revenue because that online retailer has to pay AWS for all the cloud services (online web space, online web transactions, etc.) to make your online transaction happen.

Furthermore, going online to coordinate the boycott on sites like FB, Insta, TikTok, likely puts money into Amazon’s pocket just by conducting the communication online. The process of simply posting something online more than likely involves an AWS server or cloud services - sending money to ‘you know who’ as soon as you click ‘send’.

Sure, cancel your Prime account, don’t purchase Amazon-branded goods - but please, please consider the small businesses that you are inadvertently hurting by a blanketed, non-targeted/specific boycott.

Thank you!