You may have seen a lot of people lately talking about how they’re going to stop buying from Amazon, and as a consequence will be getting rid of their Kindle Unlimited subscription. If you’re a romance author on KU, you may have seen a downturn in your page reads since January. If you are on social media, you may have seen lots of book influencers and authors and others (me included!) imploring people to keep their KU because it helps authors, who are essentially small businesses who happen to need Amazon in order to run said business.
So as an author, what do you do right now when a huge income source is being boycotted and affecting your take-home pay? Do you stay on KU, or is it time to jump ship?
As a reader, I love KU. I get my money’s worth every month with the way I read—like many romance readers, I go through a ton of books in a month between KU, the library, and actual purchases (though I have shifted from buying ebooks on Amazon to buying on Kobo). KU is not only an economical way for me to read a lot, but I’ve found some of my favourite writers on KU, and KU gives me a ton of flexibility in my reading tastes (just this weekend, I was like, “I need to read something UNHINGED”—there’s no better place for KU than that).
But as someone who supports authors, I’ve long been wary of KU and its practices (peep this blog post from 2018! Who remembers Cockygate?), which tend to be not at all transparent and can seem almost indiscriminate in the way it applies its rules and exercises its authority. And now in 2025, the KU romance market, which was alwaysoversaturated, is even more so, which means there’s less money in the pot and more competition for eyeballs and page views.
Still, KU remains one of the best places for discoverability if you’re able to cut through the noise and carve out your own niche there. And for readers like me who are willing to try a new-to-them author based on a gorgeous cover or a great blurb or an enthusiastic recommendation, it’s a way to discover a new favourite author.
KU’s exclusivity requirements have always been a headache for authors. You cannot put your books for sale anywhere but Amazon while your books are in KU, which obviously narrows your potential sales, and Amazon can get very punitive if you’ve forgotten to take down one book on one other platform. Basically, they very much encourage putting all your eggs in their Amazon basket—but now that Amazon is facing backlash, is it still worth it to stay?
I still think it's worth being on KU because it's still where the readers are. There hasn't been enough of a mass exodus yet to warrant jumping the ship. BUT...there are more options now for authors going wide, so maybe it's time to reconsider your strategy?
Going wide (i.e. not being on KU) is an uphill battle—you need to convince people to pay money to take a chance on an unknown quantity. But you have a lot more freedom and a lot of places to experiment and find your niche. (This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how much work you want to put into your strategy and how much time you have for experimentation.)
But if you're hoping to divest yourself from Amazon entirely, being wide won't necessarily do that. You probably still want to sell your books there (it controls the majority of the market). And having your books wide is more work for you to keep track of them on all platforms, which will not have nearly as many sales as Amazon. Amazon has so ingrained itself in the book market that trying to extricate yourself from it—as a reader or as an author—has become very, very difficult. So, unfortunately, a strong ethical position against Amazon is not really for your author business—but of course that's your decision to make.
If you do want to go wide, I’d suggest experimenting a bit when you have a few books under your belt—can you put some in KU and some wide, and see how they do and determine where the best place for you to be is?
If you’re wide, you also might consider putting your book in Kobo Plus, which is Kobo’s version of KU. Unlike KU, it does NOT require exclusivity, so you can sell your books on other platforms too. It’s not nearly as saturated with romance as KU is, but there are also way fewer readers there than there are in KU. The royalties aren’t a ton more than KU (here’s a nice comparison of KU vs Kobo for authors), but if readers are jumping ship from Amazon, they’ll probably head over to Kobo for book sales and to Kobo Plus, which gives readers unlimited borrows per month and includes audiobooks in one of the plans.
If you remember the heyday of KU in the mid-teens when people were making big money on there, Kobo Plus hasn't gotten to that heyday yet, as it's still in its relatively early days. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for authors to find their niche and their audience on Kobo Plus, especially as it grows—you’d basically be getting in at the ground floor now. And if readers are leaving KU, Kobo Plus, with its similar format, is probably where they'll go. But to be on Kobo Plus right now means you can't be on KU because of their exclusivity clause, and there are more readers (and money) on KU than on Kobo Plus.
I don’t want to say “yes, everyone should be on KU!” or “no, get off of KU ASAP!”—it really depends on a variety of factors: how many books you have out, what kind of romance you write, where your ideal audience is and how they read, how quickly the market changes, the concerns of your particular business, your ethical stance, etc. etc. I want you to make the choices that are best for your creativity and your author business so you can continue to grow. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see where you’re actually doing really well—maybe it’ll surprise you?
Where are you at right now? To KU or not KU? If you’ve always been wide, have you considered KU or Kobo Plus?
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