Amazon has long been a necessary evil in my life. Overall I despise Jeff Bezos’ company, but being a self-published author in a very niche space like this is virtually impossible without it, so I allowed it into my life in a sort of uneasy alliance.
A little while back, I got a notification from Amazon saying that I was due for a round of identity verification. No worries, they said. It’s easy and you can do it on your phone (in fact you pretty much have to.) I rolled my eyes and put it to the back of my mind to take care of later.
Later came yesterday, when I finally had a moment to sit down and run through the process. Using their client, you must take a picture of a form of government photo ID, and your face to match. I’ve been publishing on Amazon for years, so obviously I have succeeded at this at some point. Fine, whatever it takes to prove that there’s a real person here, and not some faceless content-stealing, sludge-generating AI robot entity.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t so easy. My attempts to photograph my ID occasionally were often blurry. Then when I would get to the part where they were to examine my face, they… just didn’t see it, I guess? My driver’s license photo is only 2.5 years old, my face hasn’t changed that much in the interim. I tried it without glasses, I tried with a different device, I couldn’t satisfy them. Eventually I ran out of attempts and was locked out. I won’t be able to try again until November 15.
It seems, quite honestly, unrealistic that my efforts will fare any better at that time. I don’t know what was wrong with my first attempts or how to fix it. The Amazon FAQ is distinctly unhelpful. It feels a little bit Kafka-esque to keep going through the onerous process of verification and be told, for reasons they can’t explain, that it was not successful. It’s disheartening and frustrating, and has dire implications for my future as a writer.
A lot of what I do is contingent on having a place to publish. I want people to see what I do, and I happen to think it’s usually worth paying a couple of bucks for. The small amount of success I’ve had in this field suggests I’m not wrong. As you know, I do publish almost everything in my library concurrently on Draft2Digital, which puts it in stores like Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Everand, but the income from these streams is roughly half of what I get from Amazon. In a month’s time, my prospects for earning money from my writing — and reaching readers — might be cut by two thirds.
It’s heartbreaking, especially because, as anyone who follows me on Bluesky knows, I’m currently well into writing what I think is a really exciting new book, and as I’ve discussed elsewhere I have a ton of other ideas waiting to be realized.
I’m a writer. I will always be writing something, even if it’s not anything anyone ends up seeing. I will more than likely continue my involvement with the Trading Post Blog, of course. But if I can no longer publish on Amazon, that might mean the end of a certain type of writing. It might mean that I no longer feel the incentive to do the novellas, short story collections and Fantasy Epics I had dreamed up. My place in this space might shrink down considerably.
I’ve written numerous times over the last few years that I wasn’t certain how much longer I would be doing this. It’s sad that that might end up coming to pass not because of my choice, but because of some fucking technological glitch. (I always seem to run afoul of technology. Even my coffee maker isn’t working the way it should.) But sometimes, things have to end because of outside factors.
I would not say I’m completely comfortable with the idea of ending this particular version of my writing career. I have more to do and it still excites me to do it. But I’m also on record as having accomplished most of what I want to do, and having created works that I can be proud of and that I know people appreciated.
In the larger picture, it might be for the best. It could be that the mental energy I devote to being Liam Slade is better spent pursuing other goals, and that it is time to move on. That would be a sad but necessary reality to face.
I don’t know how this is all going to shake out. I do know that I am going to continue writing what I am writing, whatever I want to write, as long as I feel like writing it. Whether it gets done and whether people see it, I don’t know yet. What the future holds is as murky as it has ever been.
But in the meantime, thank you all for being here for me, enjoying what I do, and encouraging me to continue. I’ve loved it.
Be kind,
Liam