It was surprising for me that many people don’t know about the long-time Amazon-Google-Apple rivalry over book selling.
You can’t buy a Kindle book inside the phone Amazon app. Not on Android phones, not on iPhones. Here’s why nobody talks about it.
First, Apple wanted 30% for processing in-app purchases. It was a long time ago, when the App Store just started selling apps.
But Amazon’s entire margin on ebooks is also around 30%. There’s literally no room for a third party at the table, so Amazon removed the buy button from the app entirely and sent you to the browser instead. Android allowed selling books for free for a really long time, but a few years ago it decided to adopt a similar policy to the one Apple created.
Problem solved for three corporations, mildly annoying for everyone else. Promoting book reading for a new generation, you say?
So, to buy any ebook from your phone, you have to:
1. Open an internet browser
2. Go to the Amazon page
3. Log in and deny any suggestions to reroute you to the app
4. Find the book
5. Here you will see the convenient “buy with 1 click” button
Now let’s talk about what actually lands in an author’s pocket on a $2.99 ebook — the most common indie price point.
Amazon keeps 30% off the top. The delivery fee takes another bite. US self-employment tax claims 15.3% of what’s left. A non-US author without a tax treaty setup? Amazon withholds an additional 30% on top of everything. On a $2.99 book, the author might walk away with somewhere around $1.20. On 2–3 years of work.
I was a published author in Russia in 2004. Trust me, this is not a new problem. The publishing industry has always been architecturally designed to pay authors last. Even on ebooks.
I am an avid reader. I read fast and read everything.
Which is exactly why, when I genuinely connect with a book, I buy the paperback, the ebook, and the audio version.
Not because I need three copies.
Because internet popularity is the only real promotional currency authors have now — so they get noticed and invited to speak or to teach. Algorithms amplify what already sells.
Publishers greenlight what already trends.
A 2–3 year creative project lives or quietly disappears based on signals that cost a reader maybe $40 total.
I knew that part about ebook selling all too well, having written and published 6 books in Russian many years ago.
But I didn’t know that the paperback and audiobook business is even worse! I learned about that side of the business from Brandon Sanderson — my exceptional favorite author, teacher of modern writing, and, not coincidentally, the son of an accountant. He has been transparently educating his readers about publishing economics for years.
His $41M Kickstarter wasn’t a stunt. It was a man who understood the math and decided to own his own work.
Buy the books you love in every format you can afford (I’m not talking about my books here, because I don’t do it for a living — but many authors do).
It’s not charity. It’s the only signal the algorithm actually understands.
