Audience Ownership: Why Authors Can’t Rely on Platforms Anymore

Rosemi Mederos: 00:01

Welcome, writers. This episode of Writing Break is all business. In thinking about several news stories I've shared with you, I realized that recent changes in distribution and visibility can hinder your audience growth. In this episode I'm going into detail about what those changes are and what you should be doing about it.

The Writing Break cafe is open, so let's get to it.

Modern-day publishing has made it clear that authors need to own their relationship with readers. While it's always been true that contracts control how an author's work can be used, recent changes in publishing, technology, and distribution have made it so that platforms control access and algorithms control visibility. These days, an author without direct reader relationships might see engagement drop off overnight should the algorithm stop working in their favor or a book-selling platform decide to remove their books. I've mentioned the latter happening to one author, but let's go further.

Selling through a platform does not mean you control your distribution. For the past couple of years, multiple authors and small presses reported sudden Kindle Direct Publishing account terminations, often with little warning or explanation. In some cases, entire publisher accounts were shut down after a single title was flagged for policy violations. When that happens, books are removed from sale and royalties are frozen. Authors and publishers might lose access to reader data and publishing privileges for a short while or forever.

Amazon has also continued expanding content filtering and regional availability controls. Research from The Citizen Lab has documented cases in which books remain listed on Amazon but are marked unavailable or unshippable in certain regions."In numerous cases, the resulting censorship is either overly broad or miscategorized. Examples include the restriction of books relating to breast cancer, recipe books invoking 'food porn' euphemisms, Nietzsche’s Gay Science, and 'rainbow' Mentos candy." These books and candy exist, but online shoppers cannot access them, and the authors may never be informed about the ban.

We've discussed Amazon's “Ask This Book” feature for Kindle, which is a tool that allows readers to ask questions about a book and receive AI-generated explanations based on the text they purchased. Amazon describes the feature as an enhanced reading tool. Putting aside the fact that generative AI makes a lot of mistakes and could output incorrect or harmful information to readers, The Authors Guild argues that the "Ask This Book" feature effectively transforms books into AI-enhanced products without author consent or additional compensation. That argument makes sense to me.

Let's overthink this. The search feature on ereaders allows readers to search an ebook in a way that you cannot do in print, but the search feature does not generate text about the book, so it's still just a book. But a primer that explains that book is a separate product that requires a separate purchase in order to access it. For example, the book Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare: A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Works of Shakespeare is not thrown in free of charge whenever you purchase one of Shakespeare's works. It's a separate product because it's different in much the same way that AI-enhanced ebooks are different from regular ebooks and audiobooks and print books.

The lack of respect that has been shown to authors and other artistically talented people during the development of the most used LLMs is astounding. They violated copyright laws and authors' rights with abandon. Are we supposed to respect the developers? And now, Anthropic, which owns Claude, is crying in their Cheerios because other LLM developers are teaching their models using Claude. And what these companies are doing isn't even illegal, not yet, anyway.

Let me explain. There's a method in LLM development called knowledge distillation or just distillation, which is when one LLM shares its so-called thought process with a new LLM, resulting in a smaller, faster, and more efficient LLM. That's the simplest explanation. OK, so, Anthropic is now whining about other developers using this method to train their own models. Is this illegal? Nope. That might change in the future, but it's not illegal now. You know what is illegal? The way Claude and others used the work of authors and other artists to train their LLMs.

But according to Anthropic, what these LLM companies are doing violates their terms of service. In the words of Bernard Black, "Don't make me get sick into my own scorn."

I mean, where would generative AI be had developers not illegally trained their models with books?

Nowhere.

How many of these AI profiteers feel remorse for what they did?

None.

They think they got away with it, and so far it seems they have, even though legal pressure around AI training might be increasing. Anthropic agreed to a proposed settlement of up to $1.5 billion in a lawsuit alleging that the company trained its models on pirated books. If approved, authors whose works were included could receive compensation, and the company must delete pirated training datasets.

Seeing KDP apply their AI feature to books without getting authors' consent or offering compensation, I guess should not be a surprise, but that doesn't make it OK. This "ready or not, here's AI" approach is pervasive in many industries, and with our current lack of AI governance, there are bound to be more lawsuits.

Do you remember back in: 2014

Amazon seems to have taken this incident as a blueprint for dealing with published authors. They don't care if the authors consent or are interested in their AI feature; they think it's their prerogative to do as they wish with your books. I know and they know, that many KDP authors can't gain readers without them. This is why they expect you to genuflect no matter what they do, for those new to the word, genuflect means to bend your knee, as in worship, but maybe they'd prefer it if we bent over, and I'll stop that thought there.

Another major shift came with the closure of Baker & Taylor’s traditional wholesale operations, a development that reshaped how many libraries acquire books. For nearly two centuries, Baker & Taylor was one of the primary suppliers to public and school libraries. As libraries shift toward digital-first acquisition models, including ebook licensing platforms like OverDrive and digital procurement through distributors such as Ingram, discoverability is changing. With physical distribution pipelines shrinking, digital availability, metadata quality, and licensing access now play a much larger role in whether readers ever encounter a book and library visibility is no longer guaranteed by traditional supply chains.

These changes are happening alongside broader consolidation pressure across publishing and media. The US Department of Justice’s challenge to the Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merger highlighted concerns about reduced competition for authors. Although that specific merger was blocked, the trend toward concentrating control continues across distribution, retail, and media ownership.

The number of gatekeepers has decreased, but the power of each remaining gatekeeper has increased, which means individual creators have less control and less options. And don't these gatekeepers know it.

So what does it mean that libraries are becoming digital acquisition environments? Well, with ebook and audiobook lending, access often depends on licensing terms, vendor platforms, and budget models controlled by a few large intermediaries rather than local purchasing decisions. Contracts are expanding platform rights. Publishers and distributors are increasingly adding language about AI use, digital formats, and future technologies. That shifts more long-term control over how a work is used.

Fewer organizations now have more power over how books are distributed, discovered, and monetized. Instead of many independent pathways to readers, the system is becoming centralized around a small number of decision-makers and automated systems. Only a handful of companies dominate ebook, audiobook, and online retail sales. If a title is removed, restricted, or deprioritized, an author can lose access to a large portion of the market overnight. When the power is concentrated in fewer hands, any change in policy, algorithm, or access has a larger impact on individual authors. Right now, platforms control distribution.

Retailers across media sectors are increasingly experimenting with what industry observers call visibility controls. Books may remain listed but appear lower in search results. They might be excluded from recommendations or lose merchandising support based on content policies, regional restrictions, or algorithmic ranking changes. Amazon has not publicly detailed its ranking criteria, but both publishers and independent authors have reported sudden drops in discoverability that cannot be explained by sales performance alone. So what do we have? The result is a marketplace where availability and visibility are two different things. A book can be technically for sale and still effectively hidden.

Discovery is no longer driven primarily by browsing or human recommendation. Visibility depends on platform rules, content policies, pricing structures, and participation in specific programs. Search rankings, recommendation engines, and category placement determine whether a book is seen, but those systems change frequently and operate without transparency. At the same time, magazine and midlist media contraction has accelerated. Major outlets such as Sports Illustrated, BuzzFeed News, and numerous regional publications have reduced staff, shut down print operations, or closed entirely. For authors, this means fewer widely respected bestseller lists than before as well as fewer review outlets. It also means fewer feature opportunities and fewer traditional pathways to audience discovery. Fewer media outlets discuss books at all, and those that remain feature a smaller number of titles. Publishers are increasingly focused on high-performing titles with clear market potential, leaving less room for slow-build careers supported by institutional visibility. Publishers are taking less risks, which means books are getting less and less interesting, which will only result in fewer and fewer readers. Organic publicity opportunities are harder to secure than before. Right now, algorithms control visibility.

The more concentrated the system becomes, the more valuable direct reader relationships become. This is why audience ownership has moved from a marketing tactic to a career strategy. You can’t escape it anymore. Authors who rely entirely on one retailer, one distributor, or one discovery channel are vulnerable to decisions they cannot influence. Chasing algorithms becomes a relentless pursuit that will leave you little time, if any, for actual writing. However, authors who build newsletters, reader communities, direct sales channels, and diversified distribution have leverage.

If a platform changes its policies, they still have a way to reach readers.

If an algorithm changes, their audience does not disappear.

If a retailer removes their book, their career does not end.

Maybe the publishing industry is not collapsing, but it is reorganizing around control, data, and platform power.

Authors would do best to put effort into finding ways to maintain direct contact with their audience.

Three final items before I depart. Number one, I write about AI governance on Medium. Check the show notes if you're interested. Number two, in order to write about AI, I have to know it, right? Well, I tried Claude out by attempting to have a philosophical conversation with it, and it repeatedly told me I was suicidal. And that’s not a joke; that really happened. Three, next time, which might be next week or in two weeks, don’t get scared, I haven’t offed myself, we'll be talking about romantic suspense and blending intimacy with danger.

Until then, keep writing. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, you deserved this break.