Being a writer, and picking a fight with Amazon, is like  walking under the foot of a giant and waiting to be stepped on. None-the-less, I have to say we won’t be publishing The Rumpus on Amazon’s Kindle.

We signed up to do this briefly. Why not another platform? Amazon pays 30% of all subscriptions to the publisher, keeps 70% for itself. My first thought was, 30% is better than nothing, which is what The Rumpus makes off each viewer. (donate here)

My second thought was, fuck you Amazon. You want 70% just for creating the machine? That’s insane. The writers (we would pay you if we could) and editors (we would pay ourselves if we could) aren’t even worth 50%? Seriously? Why on earth would Amazon get 70% just for delivering the content, which costs them virtually nothing? I just can’t understand the staggering corporate greed that would lead Amazon to believe they should get more than half.

This is the deal Amazon is offering all newspapers, web magazines, and blogs. It’s not a workable model. Most book blogs will probably take it— something’s better than nothing, after all. But nothing can be more than a little sometimes. It’s less embarrassing to rely on the kindness of strangers, even if financially it comes out to about the same.

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