Amazon vs WarGate: 3 Times Is Enemy Action
Veteran readers of this blog will know I’ve been sounding the alarm on Amazon for years. Yes, they blew the gates off the legacy publishing cartel. Yes, they made it possible for indie authors to get their books into readers’ hands without begging some box wine-sipping intern at Random House for table scraps. For a while, Amazon was the better devil. But now? Amazon is acting more and more like the dinosaurs it replaced.
Just ask best selling author Nick Cole.
Screencap: Nick Cole on X
On April 23rd Nick, co-creator of the Galaxy’s Edge universe and a major force at WarGate Books, reported that Amazon delisted the third volume in his Strange Company series. The official excuse? A “mistake.”
Never mind that the same “mistake” has happened to multiple titles of his. Or that every preorder was wiped out—a move that just happens to crater launch day momentum.
Coincidence? Or enemy action?
Rather than kneel, WarGate pivoted. They launched Strange Company 3 as an exclusive eBook on their own website.
Check out what happened:
Screencap: Nick Cole on X
You read that right …
Gross sales up 1,100%.
Total orders up 1,200%.
Conversion rate up 174%.
Sessions up 372%.
Those are insane numbers, and they didn’t come from Silicon Valley. They came from readers who followed the author, not the algorithm; many of them new customers who discovered that yes, there’s life beyond Bezos’ fiefdom.
More importantly, they prove a vital point: You don’t need Amazon to succeed as an author anymore.
Related: Amazon Ends Kindle Sideloading
For more than a decade, the publishing industry has operated under the assumption that if you’re not on Amazon, you don’t exist.
But as usual, the powers that be mistook inertia for loyalty. They assumed readers were tied to their platform instead of to the creators they actually care about.
Nick Cole just proved Amazon wrong.
Here’s the takeaway for any author still chasing validation from a Big Five gatekeeper or bending over for the KDP algo:
Stop toiling on someone else’s plantation.
If they can delist your book, they own you. If they can erase your preorders with a “glitch,” they control your future. The more you depend on them, the more leverage they have. It’s the same playbook the New York cartel ran for decades, only now it’s automated and faceless.
But there’s a better way. You can build your own platform with your own store. Sell directly to readers, keep your data, and cultivate customer relationships.
More to the point, keep your dignity.
WarGate did it. And they’re thriving.
So it’s worth saying again: You don’t need Amazon.
You just need readers. And the guts to go around the machine that hates you.
I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I’m not willing to do myself.
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Dark fantasy minus the grim plus heroes you can relate to battling vs overwhelming odds
