on New Shelves:

Threatening emails from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) have the author community abuzz with talk of how Walmart pricing is ruining indie authors. But, is it really?

Lately, New Shelves is getting questions and notes like this every week.

“Walmart discount pricing is killing me.”

“How can I possibly control what other people are selling my book for?”

“Do I have to choose between Amazon and Ingram Spark?”

While many authors have received these emails from KDP within the last 3-4 weeks, this isn’t a new issue. In fact, I’ve been seeing these emails for months and they always seem to go out in clusters. (I would guess we have Amazon bots to thank for that.) A rash of emails go out and suddenly writing communities are flooded with panicked authors who think they need to raise their price on Ingram Spark or, even worse, remove their books from Ingram Spark all together. After all, wholesale opportunities are great, but the average indie author makes the majority of their sales on Amazon.com via KDP.

If you receive an email from KDP questioning your distribution through other channels, don’t panic.