Is Amazon Kindle Cheating Self-Published Authors?

[Paul Whybrow]

After pondering Selling My Soul To Satan, by entering Amazon's new £20,000 competition, which would mean joining the Kindle Direct Publishing programme, I came across this worrying article:

Is Amazon Kindle Cheating Self-Published Authors? - Authorlink

What I find disturbing about how Amazon handle their book publishing, is the lack of transparency, along with their deceit and coercion of the very authors who create the stories they sell for a share of the profit.

Some authors do stupendously well by giving Amazon exclusive rights to their work, but others not so much:

In hard-to-find data, Digital Book World reported not long ago that Amazon Kindle’s monthly individual author payout equaled $1.38.

There are daily reports about Amazon's latest initiatives in the writing press, but what do you think of them?
Have any of you had good, or bad, experiences in using them to publish your work?

 

[Carol Rose]

I've never self-pubbed anything, but I've heard too many horror stories from authors who did, and who were shafted by Amazon. Making mega bucks by self-publishing is no different than scoring huge sales with traditional publishers - that one percent of authors who have the right book, in the right place, at the right time. And a lot of luck.