My Amazon-Free July - Day 1

Now, don't get me wrong - I love a lot of what Amazon does.

However, I also truly dislike a lot of what Amazon does.

They're wonderfully convenient, fast, reliable, and I adore my Kindle and finding new authors through KU. The first thing I do online in the morning is sign into my email account, the second is check facebook, and the third is get onto Amazon even if I have nothing I want to buy.

On the flip side - there's a lot wrong with KU, Amazon has a habit of not policing scammers the way they should, and their domination of the market is slowly giving them even more power... and so far a lot of their power use seems to be detrimental to authors. They're not doing anything wrong persay, but they aren't doing everything right.

But instead of continuing to complain while also continuing to spend the majority of my money at Amazon every month, I decided to try NOT spending money there for a whole month. This is not something that is going to be easy for me, even though I've decided that I am still allowed to use my Kindle Unlimited subscription to read KU books (since I already paid for the year anyway).

Proof of how difficult this is going to be - I made the decision this morning that I was going to have an Amazon-free month but by lunch time I had already purchased an Elle James book on my Kindle without even thinking twice about it. I didn't even check if it was available anywhere else. I just automatically clicked and bought.

*sigh*

I am very well trained by Amazon, so this should be an interesting ride.

On a side note - Smashwords is having an amazeballs sale this month and almost all of my books are on sale there.

Okay, so I failed my first test this morning when I bought an ebook without thinking. My second test came this afternoon when I remembered I needed to order another phone holder for doing my live videos. Of course, I bought the last one off of Amazon. I really want the same one. So I went into my past orders and found it... and then did a google search to find it on another site. Of course the first three results are Amazon, but they're not the ONLY ones.

Success! It's on ebay... for $2 more. but hey, ebay is mostly smaller businesses / individuals doing business, right? (no idea if I'm right, but that's what I think of when I think ebay) So I can pay $2 more to help out the little guy instead of the massive conglomerate. And hey, it's still free shipping! Will I have it in two days?... Doubtful.

But I don't NEED it in two days either. Heck, half the time when I buy something on Amazon, I request the longer delivery anyway so that I can get the free kindle credit.

Anyway. Off to find a small vacuum...