Amazon Puts Indies Writers in Five States Out of Business

According to the new Amazon operating agreement, if you live in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, or Rhode Island you can no longer link your books from Amazon to any website.

Not only is Amazon deliberately evading taxes with this policy but they are also discriminating against people from those states and intentionally causing monetary loss to authors in those states. This is criminal tax evasion and discrimination. Time for the government to reign Amazon in and explain to them they cannot dictate tax policy or discriminate against whole states because they don’t want to pay taxes in those states.

Visit https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/compare, to view a summary of changes to the Operating Agreement.

This means if you live in one of the five states targeted Amazon has put you out of business. You can no longer post links to your books on FB, any other social media or even your own home page if you live in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, or Rhode Island.

Amazon once again has shown that it is persecuting indie writers.  What does linking your book to sell it have to do with Amazon’s displeasure with the state taxes?  Not a damn thing beyond an opportunity to further persecute the indie writers and self-publishers.  With one stoke of the pen 10% of indies can no longer sell their books through the monopoly venue.  This is criminal corporatism.

Somewhere along the line corporations becames delusional in thinking they are somehow outside of and not limited by constitutional restraints.  There has to be a showdown between government and corporations to prove who runs things.  This would be an ideal opportunity to do that because not only is Amazon putting thousands of authors out of busisness, but they are doing this as part of tax evasion in 5 states.

I see a purge of indies from Amazon, starting with this policy.  If a member violates this no link policy, and they have to to survive, then Amazon will ban them and all their books.  This is nothing less than an attack on indies and a plan to eliminate 10% in one wack.

This cannot be allowed to happen. If you live in one of the targetted states call your attorney general’s office.