Like many others recently, I’ve been working on shifting my buying habits away from making the rich even richer and towards supporting smaller businesses. It isn’t easy to avoid Amazon as an author, whether you’re traditionally or self-published, but what I can do is make sure I promote the alternative links for those seeking them. I’ll keep updating each individual book page as more options become available.
Victoria Hawthorne
My historical suspense novels The Darkest Night and The House at Helygen are available from independent bookshops such as Tea Leaves & Reads (for signed copies!), Bookish, Portobello Bookshop, and via Bookshop.org.
You can also buy the ebook from Kobo or ebooks.com, and listen to the audiobook via Libro.fm.
Vikki Patis
My thrillers are a wee bit more complicated, as they’re published by three separate publishers.
Girl, Lost, The Wake, and In the Dark are currently only available on audio (or second-hand paperbacks) as the other rights were reverted to me. I hope to be able to bring them back soon, but in the meantime, you can listen to them on BookBeat and Libro.fm, as well as Audible.
The audiobook for Return to Blackwater House is currently only available via Audible and Spotify, but there are more options for the ebook and paperback. Similarly for The Diary and The Girl Across the Street. You can also buy the ebook from Kobo or ebooks.com.
Don’t forget that you can always request books from your local bookshops even if they’re not stocked, and you can buy ebooks from Bookshop.org now (though currently you have to use their app to read them). And you can, of course, borrow books from your local library, using Libby or Borrowbox for ebooks and audiobooks. Authors are paid a small amount for each lend in the UK and Ireland.
As a reader, I’ve switched to Kobo for ebooks and Libro.fm for audiobooks. I did use BookBeat for a while, but unlike Libro.fm (and even Audible), you’re just streaming and don’t actually own the books you listen to. Libro.fm is currently running an offer where you’ll get two free credits when you sign up using the code SWITCH (not affiliated). Like Bookshop.org, your purchases support your chosen local bookshop.
If you want to back up your Kindle books, Amazon is removing the ‘download and transfer via USB’ option from 26th February 2025 (but I believe it’ll still be possible to plug a Kindle into a PC and manually move the files after this date). While, as an author, I appreciate any moves to reduce piracy, if we don’t own the digital media we buy, its worth is actually reduced. And for people like me who can’t read physical books for health reasons, we need to be making alternative formats more accessible, not less (I’m looking at you, Netgalley).
I hope this is helpful for anyone looking to buy my (or any!) books from alternative sources. Let me know if I’ve missed any in the comments!
VIKKI PATIS 
Leave a Reply