At some recent undisclosed point in time, Amazon launched what they call “A10” algorithm program. Indie authors saw their ad clicks drop like stones, along with their incomes. This system heavily monitors non-Amazon websites and tracks buyers or Kindle Unlimited borrowers coming in from the outside, such as authors’ websites, blogs, or social media.

Upper management at Amazon has now changed its focus from its internal platform, such as ads, to external platforms, which overnight devastated most small businesses on Amazon, including indie authors. To even get internal Amazon ads to run, the brand must already be a top seller, or the ad is not shown. This explanation comes from third-party bloggers since Amazon never addresses the peasantry.

After learning that this was the cause of my dramatic income drop—from $5K per month to $500 per month—and why my ads weren’t receiving clicks anymore, I had several anxiety attacks, dampened with sedatives and alcohol. I am chronically ill. Please do not do logic-based fantasies about some timely Social Security disability in America, since it takes 5 to 10 years for most people to be approved. For years, I have relied on my Amazon royalties as my sole income.

I woke up at 3 a.m. with the realization that this Greedism Corp was forcing small businesses, including indie authors, to do their advertising for them. They want small businesses to drive customers to the mammoth platform instead of doing it themselves. It will cost small businesses fortunes compared to their budgets for this off-Amazon advertising—I can personally attest to this—and it’s going to destroy most of the small businesses, including indie authors. Bye-bye to those niche dominance positions for the mammoth.

Amazon has long had a Big Brother corporation problem and has not cared one iota that most people seriously dislike its intrusive invasion of privacy through widespread internet algorithms that go further than anyone else’s. Amazon really is tracking you off of the Amazon website, folks, and they have been doing so for many years. Now, they have increased it. But you, like small businesses, are the peasantry, so what does the rich upper management care?

This corporation has made a series of bad internal decision-making under the new management. For example, their electronics and OTC medications have sharply declined in quality, angering the customers. Five years ago, everyone was using Amazon. Nowadays? Nope. Most people from all walks of life are trying to avoid Amazon whenever possible. Other mammoth corporations, such as Walmart, are happily stepping into the void.

Here’s one of the bad decisions. Amazon’s top management decided Prime Video would now have third-party commercials. They offered ad-free for a modest increase in subscription price that was competitive in the current market. Fine, people did it, including this author. But then management went further and exposed pure, undiluted greedism. On ad-free subscriptions, “Included with Prime” movies and shows began showing third-party commercials, such as Drive Time, which infuriates and rips off the customers. Now, people are avoiding those movies and TV shows so as not to be duped and enraged. This move helped Amazon Prime’s competition tremendously. Things changed to no longer being about the platforms themselves, but to which platform has specific shows and movies that you want to watch. Amazon was disloyal to us, so we are disloyal to it. That is how it works.

Customers are like water, and will take the easiest route.

Amazon is making decisions that promise to make it go the way of other iconic corporations that drove themselves extinct, like the Dodo bird, not by outside competition but by internal bad business decisions. Sears and Kmart used to be iconic American places to shop. Apparently, business schools aren’t teaching about this, based on MBA behavior nowadays. Those of us old enough to remember, though, can foresee the rising tsunami waves based on the previous extinction of those iconic stores.

Once a store becomes a household name, recognized as synonymous with certain goods it sells, this cuts down tremendously on advertising expenses. Word of mouth is now doing it. Such a thing used to be the dream of stores. Then greedism became the American rule.

Sears dominated the tool niche bar none. It goes all the way back to World War Two. That was the go-to store for tools, and with knowledgeable store clerks. Before then, it was a massive catalog-ordering giant. Just as 1980s clothing franchises sprouted up like mushrooms after a spring shower, such as Old Navy, Sears’ upper management abandoned tools and went into new market niches such as clothing. Small children could have told them this was a terrible decision. Only my grandpa shopped at Sears for clothes. As a direct result, Sears bled out for decades, as it sank like the Titanic in slow-mo, until it finally went under. There was no intelligent thinking of going back to tools—back to the niche the store dominated—once the CEO was receiving the reports of the iceberg ahead. There still isn’t a store that has filled the tool niche like Sears did. That is how wide a void the sinking of Sears was, but the management was just too stupid or greedy or insane.

Kmart used to be a household name, particularly for late 20th-century blue-collar or working-class households. At the time, white-collar workers were still making good money. New competition was rising in the form of Target, which was a bit more high-end and targeted white-collar households. Also, Walmart was rising, which had one-stop shopping for food, clothing, and various other items available under one roof, like Kmart did—direct niche competition. Kmart’s management targeted white-collar customers like Target did, and dropped its staple working-class customers. So, guess what happened? The working-class customers went to Walmart instead, and they would soon be met there by their white-collar cousins as the economy dropped.

Target and Walmart didn’t have a household reputation for budget or cheap items as Kmart did. Kmart could not change its household image to attract white-collar customers. If corporate management hadn’t slept through every business class of their MBAs, they would have known this very no-duh thing. What Kmart did is noted as one of the most colossally bad business decisions, along with Sears.

Like Sears, it took the Kmart Titanic a while to sink. Decades. It was not immediate overnight, but there were signs early on. Apparently, it was so subtle to the top management that they somehow didn’t see the iceberg, despite regular folks on the streets identifying it early on. 

Amazon is showing a determination to make the same colossal bad decision-making. And their slept-through-their-MBA-classes, upper management, too, only looks short term with their elbow firmly planted on the pulse of the customers. Amazon is currently so iconic and such a household name that it doesn’t need to advertise. The bad decisions are rapidly destroying this.

Corporations that royally piss off customers have to be monopolies, like Microsoft. If you have a laptop, it is Microsoft or Apple that you are using over 90% of the time. Amazon no longer has a monopoly in any niche, except for Kindle Unlimited, which it’s now destroying with the new A10.

For all their Big Brother algorithm spying, Amazon isn’t monitoring customer perceptions of it, is it? Another Titanic is in the making.

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