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The harmful impact of Audible-exclusive audiobooks
- falcolas 6y agoThis is a continuation of a trend found throughout our purchasing life: exclusives are generally harmful to customers. This is specifically because an exclusive represents an artificial loss of choice. They are, however, very lucrative to creators and the distributors, so I have high doubts that the concept of 'the exclusive' will ever go away.
- Solstinox 6y agoHarm means to hurt or injure. If I write a book and exclusively circulate it among my closest friends, am I harming you because there is 1 less book you for you to happen upon?
- falcolas 6y agoThis is a distinct usecase from only offering it through, for example, Barnes and Noble. The former (sharing exclusively among friends) is not necessarily harmful, the latter (only selling through one vendor) is.
- enkid 6y agoI think his point is that if you create an audiobook and then limit how you sell it, you are creating more choice then if you didn't create the audiobook at all. You're saying it's different but you aren't saying how. How does creating additional choice harm the consumer? I'm not making an argument either way, just trying to clarify positions.
- freehunter 6y agoThe real answer is, very few authors say “oh I have a great idea for a book that I’m only going to sell through Audible!” They have an idea for a book that they want to sell, and then through licensing deals and marketing it becomes an Audible exclusive. So the choice is created when the author decides to write a book. The choice is restricted when the author or publisher decides to offer it only on Audible. Writing a book is “creating more choice”, offering that book exclusively through one reseller is limiting that choice. You might make the argument that this is just capitalism and the free market doing its job, but to keep healthy competition alive capitalism is generally regulated to keep the biggest players from dominating the entire market. Amazon and B&N might have the money to fight over exclusive rights to a book, but smaller bookstores don’t. This creates a barrier to entry for any new or smaller stores who want to compete in the book market. The reason regulators watch for this kind of stuff is because Amazon has the money and the audience to completely lock out any competitors they want, singe-handedly destroying the free market. Amazon doesn’t need an exclusive deal in order to sell books. They need exclusive deals in order to put their competitors out of business.
- falcolas 6y agoI wholly support this answer. I will add a caveat - I'm mostly OK if Audible is proactively paying the author (and the voice actor(s), director, sound engineer, et.al.) to create a work that would not normally exist. There's no indication that this is the case with most of these exclusives.
- Solstinox 6y agoThe way I read that, the problem isn’t exclusive deals. It’s Amazon signing exclusive deals. What do you think about this: authors can sign exclusive with non-monopolistic entities?
- freehunter 6y agoJust my opinion but I would say that’s fair. That’s such a bad idea if you care about profits and wide exposure that there’s almost no economic incentive to sell a book but exclude selling it on Amazon or B&N, you’re just throwing away money. Which, in a free market, you should be able to do at your own discretion. The problem only comes if the biggest players in the space use their power and influence (read: money) to keep smaller competitors from having a chance.
- mlthoughts2018 6y agoYes, because your friends have access to information which may benefit them in ways that are deprived to me without the same information. I’m not saying this should be legal / illegal / “right” / “wrong” - just that at a fundamental philosophical level if you create something and restrict its distribution, you are changing the world (the pool of total content / information) in a way that by definition harms some people. This could be true in many ways. If you only produce printed copies, you’re harming blind people. If you only produce English copies, you’re harming speakers of other languages. If you only produce DRM’d copies through an exclusive distributor, you’re harming all parties that can’t access that channel of distribution. Whether it’s ok to perpetrate this harm, as well as when and how and who should foot the bill for wider distribution, are very hard problems of the philosophy of population ethics.
- HeadsUpHigh 6y agoNow please apply the same logic to piracy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- m463 6y agoFrom what I can tell, exclusives generally seem to time out, and then wider distribution happens. I'm uncertain if that is a general rule and what kinds of exceptions we see. But I do find it annoying when a behemoth messes with classic stuff I grew up with. I didn't like "I, Robot" in full hollywood regalia, and I think apple might not be a good representative for Foundation. (both classic Asimov)
- Karunamon 6y agoThat was a lot of text to convey the point that Audible is doing to audiobooks what the Epic Games Store is doing to games: paying publishers extra (in this case, a better cut of the price) to release only on a single platform.
- gxqoz 6y agoLast time I checked there wasn't even a good way to filter on Audible exclusives. They're typically the only audiobooks I get through Audible, as I'd otherwise wait for them to be available in my library app.
- krick 6y agoLibrary app? I didn't even know those exist. I thought everything is copyrighted and DRM-ed right now. You mean there is actually a way to read/listen to new books without buying them, like, "legally", not "stealing" them from torrents?
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI don't think this is their biggest problem. Libro.fm is selling their audiobooks at what appears to be some kind of absurd MSRP. Audible offers audiobooks at that price point too, but you'd have to be an idiot to pay it. Amazon will sell you the Audible version of a book you've purchased the Kindle version of at a steep discount. So steep that purchasing the ebook+audiobook is cheaper than purchasing the audiobook by itself. Compare the pricing for All Creatures Great and Small, which is atypical mostly in that the combined-purchase discount is unusually stingy: Libro.fm: $37.94 Audible: $29.99 Kindle+Audible: $17.48 I don't like buying DRMed audiobooks, but it's not that hard to justify at $2.99.
- throwanem 6y agoUnless you can strip the DRM, you're not buying.
- recursive 6y agoI don't think most audiobook listeners care about this distinction enough to overcome the price difference.
- xtracto 6y agoUntil all their "purchased" books get into the DRM graveyard because in fact they did not purchase anything. I lost access to all my "purchased" Amazon Kindle books when they blocked my account and no amount of calls and explaining allowed me to at least get my "purchased" content. Since then I created r/drmgraveyard to follow up the dead of DRM encumbered services.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoThe curse is that, like targeted social engineering, it doesn't happen to enough people enough of the time to change behavior. How many people use Steam knowing and caring that you can't enter offline mode to play your games unless you connect to the internet every month?
- gxqoz 6y agoHave people used the Libro.fm Android app? I've used the Audible Android app for years and it's trash, even compared to something like OverDrive. No other audio app on Android gets shut down in the background like Audible does (if it lasts more than 30 minutes without being actively played that's a long time). It takes forever to boot because they want to trick me into purchasing more credits and showing ads. Whenever there's a notification, it pauses for like 8 seconds, twice as long as any other audio app.
- beervirus 6y agoStrange. Works beautifully on iOS.
- teruakohatu 6y ago"We are Libro.fm, an audiobook platform that makes it possible for you to buy audiobooks directly through your local bookstore“ Can someone explain how this works? Do we actually buy from a local bookstore or do they just pass a commission to the local bookstore on each sale?
- burkaman 6y agoThey pass on a commission. I've found a couple articles that claim it's a 50/50 split (https://www.fastcompany.com/90489801/libro-fm-kanopy-audiobooks-free-streaming-quarantine-boredom-support-local-communities https://www.fastcompany.com/90489801/libro-fm-kanopy-audiobo...), but I don't know if that's true at all or true for every store. Since they don't disclose it, I'm guessing they have different deals with different stores.
- AlanSE 6y agoI was really excited when Google Play came out with audiobooks on their platform. I realize that Google's success may still result in an oligopoly situation. That would still be better. I'm a prolific Audiobook listener, but actively avoided Audible because of the subscription model.
- input_sh 6y agoI've never been attracted to audiobooks because of the really steep price (compared to ebooks), but I've just checked five fiction books from my to-read list and they all seem much cheaper on Google Play than on Audible and Libro.fm. Out of five, one is $2.5 cheaper, while the other four are $10+ cheaper.
- treeman79 6y agoGreat for long drives, workouts, Migraines, or if you are losing vision.
- hirundo 6y ago"we all know amazon is evil, but did you know that when a book becomes an audible exclusive, libraries cannot buy copies of that audiobook? did you know that capitalism is the enemy of accessibility?" Evil capitalist Amazon is also the greatest creator of book accessibility since Gutenberg.
- gentleman11 6y agoI have been enjoying downpour.com lately. The token system means most books are $15 or so. Heard about them from an anti-DRM advocacy group and was pleasantly surprised at the prices and huge selection
- mdoms 6y agoI agree that these exclusivity deals are bad news for most of us but to be completely frank this is largely on the authors. They are the ones agreeing, ultimately, to these deals to line their own pockets at the expense of readers and potential readers. Yeah Amazon is evil but no one forces the authors into this.
- naravara 6y ago> I agree that these exclusivity deals are bad news for most of us but to be completely frank this is largely on the authors. They are the ones agreeing, ultimately, to these deals to line their own pockets at the expense of readers and potential readers. Yeah Amazon is evil but no one forces the authors into this. No individual author has the ability to impact something like this from happening on their own. Why would it be "largely the author's fault" when they have no say over the ecosystem?
- ars 6y ago> No individual author has the ability to impact something like this from happening on their own. Yes they do, they just .... don't enter into an exclusive contract, and pick instead a contract that allows them to market in other places as well. Or are you implying that Audible requires only Exclusive contacts? Because I don't believe that's true.
- naravara 6y ago> don't enter into an exclusive contract, and pick instead a contract that allows them to market in other places as well. It's not like you get to tick off a feature list in your contracts to get all the stuff you want. Audible is likely paying them for exclusivity and they're getting read and promotion out of it that other publishers aren't able to get them. The author's goal is to get their work to where people who want to read it are. It a weird sift of responsibility to expect the author to concern themselves with how the overall audiobook market shakes out for consumers or even other authors. They have no leverage in the negotiation to make those decisions unless they're like Stephen King.
- krick 6y agoI'm not exactly the kind of person that would support Amazon on anything, but this is sort of what "exclusive" means, you know. So this amazed tone he uses to repeat you cannot sell "exclusive" stuff at other places is pretty silly.
- kd5bjo 6y agoThe real issue is the circumvention of the first sale doctrine. Before the download era, licenses were mostly attached to physical media that could be given, resold, or loaned out. By eliminating the physical artifact, modern content companies are exploiting a loophole in consumers’ traditional resale rights.
- falcor84 6y agoHow is this different from a band performing exclusively live to people who buy tickets and actively disallowing recordings? Or what about a Broadway show that doesn't have a recording? Should we force all performers to make their content available to buy to anyone across the world? I'm not necessarily against this, but it would be quite a big change.
- kd5bjo 6y agoIn Audible’s case, they’re already selling access to a recording in perpetuity; your examples are all live performances. There’s a colorable distinction here, and there’s no need to force people to make recordings if they don’t want to. A harder question is where the line between these two regimes should be: movie theaters and television stations are generally treated like performances despite showing recorded content. Netflix acts like a rental company: when you drop your subscription, you lose access to their library.
- falcor84 6y agoWell, stretching the analogy a bit, a lawyer could argue that Netflix's act of streaming a piece of content is a live performance - you're not paying for the video, but rather to access this "Netflix theatre".
- umvi 6y agoExclusives on every platform are annoying - Audible, Nintendo, Netflix, you name it. People make mutually beneficial deals, and one way to do that is with exclusivity.
- gkoberger 6y agoWell, I think you mixed things up a bit here. Nintendo makes sense; they created many of the games from scratch. Are they supposed to rewrite them for every platform? Netflix is more of a Tv station now... that’s like saying it’s not fair This Is Us isn’t on Comedy Central. I do agree exclusives suck, however I think the only fair comparisons are media that’s traditionally available everywhere (music albums, podcasts, books).
- The_Founder 6y agoTry https://AudioBookReviews.com https://AudioBookReviews.com if you are looking for free and open source audiobooks!
- dirtyid 6y agoI'm glad I've trained my brain to acclimatize to TTS, trivially easy to compile epubs into audiobooks now. Think we're a few years away from neural TTS solutions making passable audiobooks. Tons of services for articles sound OK now. Even youtube wiki TTS spam are becoming not bad.
- st1ck 6y agoI've been using TTS for years by now, and IMO it's really good by now for original digital epub editions. The biggest remaining issue is some words can be mispronounced (wrong part of speech, foreign or rare words). Even "text in quotes" is accentuated now in Google TTS, although it'd be nice to also highlight italicized text.
- crazygringo 6y agoThis argument doesn't seem particularly strong. First of all, for books that are entertainment (most fiction), how is this any different from series that are exclusive to Netflix? The answer given by the author is a non-answer, claiming you can "buy DVD's online". Yeah right, please show me where I can buy Tiger King on DVD? I didn't think so. Second, for books that are more in line with libraries' missions to make information accessible for an educated citizenry, the original print and ebooks are still available, right? And if you have vision impairment, there are also methods for automated screenreading, since most books don't have audiobook versions. So I don't really see any valid complaint here except "we want to sell things exclusive to other stores" which, yeah, and I'd like to have a billion dollars. If you want to have the conversation that there should be laws breaking up creation and distribution and making exclusive distribution illegal, then go ahead, but that would shake up everything, a pretty radical change. But if you're not going to go there, then there's no reason why audiobooks shouldn't be exclusive while other things get to be.
- kd5bjo 6y ago> How is this any different from series that are exclusive to Netflix? Netflix is a subscription, but Audible sells things: their subscription provides credits that can be used to purchase audiobooks below list price, but you don’t lose access if you discontinue the subscription. As this is a purchase-like transaction instead of a broadcast-like transaction, it’s reasonable to assume it should work like other purchases. That includes the right to transfer ownership to someone else, either temporarily (loan) or permanently (gift/sale).
- bengale 6y agoThat isn’t really the case with any digital purchases is it? Or very few.
- kd5bjo 6y agoThat depends on what you consider a digital purchase. DVDs, CDs, and game cartridges are nothing but physical manifestations of digital data, and everyone was allowed to loan or resell those. Books arguably are, too, and have hundreds of years of established legal precedent. Why should this newcomer (downloads) be treated differently without specific legislation?
- Nabati 6y agoOff topic but, why would anyone want to buy audiobooks via their local bookstore? I haven't seen this anywhere else: when is it something desirable to ADD a middleman rather than removing them?
- raz32dust 6y agoIt's not that anyone wants to buy books at a local bookstore, but that people don't want to be forced to buy things from just one place. The core issue here is that exclusivity further strengthens monopoly, and that, I think, is the fundamental gripe.
- ballenf 6y agoHow does Amazon replacing the local bookseller eliminate a “middleman”?
- Nabati 6y agoIn case of Libro, you have both Libro and the bookstore as middle men. In the Amazon case, you only have Amazon.
- quickthrower2 6y agoDo people think in terms of "middlemen" when buying stuff. I don't think so, latte sippers.
- kilo_bravo_3 6y agoIf I want to write a book, and only sell the audiobook version on wax cylinders in a physical shop that is only open on leap days for a billion dollars a cylinder then that's what I'm going to do and everyone else can pound sand. The entitlement of people is staggering.
- vinceguidry 6y agoDid anyone else read the headline initially as "Audible Explosive Audiobooks"?
- darth_avocado 6y agoI absolutely do not understand this article. It contradicts itself. > ACX offers higher royalties to creators (i.e. more money from audiobook sales) if they opt for Exclusive distribution. Well, then pay more money to the authors, instead of complaining about it. Also, how is this any different from bookstores having exclusive rights with certain publishers. I remember some books I wanted few years back were available only on Barnes and Noble (back when Amazon was still not that big). How is this different from games being Steam or Epic store exclusives? Like come on, create incentives for creators and they will flock to you. You can't sit around and complain when literally you're a middleman and you refuse to pay your creators more.
- monkeywork 6y agosteam doesn't do exclusives ... not important to your point at all just thought I'd toss that out there.
- jay_kyburz 6y agoSteam however does provide a huge amount of cool features you get for free when you implement their API and use their platform. This effectively creates exclusives because its a pain to implement those things yourself.
- monkeywork 6y agoThat's just offering a good product that people want to use... I find negative views on exclusivity only really come into play when the platform "buys" that exclusivity rather than it being a choice of the creator.
- ranbumo 6y agoIn addition to the other comment: plenty of games are, or at least used to be, available exclusively through steam. Steam doesn't pay for exclusivity, but it still exists
- 6y ago
- sandreas 6y agoI always wanted to know, if it would be ok to publish an audio book "creative commons", that has been licensed Audible exclusive, since it would be the creative work of a private narrator, that has no financial interest. But since the author is the owner if the base creative work, this must be forbidden, if the content is licensed to a specific company. Another interesting question would be, how this would fit to a text-to-speech approach while not letting a human read the book but a machine... Can someone tell me more about this topic?