26 ms·

Audiblegate

• rplnt 5y ago
  It needs to be repeated that twitter is the worst medium for anything like this. Also, don't hook people with "40% is too low", because it isn't, and you might lose them before getting to the point. Especially easy on twitter, see above.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• merlinscholz 5y ago
  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1492810241372741636.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1492810241372741636.html
  • leoc 5y ago
    Also https://www.audiblegate.com/post/audible-royalties-ain-t-royalties-how-audible-profits-at-the-expense-of-authors-by-colleen-cross https://www.audiblegate.com/post/audible-royalties-ain-t-roy... . I may submit this separately.
    • joelkesler 5y ago
      Please do. This is alarming
    • pvg 5y ago
      It would be a dupe since it's the same story. It's probably a better submission though, so you could email the mods to replace URL on this one.
• donutshop 5y ago
  Shout out to gumroad. Wished all platforms put creators first.
• zodo123 5y ago
  The giant nosed character shown in the twitter preview for the audiblegate.com site brings to mind some uncomfortable and hopefully unintentional stereotypes.
  • judge2020 5y ago
    Hmm, it seems twitter:image and og:image are now https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a4d16d_faa91d4b4ee54bb5ba7113b7bd77e678~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_1640,h_924,al_c/a4d16d_faa91d4b4ee54bb5ba7113b7bd77e678~mv2.png https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a4d16d_faa91d4b4ee54bb5ba... , but Twitter aggressively caches (saves?) that preview image.
  • WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
    Looked to me a bit like Steve Jobs.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    Same here. I found myself hoping it was supposed to be Bezos?
  • sol_invictus 5y ago
    It has large ears too. Which stereotype are you referring to that has large ears and noses? Brits perhaps?
    • krageon 5y ago
      When stereotypes make people uncomfortable, it's almost always a class of people viewed as commonly persecuted and usually a heavily US-influenced culture pointing it out. As the poster does not mention skin colour, we can assume it is white (given the US-centric context). As such, it has to be a Jewish stereotype. I am basing this on the fact that the discrimination that makes US citizens uncomfortable is generally against jews or black people. There is a certain segment that thinks discrimination against white people is an issue, but there are no dogwhistles to indicate that (and I'd assume skin colour would be emphasised more).
• philwebster 5y ago
  Not surprised they're mistreating the creators based on the way they treat customers. The way they delete any unused credits upon canceling a subscription is egregious. https://help.audible.com/s/article/do-i-keep-my-credits-if-i-cancel-my-audible-premium-plus-membership?language=en_US https://help.audible.com/s/article/do-i-keep-my-credits-if-i...
• conradev 5y ago
  From the linked post: “If you’ve ever looked at the Audible ACX contract, you’ve seen the complicated sales earnings math (another future post). For now, let’s focus only on the result: the amount of money which ends up in our bank” I personally feel like I need to see the math in order to understand what is actually going on
  • csours 5y ago
    Sounds like the marketing is misrepresenting the contract - which consumers have some protections against, but I'm not sure how many similar protections exist for what are supposed to be sophisticated counter-parties.
    • falcolas 5y ago
      ACX producer here. You get as much say in the contract as you do the average EULA. If you want to use Audible without a publisher to negotiate on your behalf, you get a 40% royalty rate, but not always (hence the complicated math comments). Some purchases are worth nothing (literally invoiced at a 0% royalty rate) to the authors/producers.
      • vasachi 5y ago
        Why are they 0%?
        • krageon 5y ago
          Because it is good for Amazon
        • falcolas 5y ago
          Looks like it's promo codes. Which authors can generate and sell/give away outside of audible. Technically, so can producers too. So, still sketchy, but for different reasons.
• entangledqubit 5y ago
  Tangential. The claim about the $0.15 / MB delivery fee on Kindle ebooks makes AWS egress charges look cheap.
  • pas 5y ago
    the what? :D do they have some amazing team that comes up with these?
• PuppyTailWags 5y ago
  I think this thread is excessively vague and potentially taking advantage of ignorance on how precisely audible is shady. It seems to assume the royalty statements should come out of list price, but in actuality audible has multiple list prices- is it cash or credit? is it regular or premium subscription? These all are quite different and pay out differently. If it is such that audible is paying 40% less than it should based on its own price tiers though that's a whole other story and worth massive lawsuit money.
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• axxl 5y ago
  The twitter thread and the accompanying website don't quite tell me what's going on besides 'not as much money as expected'. But I can't quite see what the 'Net Sales' problem is, it's just stated as "less money" for no reason? Although I am tired so maybe something just isn't clicking. I don't doubt that the terms of the deal are poor though. I had wondered for a while how the credit system worked, and if the increase in sales made up for the 'deal' off audiobooks. I get $50-$60 audiobooks for $15, there's something mismatched there. Either the audiobook was priced at an extreme premium, or, it seems, Amazon just isn't paying the price I would expect. Edit: I found one response from an author that I think makes a simple point, if not perhaps what the thread describes (still can't tell). It's impossible for authors to calculate their expected royalties as there are so many varieties of discounts and price points that customers can pay for a single book: https://twitter.com/AdamEcclesBooks/status/1493323656910548996 https://twitter.com/AdamEcclesBooks/status/14933236569105489... Which makes sense to me, as there's purchases and credits and various subscription tiers and audible unlimited and these are just the things I can think up off the top of my head. But again, I would buy a small fraction of the audiobooks I have purchased at full price.
  • jsnell 5y ago
    The site has more details in other articles. They're not worth reading. There's no substance just a lot of charged language. And I'm really annoyed at spending any time at all on reading this. The narrators don't get paid by the retail price (and the contract doesn't suggest they would). Basically Audible splits the money spent on credits among the books that the credits were spent on in proportion to the number of credits spent on that book, but weighted by the retail price. I.e. a credit spent on a long expensive book pays the narrator more than the same credit spent on a medium length book, even though the credit cost the same to customer. There's an undocumented revenue floor for price tranche of books. If the revenues per copy would end up lower than the floor in a billing period due to e.g. some promotion that flooded the economy with cheap credits, Audible makes up the difference and pays the narrator at least that minimum amount per copy. Apparently that floor is being hit every time, i.e. Audible is paying them more than they are actually required by the contract. The author thinks this is a smoking gun that proves how they're being cheated, which is an odd take. Since the credits are far cheaper than the retail prices, it should hardly be surprising that the effective sales price is cheaper than the retail price.
• duxup 5y ago
  Have they asked Audible to explain what numbers they have / for an explication? I don’t feel like the twitter thread was detailed enough to be sure what is happening.
• chrispeel 5y ago
  I used to use Audible, then I got a few public library cards (they're easy to get), and now use Libby on mobile and desktop
  • JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    Libby is incredible. I hope others know about it.
  • BR-549 5y ago
    I was considering signing up for an Audible account. I'd never heard of Libby but it looks great, I will be using that instead. Thank you!
  • wildzzz 5y ago
    I do like using Libby for books that don't have a long hold list and those that are very short. I absolutely hate wasting an Audible token on a 2 or 3hr book, I'll drop a token on something like a 51hr Tom Clancy book or just books I'm too impatient to wait weeks for.
  • harryf 5y ago
    Thanks for the tip on Libby. I tried Audible on iOS for a while and found the UX too annoying. I can’t remember specifics but in general I remember it was annoying to use with AirPods while using my phone for other things. Felt like it needed to learn some lessons from Apple Music or Spotify
  • frosted-flakes 5y ago
    My library has a crappy selection though. Not Hardly even worth even checking if they have a book, because they won't.
    • chrispeel 5y ago
      I live in California, where I can get a card for the SF and LA public libraries, in addition to those where I live. I'm sure it's not that way for everyone...
• nerdbaggy 5y ago
  Best case scenario a publisher will get 40% of the sale. That seems extremely low.
• atty 5y ago
  I am confused. I spent a decent amount of time reading the thread and the linked article, and I see no proof, only an accusation that Amazon/Audible are manipulating their calculation of “Net Sales” in “shady ways”. Is the accusation that people are getting paid a percentage of an audible credit instead of a percentage of the retail price when a credit is used? Or that they don’t get paid when someone returns a purchase? Because those both seem very obviously how it should work and not at all a -gate situation. If someone has a better understanding of the root problem, I’d be very happy for a short explanation.
  • davnn 5y ago
    I feel the same. It‘s really strange that the „forensic accountant“ suggests to calculate the royalty from the retail price, is that common practice anywhere? At least in my country, everything business related is calculated from the net prices. However, what may not be clear for creators is that they will mostly sell their books cheaper than retail because of the subscriptions. I don‘t understand the hype/gate.
• belter 5y ago
  Please stop ...communicating... via ... multiple ... twitter posts... please... ... write an article, blog, book, youtube video anything but these spread out posts.
  • WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  • adamors 5y ago
    I've started flagging these submissions, it's incredibly obnoxious to use Twitter without an account and if the author couldn't bother to use a longer format (there's even twitlonger!) I won't bother to read it.
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• ALittleLight 5y ago
  I worked on a tool at Amazon once that incorrectly calculated royalties, not because Amazon was greedily trying to steal from publishers, but just because of general incompetence (or, lack of sufficient competence maybe). Basically, of the people who wrote the tool, tested the tool, and used the tool, none of them knew exactly how royalties should be calculated and none of them could tell whether or not they were being calculated correctly. They weren't. We eventually figured out something was wrong and went through a very annoying process of learning about royalties and how they interplay with prices, discounts, and other factors and then set things right. Still, if I were paid by Amazon royalties in any capacity I would carefully double check their math and read the fine print. Maybe it's greed in this case, but in my time at Amazon I saw many teams in "Keep Lights On" mode where one or two people with vague memories of how services are supposed to work try to keep them running. There's also high turnover, so it's very easy to be the person on your team with the longest tenure and also be mostly in the dark about how your services should and do work. As I say, maybe it's greed, but I would never rule out the people responsible just not understanding (or doing) what they should be doing.
  • lotophage 5y ago
    The nature of these kinds of errors is that when the error favors Amazon (or whatever company), it's "keep the lights on" mode. If it's the company losing money then alarm bells ring, and it's "all hands on deck" to fix the issue.
    • banku_brougham 5y ago
      OP clarified the opposite here. As former amazon retail I can confirm we commonly lost money to vendors, sellers, and customers. Funny example was prime day promo fat fingered, with several expensive lenses shipped for $99.
      • bonestamp2 5y ago
        I remember that deal being shared online, and being corrected fairly quickly.
• thrower123 5y ago
  I've always thought it was a bit odd how it is usually cheaper to buy a Kindle copy of a book and add the Audible narration on, than to buy the Audible audiobook outright.
  • MrDunham 5y ago
    I'm convinced that the prices of audible books for people without a membership were solely to drive people to memberships (Much like how Vail ski resorts has admitted they increased ticket prices by over 200% so that they can say a season pass will be paid for with only four days of skiing)
• TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
  I find Audible really easy and convenient, but it's frustrating to hear that authors get shafted. Some independent authors I follow have been banned from Amazon's platforms and they were forced to create their own platforms and self-host. The downside is that the audiobooks are more expensive. The upside is that they're DRM-free and the creators receive a much higher percentage of sales, so they can get by with fewer sales.
  • mleonhard 5y ago
    https://www.Downpour.com https://www.Downpour.com is a good alternative to Audible. Downpour lets you download MP3 files of most books! The app works well on iOS.
• vasachi 5y ago
  You’d think a simple report of all sales of a book within a period would solve all the issues. A simple table of: Timestamp, book, price Then author could simply calculate and verify royalties.
  • puffoflogic 5y ago
    That would not solve the issue of Audible offering free or heavily discounted products and then paying a "royalty" based on the discounted price.
• scrooched_moose 5y ago
  Regardless of whether the underpaying allegations are true, Amazon keeping 60-75% of the sales price is absolutely egregious. People were absolutely up in arms about Apple's 30% app store cut a year ago.
• weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  I was recently looking at the financials of a FBA business (a business that sells on Amazon and stores their inventory with Amazon) The fees that Amazon took was DOUBLE what it cost the seller to actually buy the product and have it shipped from China Once you factor in advertising costs, Amazon is taking something like 75% of the cost of the product
  • WoahNoun 5y ago
    Shipping a product directly from China when ordered versus a "Prime" label with a 0-2 day shipping isn't the same thing.
    • weird-eye-issue 5y ago
      The products are shipped from China to Amazon's warehouses...
      • WoahNoun 5y ago
        And then Amazon charges the fees that it costs to get it from the warehouse to the customer within 0-2 days. If the seller thinks they have a cheaper way to get it from the Los Angeles port to rural West Virginia they are free to not use the service.
        • weird-eye-issue 5y ago
          Why are you defending Amazon's fees here so much? The costs they charge relate more to their monopoly on where people shop than their actual costs involved It's just scary to think how much product quality suffers when these companies charge so much in fees. It's a race to the bottom to make any profit at all and they don't have much left to actually consider quality
          • WoahNoun 5y ago
            >The costs they charge relate more to their monopoly on where people shop than their actual costs involved. [Citation needed] Offering <2-day shipping across every address in the US is very expensive. Amazon sellers can sell on Amazon without using FBA.
• delgaudm 5y ago
  It's terrible for the narrator too. In many cases the narrator makes a bad decision to record the Audiobook not for a per-finished-hour rate, but as a "Royalty Share" where they only earn on the Royalty -- that's 20% (50-50 royalty split with the author) on the audiobook version. In most cases a narrator will never earn even close to minimum wage for the effort to create an audiobook. And it's more effort than you might guess. A skilled narrator might produce a finished hour of audio in 5 hours, and a less skilled narrator may take 10 to 12 hours to create that same finished hour. So for a 10 hour audiobook a narrator will have between 50 and 100 hours of work, depending on the material and the production skills of the narrator. It can take literally years to earn $500 to $1000 in royalties -- thats $10/hr -- on a book. And most books never sell enough audiobook copies. And that's why any narrator who understands this should never accept and ACX / Audible exclusive Royalty share audiobook deal. Now with this Audiblegate revelation it's all to clear that we narrators are destined to never make our money back.
  • napsterbr 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, why does it take 5-12 hours to record one finished hour?
    • IshKebab 5y ago
      Presumably multiple takes and editing. I think he's ignoring the chance of recording a really popular audiobook though. I'd guess that's why people take royalty deals that they probably know will likely not pay well. Basically gambling.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • abdullahkhalids 5y ago
      You just don't have to read it out loud. You to read it at an even pace, have to enunciate properly, have to decide what words to emphasize in every sentence or how you change your tone etc. Getting this right for every paragraph will usually take multiple takes. Then there is additional audio editing and what not. Just for reference, as a prof, just creating a 30 min video that students can watch on their own time, easily takes 2 hours of work. This is where you just remove the worst errors, to get a just-good-enough product.
• avazhi 5y ago
  Not at all a fan of Amazon, its anti-competitive business models, or Jeff Bezos, but this Twitter thread is a bit ridiculous. Unlike other goods, Audiobooks can be distributed in literally dozens of ways, in hundreds of formats, on quite literally billions of websites, to just about anybody. How is Amazon/Audible some sort of bullying gatekeeper here? If your book is good, it'll get noticed, and word of mouth is more powerful than Google AdWords or Amazon listings. Distribute on your own website. Crying about unfair bargaining power or exploitation - welcome to the real world, kiddo. There are plenty of criticisms one could level at Amazon (See Nina Khan's law review article for a good synopsis). Amazon's contractual terms vis-a-vis Audiobooks (as usual freely consented to by the authors) isn't one of them, IMO. Now if Amazon isn't paying its authors the contractually stipulated price, that's obviously different, but this guy's problem seems to originate with his perception that the royalty split is innately unfair.
  • mdoms 5y ago
    > If your book is good, it'll get noticed This is a fantasy.
• phs318u 5y ago
  I don't doubt that Amazon's practices are shady. Creating obscure and complex pricing plans out of seemingly straightforward fees has become something of an art-form on AWS. Who here has not been hit with an unexpected charge? What I honestly find hard to believe though, is the popularity of audio-books. How do you all focus on the material if you're doing other things? Or am I mistakenly assuming the mode of consumption i.e. the audio-books are primarily listened to by those who don't have the time to read?
  • alar44 5y ago
    Are you seriously asking how someone can listen to something and do another thing at the same time?
    • phs318u 5y ago
      I'm asking how people can focus on two things at a time. I assume that an audiobook (or podcast) requires focus - otherwise are you really "getting it" or just getting a sense of it? I can certainly understand during a commute (especially on public transport, or if most of your commute is a traffic jam) because the level of conscious attention required on the non-listening task is close to zero. I admit to listening to music while doing other stuff - but I'm not focusing on the music. It's just a soundtrack - no need to remember plot lines, or make sure I don't miss critical story elements.
  • jjulius 5y ago
    >How do you all focus on the material if you're doing other things? Or am I mistakenly assuming the mode of consumption i.e. the audio-books are primarily listened to by those who don't have the time to read? I'm not an audiobook person, but I know quite a few people who listen to them during their commutes.
  • anyfoo 5y ago
    I'm of the variety where I consciously listen to every word, thinking it wouldn't be in the book if it was irrelevant. That may seem extreme, but the difference between missing a word and missing entire sentences is tiny when it comes to audiobooks and podcasts. There's a lot of rewinding. So when do I listen to them? When driving, when eating, when exercising, when doing chores that don't require much thought (laundry, folding, dishes, cleaning, ...), brushing teeth, walking to somewhere... there's a lot of time to listen to books and podcasts, even though it becomes pretty much infeasible the moment something requires actual thought, and even though I don't commute anymore.
• chime 5y ago
  Audible calculates Net Sales in A La Carte and Membership mode [1]. Is the membership mode closer to Pro-Rata mode like Spotify [2] or the User-Centric mode. Is the claim that Net Sales are shady with respect to either or both? Because pro-rata is hard to calculate and predict. Either way, this is a very complicated matter that affects the livelihoods of thousands of authors and producers but the lack of specific details makes it hard to understand what's really going on. Audible has had to change policies based on author complaints [3] and rightly so. But the claim of "Net Sales" being correct or incorrect is hard to prove without Audible releasing the detailed data like the authors are asking for. Frankly this seems like a matter best decided by lawyers in arbitration instead of Twitter-threads but maybe online pressure is the best way the authors can get Audible to come to the table. Either way, good luck to them. There are so many laws around sales, returns, commissions, royalties etc. that have evolved over the last century or two to protect all parties. But it's a wild west in the subscription world where Apple/Google control app markets, Netflix/Disney control TV/movie subs, Spotify/Apple/Amazon control music streams, YouTube/Tiktok/FB/Twitch control video streams. Each platform has their own rules, payment sharing, metric calculation etc. And while users can switch if the product sucks and platform owners can ban users or producers based on ToS violations, the producers barely have any power or say because there's almost no profitable alternative left. If this was 1960s, users and producers would definitely fight for some basic standards and guarantees across all platforms (e.g. right to pause/cancel easily, allowing usage from multiple locations, right to review/audit records etc.) But in 2020s with trillion dollar market cap companies running the show, I'm not sure that users or producers get a say in how they are treated anymore. Best we can hope for is a new entrant that is better for a few years. 1. https://www.acx.com/help/HJSJJK8XP7HYURS https://www.acx.com/help/HJSJJK8XP7HYURS 2. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/11/how-spotify-royalties-actually-work.html https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2021/11/how-spotify-royaltie... 3. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/26/audible-adjusts-terms-after-row-over-easy-exchanges-that-cut-royalties-amazon https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/26/audible-adjust...
• deleted 5y ago
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• sytelus 5y ago
  Why there aren’t viable competitors for Audible? Shouldn’t this be much easier than selling physical books?
• vzaliva 5y ago
  the twitter thread and linked web page are doing poor job making the case agains audible. Someone should be able to write a succinct 1 page summary in plain English explaining the scheme coherently.
• monocasa 5y ago
  As the 90s cartoon character 'Freakazoid' taught me: > Always ask for a piece of the gross; the net is just fantasy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHL91HQzhuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHL91HQzhuc
• Ansil849 5y ago
  > a bizarre returns policy, where the consumer could return their AB whenever they pleased, and the PRODUCER shouldered the cost. I don't understand, what's supposed to be bizarre about this policy? Why the seemingly snarky "where the consumer could return their AB whenever they pleased" comment?
  • altairprime 5y ago
    I believe what’s bizarre about the policy is the following: 1. Buyer pays Amazon $xx for sale of audiobook. 2. Amazon credits publisher $xx and debits published 40-83% of $xx for handling fees. 3. Buyer is refunded $xx by Amazon 4. Amazon debits publisher $xx. So as I understand the thread, Amazon is doing the equivalent of charging a ‘restocking fee’ equal to their share of the sale price, so that the publisher ends up paying out of pocket. (Corrections welcome if I misread here.)
    • Ansil849 5y ago
      Ah, I understand now, yes that makes sense. If Amazon is not refunding the handling fees to the publisher, that's indeed unfair. Though that seems like the issue should be firmly between the publisher and Amazon/Audible, I don't see why they also took a shot at the consumer with the glib "where the consumer could return their AB whenever they pleased" comment.
• yessirwhatever 5y ago
  I’m no fan of audible but what you’re saying here is just epic-style whining that you’re not getting what you want, in which case I’ll tell you to stop putting your audiobooks on Audible and stop your whining. In regards to returns, I like that policy. Not sure why you you’re being snarky about it. To call this Audiblegate is like calling a fart a nuclear explosion.
• michael_michael 5y ago
  I feel like the Twitter thread—for all its focus on royalty math—is missing some crucial context for people not immersed in the sausage-making of audiobooks, specifically Audible's ACX platform. I worked for Audible some years ago, so understand this context a bit better than most, and can explain for those who are interested. I left Audible not too long after ACX launched, but remember many meetings about it. To be fair, though, I was not directly involved in the creation of ACX and my recollection of its details are fuzzy. The thread author's complaint about Audible relates specifically to ACX. Again, even if you are an avid AB listener, you are probably not aware of the existence of ACX because its function is extremely boring. It's Audible's "audiobook rights marketplace". It is designed especially for people that hold the rights to books that would otherwise not be produced in audio. Those people can use the ACX platform to connect with narrators and producers who will help them record an audiobook version of their text, which will eventually be distributed on Audible—and therefore Amazon and (the holy grail) iTunes. If you're Stephen King, then Simon & Schuster is your publisher in hardcover, paperback, ebook, audio, whatever. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that Stephen King's next novel will be made into an audiobook, and it will release the same day in every format imaginable. The Stephen Kings of the [audio]book world will have never have anything to do with ACX. No need. On the other hand, if you're a low-to-mid-tier author published by a smaller house that doesn't have audiobook production capabilities, things get dicier. Before Audible, many, many, many books were never made into audiobooks. Audiobook production is time-consuming and expensive, and audiobooks were a niche format. Audiobook rights, therefore were often sold to audiobook-only publishing houses that don't hold quite the same prestige as names like Random House or Penguin. You've probably never heard of these publishing houses, except maybe at the beginning of an audiobook: "Blackstone Audio presents…", "Brilliance Audio presents…", "Recorded Books Presents", etc. Those audiobook-only publishing houses could pick up the rights to reasonably well-known books and authors that their print publisher had no intention of producing in audio. Now that audiobooks have become much, much more mainstream—in no small part thanks to Audible's efforts—there are fewer scraps from the major publishers to fight over. Today there is a much greater likelihood that a print book will be published in unabridged audio than there was twenty years ago. But there are still many "lost" books that didn't get picked up by the major audiobook publishing houses. Or the mid-tier ones, or even the bottom feeders. That's where ACX comes in. If you must use ACX to publish your audiobook, it's been overlooked (perhaps unfairly) by just about everyone else who could stand to make a buck off of purchasing the audio rights and producing it. Perhaps there is a more charitable way to put it, but that's the gist. Using ACX is definitely a gamble. It's a gamble for everyone except Audible. The gamble is this: you will spend thousands of dollars producing an audiobook. In exchange you will get distribution on the biggest audiobook marketplaces in the world: Audible, Amazon, iTunes. As I recall, there were ways to split this risk. If a narrator/producer believed that the audiobook would be a best-seller, they could negotiate a lower upfront fee in exchange for a cut of back-end sales, for example. The specific terms of the ACX deal you sign on for are certainly in Audible's favor. The only way to get better terms is to have your audiobook rights picked up by a major publishing house that has a deal in place with Audible already. Then you are largely shielded from all of these details by your publisher/manager/lawyer. If you're on ACX, it's likely because you have no other choice. Audible's fee here is largely just a way to gatekeep access to their huge distribution platforms: the Audible service itself, Amazon, and iTunes. I can't speak to the specifics of the author's complaints about how royalties are calculated. But knowing the people that worked, and still work at Audible, my gut feeling is that there is no malicious intent here. At worst, there is an imbalance of emotional investment between the authors and Audible. These authors have, after all, likely spent years of their life working on a book and shepherding it through the publishing world themselves without the aid of a publishing house. Audible, on the other hand, is largely devoted to the content they publish, the Audible platform itself, and their goal of converting people into subscribers.
• nicolimo86 5y ago
  I use Storytel instead since 2 years. The catalogue it's quite reach for what concerns my tastes.
• actionReaction 5y ago
  The whole point he makes is, "Amazon is bad because everyone else says Amazon is bad, and I just piggyback the public opinion with my little opinion about seemingly unfair royalties Amazon takes." It might be I'm wrong, but the numbers this guy put up do sound like just whining. It takes a lot of effort to provide cloud-based services such as Audible.
• langsoul-com 5y ago
  His call to action sucked. Should've listed good alternatives. At the end of the day, people will get their audio books, creators be damned.
  • artemonster 5y ago
    Sometimes there are none. Sometimes you have to pay more for less convenient service if you have your principles. And people really do that, you cant always have your cake and eat it too.
• jbverschoor 5y ago
  30% doesn’t seem too bad compared to 60-75% huh
• barneygale 5y ago
  Amazon needs to be broken up into hundreds of smaller companies.
• scrame 5y ago
  Twitter is the most obnoxious way to make a point.
• trymas 5y ago
  .. and twitter shafts their users, by not allowing to read the thread for people who do not have a twitter account. > See what’s happening > Join Twitter to get the full story with all the live commentary.
  • ohyoutravel 5y ago
    Flippantly, it doesn’t sound like they’re shafting their users by disallowing people who are not their users from reading their threads.
• KingOfCoders 5y ago
  Not that I would agree, but this is the standard accounting practice of record labels and publishers for at least the last 50 years.
• marcus_holmes 5y ago
  I know I'm against the grain here, but I don't have much sympathy. Firstly, no-one is forcing them to sell through Amazon/Audible. They don't have to. They could build their own storefront, with all the effort and cost that goes with that. Secondly, publishers are complaining about shady accounting and crooked royalty payments? Publishers of all people? Oh, the irony. Thirdly, presumably they've done the calculations, and even with the shady royalty payments it's still worth their while going through A/A rather than selling elsewhere (presumably because A/A's reach is far bigger than anything they can do on their own). This is about "we want more of the pie", though granted it's "we want the share of the pie that we were promised". Lastly, publishers will happily stiff everyone else when they have the power. Appealing to the masses to help them when the shoe is on the other foot is pathetic. I'm much more inclined to schadenfreude than sympathy.
• gambiting 5y ago
  I'm honestly curious about this statement, maybe someone can explain - the author seems to be upset about this part: "where the consumer could return their AB whenever they pleased, and the PRODUCER shouldered the cost." ....as opposed to who? When you return an item to amazon within their returns policy, who do you think pays you back for that? Is the author assuming that when their book gets "returned" for any reason.....it's amazon who should pay the consumer back, not the author? Why?
  • contravariant 5y ago
    Well, taking it to absurd levels it would be something like if Spotify were to claim they are 'selling' songs to people who are currently listening to them and they are 'returned' when people stop, with Spotify just paying royalties over the difference. The situation with audiobooks is far less extreme, but there is a cost attached to lenient return policies. Though you'd expect Amazon to be losing more money on it than the authors, so it's more like the authors disagree with Amazon's business model.
    • gambiting 5y ago
      I'd love to know the stats for how many people listen to the entire book(or 90% of it) and then return it. I have refunded books on audible before, but it was always because I didn't like the narrator, I listen to books while driving and sometimes the narration works in the car, sometimes it really doesn't - that's when I refund and get something else, but it's always within the first hour of listening.
      • frosted-flakes 5y ago
        Furthermore, Audible only lets you return 2-3 books self-serve before you have to go through customer service. This small friction is a real impediment to abuse of the system, and I highly doubt Audible won't refuse returns if you return one every month. I think I've returned 4-5 books total, out of 62 over the last 6 years[1]. All were because either I really didn't like the book, or the narration volume wasn't very well balanced (road noise means turning the volume up to hear the quiet parts, then getting your eardrums blasted out on the loud parts). [1] It's hard to believe that I've spent 35+ entire days listening to audiobooks. That's nuts.
• MaysonL 5y ago
  Many on HN would say that Apple's 30% cut on App Store sales is perhaps unfair. Is Amazon's 75% or 60% unfair, or is it highway robbery? Not to mention what they actually pay instead of the contractual amount.
  • contravariant 5y ago
    Could anyone clarify if that 75% includes the cost of narrating the audiobook?
  • microtherion 5y ago
    I have published neither an app nor an audiobook, but my impression is that Apple both takes a far lower cut of the price and is considerably more transparent in how the advertised price translates to the royalty paid out. And Audible seems to have far more market control than Apple has. Yet in HN discussions, people seem far more inclined to defend Amazon's practices than Apple's. I wonder whether the reason is that a lot more of them make their living off writing software than off publishing audiobooks (but maybe there is some other factor there that I'm missing). [Disclosure: Apple employee & shareholder, not involved in store related activities, not speaking for Apple]
  • lolinder 5y ago
    The difference here is that with Audible, the comparison is to traditional book publishing models. By all accounts, a 40% royalty (even on net sales) is pretty darn good by that standard. Apple's 30% fee, in contrast, is compared to traditional software publishing models. Developers are used to being able to publish on Windows or web without paying commission to anyone.
• mcgin 5y ago
  Is there a viable alternative to Audible out there?
  • Aachen 5y ago
    The author mentioned, and the only one I know of, is buying directly from the publishers. Problem is: those are ridiculously expensive, like 35 euros for a single audio book that I don't even know if I'll like the contents because you can't browse it. Physical books are usually 15 euros and then you have unit and shipping costs. Somehow the publisher is fine putting it on audible (where I pay €10) and getting a few percent of that, but not fine if I pay "only" 10 euros when buying from them directly? No idea about the logic here. I'd also be fine to pay 15 or so, matching the physical book, bit of a premium not to have to enrich Amazon. But 35 as only alternative to 10? Yeah no. Edit: thought I should back this up with numbers. The first book that came to mind was Ready Player 2, I didn't cherry pick here it's literally the very first that I thought of and checked. Amazon ranked way higher than the official site but I got there via the author's Wikipedia page. From there there are links to three stores: one sells just the paper version, two stores both sell - The paper book for $13 - The audio CDs for $44 - It's available on Audible.de for €10 This author (publisher?) is clearly not interested in getting sales via means other than Audible and must be happy with their €1.30 that the author says they get for non-exclusivity, or even if "audiblegate" is fake and they get the "full" 25%, that's still €2.50 instead of $44. It's the same with Steam. I don't play new games that often, but when I do, I look to buy directly from the authors, DRM-free, the whole jazz. Often it's simply not possible and the only purchase option is via Steam. Next thing I hear is my game dev friend complaining about Steam dominance. I'm trying, but they need to make it possible at all... (Or in audio books' case, make it somewhat reasonable)
    • Tepix 5y ago
      > This author (publisher?) is clearly not interested in getting sales via means other than Audible I guess the 40% instead of 25% (in reality: 21% and 13%) that Audible offers are the reason
      • 5y ago
• conor_f 5y ago
  Can everyone please just stop using Amazon products already? I'm sick of hearing people complain about them and still say "but they're too convenient" or "I've no other option!". You do. Stop using Amazon and related products. Tell everyone you can to stop using Amazon and related products.
  • cassiogo 5y ago
    Do you have any audible alternatives to suggest?
    • conor_f 5y ago
      I don't personally listen to audio books, so hopefully someone can chime in with some helpful alternatives? From a quick search though, it looks like https://libro.fm/ https://libro.fm/ is where I would start looking with an Audible alternative as it seems to align with my ideals and has a decent selection. There does seem to be a good few options though so have a look yourself if nobody has further suggestions :)
      • rjtavares 5y ago
        Apparently doesn't work outside the US/Canada: > You appear to be accessing the site from outside the United States or Canada. While a credit card from the USA/Canada is required to purchase a monthly membership, it is possible to buy a gift membership from anywhere in the world. It's incredible how far behind the Audiobook world is from Podcasting. The only company trying something different is Pushkin. I think that may be the start of a Audiobook revolution.
    • toqy 5y ago
      I don’t have an answer for a general audible competitor because I too use audible. However I do purchase directly from one studio that I’m a fan of, Soundbooth Theater. There may be other groups with a similar set up, but I’m not aware of any (nor have I looked though)
    • Symmetry 5y ago
• kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Why wouldn't royalities be based in "net sales"? I didn't finish reading the linked article to the end, because it is so long without much substance. Does it actually describe any of the alleged manipulation of the "net sales" numbers? In the first half or so, all they mention is that "returned" or "exchanged" books don't count, which seems reasonable.
• GiorgioG 5y ago
  I've spent a lot of money on Audible (and have a subscription) and part of the reason is because I can return books if they wind up being awful or are simply poorly produced (tin-sounding audio, awful narrator, clipped audio, etc.)
  • prescriptivist 5y ago
    I agree, the return policy is a feature not a bug. However I have been surprised at the generous timeframe within which I'm allowed to return a book. Seems like there is a compromise to be had there.
    • GiorgioG 5y ago
      I don’t abuse it. If I enjoy a book, I keep it - even though I’ll likely never listen to it again. But if I slog through half of a book (depending on the book it could take a month or more to get to that point) and it feels like an awful slog - I have no qualms returning it, no matter how long it’s been since I purchased it. I prefer to keep things as they are.
• parkingrift 5y ago
  > As AB producers, we're supposed to get 40% if we host our AB exclusively in Audible, or 25% if we go 'wide' and use other retailers. This should be absolutely illegal.
  • ohyoutravel 5y ago
    People should be able to contract for whatever they want, provided it isn’t illegal. This doesn’t seem usurious or anything like that, what’s your particular objection?
    • parkingrift 5y ago
      Audible is abusing their dominant position to destroy competing audio book publishers. It’s not the agreement itself, but that it’s an agreement by the dominant player in the market.
• reddog 5y ago
  He lost me at the start by complaining about Audibles listener friendly return policy. How is the producer "shouldering the cost" when I return their crappy, overwritten, poorly narrated audible book for credit?
  • mrleinad 5y ago
    Not sure what the limits are for returning content, but I'd set some if they haven't already. You shouldn't be able to return the content if you listened on its entirety, for example.
    • MrDunham 5y ago
      There's a bit of a fine line here. I used a credit on an audible book that was just rehashed, mediocre content and empty promises. The gulf between the marketing promise and content was very, very wide. That was one I read in its entirety thinking that something insightful or useful would come of it and by the end it was clear that the author just read a handful of blog posts on marketing and slapped together a book to call himself an author. I returned it for a credit. Now, I should mention that I have over 120 audible books in my library and I’ve only returned two since joining audible 7 or 8 years ago. But should I have gotten a refund for that book? On one hand it was a never ending stream of empty promises that were all left unfulfilled. On the other hand, I read the book in its entirety. Perhaps audible does/should have a mechanism to keep an eye out for abuse. I’d call myself a pretty darn good customer that has read plenty of mediocre books that weren't returned. Someone constantly downloading and refunding books to game the system, OTOH, should probably lose the refund privilege.
      • mrleinad 5y ago
        What was the overall consensus for that book in the reviews? Or were you amongst the first ones to buy it?
    • reddog 5y ago
      I agree that its dishonest and despicable to return a book that you've completed and enjoyed (or even found mediocre). In fact I wish there was a Audible tip jar that let me give extra money to writers who have changed my life with a great book. But if you've read enough you've probably had the experience of finishing the last page of a book and hurling it across the room in anger and frustration. It could be that that writer has pulled you though the story by making narative promises that painted him into a corner resulting in a maddening it-was-all-a-dream type conclusion. Or maybe you get to the last few pages of a book and start to realize that the story is not going to conclude and this book is in fact the first book in a planned 12 volume epic that the 75 year old author is going to finish over the next 30 years. In those cases I think the reader is out more than just a credit. Where do we go to get back the 20 never-to-be-relived hours of our lives that we just poured into this deadend crap? And for the record, I have a couple of hundred Audible books in my library and only returned one that I completely finished. It resulted in a letter from Amazon fussing at me for doing so and telling me not to make it a habit.
• worldmerge 5y ago
  What was the audio book market like back in the cassette days? My gramma used to listen to books on tape all the time mostly through the library.
  • prepend 5y ago
    I used to buy 2-3 per year at $30-50 each. There wasn’t a big selection and typically only best sellers would on the shelves at Waldenbooks or Cracker Barrel. Amazon helped quite a bit as prices dropped by 30% and I bought 4-5 per year until audible. I was an audible subscriber for 10 years until my library got Libby. Not as good but free and I can read more now. The market seems 100x as big both due to cost and ease of use. Switching cassettes and CDs was a pain.
• Rd6n6 5y ago
  I’ve used downpour for years and it’s a great service. Drm free downloads as well if you don’t want to use their app and a massive selection
• thereddaikon 5y ago
  Not a judgement on the content of the post, but is anyone else annoyed at the lazy trend to dub any controversy "something"-gate? Watergate was called that because that's the name of the hotel. Gate is not some synonym for scandal. It's just a gate. We used to have more appropriate names for things. At least the Panama Papers had a proper name, even if everyone forgot about it and nothing ever came of it.
  • RankingMember 5y ago
    Totally. It's like "you're an author, fella, be creative!" Here's one I just came up with: Fraudible! Gets the point across and doesn't perpetuate this weird "-gate" scheme. Also rolls off the tongue a lot nicer if I do say so myself.
  • lolinder 5y ago
    Yep, and calling it Audiblegate is just symptomatic of the general quality of the thinking that went into the post. It's lazy reasoning cloaked behind the language of internet outrage.
  • wccrawford 5y ago
    This has bothered me for some time now. Most of these handy portmanteaus don't really bother me, but this one makes no sense on its own and just sounds stupid. Sure, I know what they mean, but I cringe every time.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • octagonal 5y ago
    Language can change and words can take up new meanings.
    • thereddaikon 5y ago
      Yes but that shouldn't be an excuse for being lazy.
• citiguy 5y ago
  This behavior isn't limited to Amazon. In my years of working for IT on Wall Street, I've seen this happen numerous times. Sometimes it's too hard to write the code to ensure the contract is complied with. Other times, the folks who wrote the contract didn't communicate it clearly and/or document it. It's not even limited to American companies. When I worked at a large Swiss bank, they had a similar compliance issue.
• werber 5y ago
  What is the best option for someone who mostly listens to books read by the author and has relatively low brow taste? Recently two of my favorite musical acts, sleater Kinney and Liz phair released audible exclusives that I loved. I hate the idea of artists being screwed over, but, I’m at a loss for where to turn. Audible is a huge part of my life, but I don’t want to support artists being screwed over.
  • lolinder 5y ago
    You're fine to keep using Audible, in that case. This Twitter thread is overblown. Read through the top few comments here and you'll see that what is happening is exactly what the artists sign up for: they get a portion of the net sales of credits, weighted by length/price of the book. Audible's business model is selling subscriptions. Artists get a share of that revenue, and their share is comparable to that from any other publisher. The Twitter user is trying to exploit internet outrage for their own gain, not reacting against a truly bad deal.
    • altairprime 5y ago
      Would it be comparable to Spotify Premium crossed with a Jukebox service of some sort in that regard, or is the credits model unusually unique to Audible here?
• impostervt 5y ago
  As a publisher that uses ACX/Audible, it's REALLY hard to figure out how much they should be paying you. When I look at my Sales Dashboard, there's no monetary figure. It's also set to Lifetime Earnings, instead of the current month, which is just weird. Sales are broken down into AL Units, ALOP units, ALC units, Net returns, and Net Sales units. Again, these show the # of units, but not the rate you're being paid for them. You do receive a Royalty report for each month, but it comes 2 months after the close of that month (my December one is the latest available). It does have dollar values, but it's hard to figure out how they arrived at their numbers. It's generally related to how long the book is (longer = more money), and whether the books were bought on some kind of sale (no visibility). You kind of just have to trust ACX.
• imwillofficial 5y ago
  No, no more appending “-gate” to everything for clickbait. The scandals that occupy the attention of the west far far overshadow the meager spying that took place during the watergate debacle.
• j_d_b 5y ago
  Librivox is a community-supported free audio book service featuring the world's literature read by volunteers. They also have most new titles available. It is the perfect alternative to Audible.
• kderbyma 5y ago
  if Amazon touches it. I don't.