8 ms·

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

by 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.
- axxl 5y ago
  > there's no substance just a lot of charged language. Yeah, this was my issue with all I could find so far. It seems like 'working as designed'. Perhaps those who publish on audible would like to be able to opt in or out of various sales/credits etc but as a customer I prefer that I can get anything with a credit. > Basically Audible splits the money spent on credits among the books that the credits were spent on, except weighted by the retail price Is that all credits in the system (similar to how Spotify was weighting streaming subscriptions (to my understanding)), or per user. I would prefer the money from my credits to go to the books I purchase, not be weighted with purchases by all other users.
  - jsnell 5y ago
    Across the system, not per-user. The only funky thing is that IIUC the computation of the total income across the whole system is done based on credits sold that month, rather than deferring the income from selling a credit to the month in which the credit is spent.
    - tehwebguy 5y ago
      I wonder if authors are the ones who pay for the free Audible subscriptions that American Express Platinum card holders get now? There is a huge a “Hollywood accounting” problem that never really went away (it’s how Warner Brothers markets HBO Max for free, how bands on major labels & even indies never recoup, and now possibly know how Amazon grows audible at no cost to themselves).
    - Thorrez 5y ago
      That funky thing sounds like it would work in authors' favor overall. I would guess there's some percent of credits that are sold but never used. So if Amazon only paid on on used credits, Amazon would be able to keep that money. If Amazon pays out on sold credits, the authors get it. Although the distribution between the authors can be wrong, leading to some individual authors losing out even if authors overall benefit. Although if Amazon is always paying out some contractual minimum instead of the shared amount, then none of this makes a difference.
djrogers 5y ago
> But again, I would buy a small fraction of the audiobooks I have purchased at full price. I’ve got ~300 audible books in my library, and I can safely say I’d have bought exactly none of them at full price.
- 83457 5y ago
  You should listen to better books then.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding OP. The way Audible book pricing works is a little byzantine. The "list" price of most titles is somewhere in the neighborhood of $50. Plus or minus. But as a subscriber you're given one credit each month, for $15. So right there you can get the same title for much cheaper if it's your credit redemption. But that's not all. If you buy the Kindle edition of a book, it's only $7.50 or so to add on narration with the purchase. The text copy of the title might be $9.99, so the total is still far less than the "naked" audiobook price. I don't understand why they do it this way. Even if I'm out of credits, I can save $40 or so by getting the Kindle+Audio bundle vs. just the Audible version alone.
    - 83457 5y ago
      Most of the audible books I buy are in the $25-35 range full price. There are a few I've listened to multiple times and now could certainly justify spending full price for them. With that said, I do think I misinterpreted what they were saying, which was more speaking to the original outcome if full price than what they would do now regarding each book.
    - degeberg 5y ago
      If you run out of credits, you can also buy 3 extra for £18 (I'm not sure what the USD price is). That's significantly cheaper than buying 3 audio books at full price. Credits with frequent 2-for-1 sales, £3 sales and £1 sales, there is just no reason to ever pay retail price on Audible.
falcolas 5y ago
I haven’t dug into it too deeply myself, but here’s some numbers from late last year. Note that this as a producer sharing that 40% with the writer half and half (royalty share contract). One month saw 21 sales of a $19.99 audiobook. Amazon reported net sales of $76, so I made around $11. EDIT: looking closer, 17 of the sales occurred in a market/purchase combination that resulted in no royalties at all. The invoice is less than clear on why those markets have 0% royalty rates. The US market is split in two, one with the expected rate, one with 0. No guesses on how the counts lined up. So, around 2% real royalty rates, or 10x less than the contract stipulated. It’s not something worth fighting against for me right now, I’m using it to build a resume. But between this and the rampant fraud they do nothing to curb, it’s not a stretch to call it a scam, both for the producer and the author. But it’s Audible. What choice is there? EDIT2: Going to bed. Its not that I don’t like you.
- eyejay 5y ago
  Does your contract have the retail price in it? Or were the net sales $76? I don't think both of those can be true.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    The retail price is on the storefront. It’s determined by the length of the finished audiobook. The net sales show no full priced retail purchases. 13 of the sales were from US customers using free credits, which were valued at $1 each. Of course, those also fell in the 0% royalties category to add insult to… well, I don’t know what to call it anymore.
- axxl 5y ago
  Got it, so it seems like the contract is just heavily skewed in favor of Amazon, where the content is subsidizing all of the deals and discounts that Audible provides. Although how they can get a 0% royalty on certain sales in is baffling to me. > But it’s Audible. What choice is there? Yeah, they sadly seem to be lacking in meaningful competition. People on twitter are talking about libro.fm which has a slew of anti-audible articles, although I can't find any details on their reimbursements either.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sdoering 5y ago
I couldn't agree more. Also this person scandalizing and stirring things up sounded to me like trying to weapponize public opinion for personal gain. I know from other, let's call the traditional, authors that classical book royalties were more in the 10 - 20 percent range for printed books. The upper range if you were a long published best seller with bargaining power. So I was already irritated when he stated that 40% exclusive royalty (as a not so well known author I assume) was very little earnings per book. Without providing context that already was him trying to weapponize my opinion (at least that was how it felt to me). Publishing that one feels there is an error on Audibles side in calculating royalties is not only legitimate but appreciated by me. I want to know that errors occur and ideally how they are fixed. Trying to manipulate me into enragement "porn" and wesponizing public outrage might be good for business or might feel like a valid approach when feeling wronged by Goliath but is - at least on my side - just off-putting. So I do wish for all authors to be compensated based on the contracts they have with Audible. But I couldn't care less about this person's vendetta.
- alphabetting 5y ago
  > Also this person scandalizing and stirring things up sounded to me like trying to weaponize public opinion for personal gain. What is the potential gain of going after audible as an author?
  - lolinder 5y ago
    They explicitly say in the thread that they're trying to get enough people angry that Audible changes the deal.

by axxl 5y ago

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.

axxl 5y ago
> there's no substance just a lot of charged language. Yeah, this was my issue with all I could find so far. It seems like 'working as designed'. Perhaps those who publish on audible would like to be able to opt in or out of various sales/credits etc but as a customer I prefer that I can get anything with a credit. > Basically Audible splits the money spent on credits among the books that the credits were spent on, except weighted by the retail price Is that all credits in the system (similar to how Spotify was weighting streaming subscriptions (to my understanding)), or per user. I would prefer the money from my credits to go to the books I purchase, not be weighted with purchases by all other users.
- jsnell 5y ago
  Across the system, not per-user. The only funky thing is that IIUC the computation of the total income across the whole system is done based on credits sold that month, rather than deferring the income from selling a credit to the month in which the credit is spent.
  - tehwebguy 5y ago
    I wonder if authors are the ones who pay for the free Audible subscriptions that American Express Platinum card holders get now? There is a huge a “Hollywood accounting” problem that never really went away (it’s how Warner Brothers markets HBO Max for free, how bands on major labels & even indies never recoup, and now possibly know how Amazon grows audible at no cost to themselves).
  - Thorrez 5y ago
    That funky thing sounds like it would work in authors' favor overall. I would guess there's some percent of credits that are sold but never used. So if Amazon only paid on on used credits, Amazon would be able to keep that money. If Amazon pays out on sold credits, the authors get it. Although the distribution between the authors can be wrong, leading to some individual authors losing out even if authors overall benefit. Although if Amazon is always paying out some contractual minimum instead of the shared amount, then none of this makes a difference.

djrogers 5y ago

> But again, I would buy a small fraction of the audiobooks I have purchased at full price. I’ve got ~300 audible books in my library, and I can safely say I’d have bought exactly none of them at full price.

83457 5y ago
You should listen to better books then.
- function_seven 5y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding OP. The way Audible book pricing works is a little byzantine. The "list" price of most titles is somewhere in the neighborhood of $50. Plus or minus. But as a subscriber you're given one credit each month, for $15. So right there you can get the same title for much cheaper if it's your credit redemption. But that's not all. If you buy the Kindle edition of a book, it's only $7.50 or so to add on narration with the purchase. The text copy of the title might be $9.99, so the total is still far less than the "naked" audiobook price. I don't understand why they do it this way. Even if I'm out of credits, I can save $40 or so by getting the Kindle+Audio bundle vs. just the Audible version alone.
  - 83457 5y ago
    Most of the audible books I buy are in the $25-35 range full price. There are a few I've listened to multiple times and now could certainly justify spending full price for them. With that said, I do think I misinterpreted what they were saying, which was more speaking to the original outcome if full price than what they would do now regarding each book.
  - degeberg 5y ago
    If you run out of credits, you can also buy 3 extra for £18 (I'm not sure what the USD price is). That's significantly cheaper than buying 3 audio books at full price. Credits with frequent 2-for-1 sales, £3 sales and £1 sales, there is just no reason to ever pay retail price on Audible.

falcolas 5y ago

I haven’t dug into it too deeply myself, but here’s some numbers from late last year. Note that this as a producer sharing that 40% with the writer half and half (royalty share contract). One month saw 21 sales of a $19.99 audiobook. Amazon reported net sales of $76, so I made around $11. EDIT: looking closer, 17 of the sales occurred in a market/purchase combination that resulted in no royalties at all. The invoice is less than clear on why those markets have 0% royalty rates. The US market is split in two, one with the expected rate, one with 0. No guesses on how the counts lined up. So, around 2% real royalty rates, or 10x less than the contract stipulated. It’s not something worth fighting against for me right now, I’m using it to build a resume. But between this and the rampant fraud they do nothing to curb, it’s not a stretch to call it a scam, both for the producer and the author. But it’s Audible. What choice is there? EDIT2: Going to bed. Its not that I don’t like you.

eyejay 5y ago
Does your contract have the retail price in it? Or were the net sales $76? I don't think both of those can be true.
- falcolas 5y ago
  The retail price is on the storefront. It’s determined by the length of the finished audiobook. The net sales show no full priced retail purchases. 13 of the sales were from US customers using free credits, which were valued at $1 each. Of course, those also fell in the 0% royalties category to add insult to… well, I don’t know what to call it anymore.
axxl 5y ago
Got it, so it seems like the contract is just heavily skewed in favor of Amazon, where the content is subsidizing all of the deals and discounts that Audible provides. Although how they can get a 0% royalty on certain sales in is baffling to me. > But it’s Audible. What choice is there? Yeah, they sadly seem to be lacking in meaningful competition. People on twitter are talking about libro.fm which has a slew of anti-audible articles, although I can't find any details on their reimbursements either.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sdoering 5y ago

I couldn't agree more. Also this person scandalizing and stirring things up sounded to me like trying to weapponize public opinion for personal gain. I know from other, let's call the traditional, authors that classical book royalties were more in the 10 - 20 percent range for printed books. The upper range if you were a long published best seller with bargaining power. So I was already irritated when he stated that 40% exclusive royalty (as a not so well known author I assume) was very little earnings per book. Without providing context that already was him trying to weapponize my opinion (at least that was how it felt to me). Publishing that one feels there is an error on Audibles side in calculating royalties is not only legitimate but appreciated by me. I want to know that errors occur and ideally how they are fixed. Trying to manipulate me into enragement "porn" and wesponizing public outrage might be good for business or might feel like a valid approach when feeling wronged by Goliath but is - at least on my side - just off-putting. So I do wish for all authors to be compensated based on the contracts they have with Audible. But I couldn't care less about this person's vendetta.

alphabetting 5y ago
> Also this person scandalizing and stirring things up sounded to me like trying to weaponize public opinion for personal gain. What is the potential gain of going after audible as an author?
- lolinder 5y ago
  They explicitly say in the thread that they're trying to get enough people angry that Audible changes the deal.