6 ms·

I just looked and the last Song of Ice and Fire audiobook is 41€ in Apple Books. That is hilariously insane. I could perhaps pay that for all of them but for 1

by tekkk 3y ago

I just looked and the last Song of Ice and Fire audiobook is 41€ in Apple Books. That is hilariously insane. I could perhaps pay that for all of them but for 1 — the others are basically the same price. That's 200€ for the set. There are weirdly other audiobook versions that cost only 29€ so I wonder what's the story here.

cheschire 3y ago
And many other folks will keep wondering what the story is for 41€! My bad puns aside, thank god for libraries. Otherwise these stories would be truly lost to the rich.
yourusername 3y ago
Audiobooks are just expensive in general. A song of Ice and Fire is $39 in Audible on android (well it's on sale now for $27). Sadly $20-40 is a fairly normal price for a audiobook.
- tekkk 3y ago
  Yeah I think they are though artificially inflated by Amazon and co since why on earth can Audible sell them 8$ every month. Luckily there are a lot of old public domain books that you can listen to. Reading what Brandon Sanderson has to say about Audible to me was really revealing.
troupo 3y ago
What do you think it would cost? It's a professional reading/acting out a full book in a professional studio, with at least an editor, a production team, a corrector. And the market for audiobooks is still very minuscule.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  If a band of professional musicians can put out an album with original music and multi-track mixing for $10, a pre-written book with a single voice performer and minimal production crew shouldn't cost multiples of that.
  - TuringNYC 3y ago
    > If a band of professional musicians can put out an album with original music and multi-track mixing for $10, a pre-written book with a single voice performer and minimal production crew shouldn't cost multiples of that. Not saying this is fair, but musicians often do economically sub-optimal things for the love of creation and because it is a passion. Hopefully, the musician also gets added revenue from concerts. The voice performance doesnt get the fame nor after-performance revenue -- so naturally they are charging market rates for their time reading. Further, most of the credit/glory goes to the author, not the voice performer. I doubt most people know who the voice performer is on audiobooks.
- lsaferite 3y ago
  > the market for audiobooks is still very minuscule > A song of Ice and Fire is $39 in Audible Is this really surprising? Production costs for a single audiobook are _significantly_ less than something like a movie, but the audiobook is more than double the cost of seeing a movie?!? I straight up refuse to buy audiobooks based on the price alone. Ebook prices are bad enough, but audiobook prices are ludicrous.
  - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
    Movies amortize their cost over a much, much larger audience than books do. A book that sells a 100,000 copies is a fairly successful book. A movie that sold 100,000 tickets is a complete flop.
    - rickdeckard 3y ago
      Then add on top that Audiobook sales-volume in total is still smaller than book-sales, that Audible controls the majority of the US Audiobook sales, while the majority of consumption is actually their monthly subscription tier (which probably doesn't pay much at all). Then Audible takes a revenue-share of 30~50% depending on content, publisher and author also want to earn money,... Then the audiobook of "A song of fire and ice" is apparently 33 hours and 46 minutes, which is more than 3 times the average length [1], so just the narration production-cost is 3 times higher than the average audiobook. So overall there's not so much left to make a profit, leave alone break-even. [1] https://wordsrated.com/audiobook-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/audiobook-statistics/
      - lsaferite 3y ago
        The statistics on that page are interesting. > Younger people are more likely to consume audio format, as 57% of Americans younger than 50 listened to audiobooks in 2021. I know I only have anecdata (I'm in that cohort), but that seems off based on my personal experiences and the people I know. Perhaps 2021 was an outlier? > Over 23% of Americans listened to at least one audiobook in 2021, 15% more than in 2020. This also seems off. Almost 1 in 4 Americans listened to an audiobook in 2021? That seems... high. I couldn't find a link to the source data used to generate those statistics. Based on your link, you'd be looking at something in the range of $24,000 for ASOIAF. Even if you double that you're looking at $48,000. If we factor in 50% (WTF?) rev share with Audible, that's ~2400 units to break even. And then they are clearing ~$20/unit after that. Yeah, I know I hand-waved a bunch of minutia, but my point is that the volume of sales needed to start making a profit, even considering a large rev share, isn't _that_ high. I can't stack that against sales numbers, but I'll say this, even if it's a legit price based on costs and volume that it doesn't _feel_ legit to _me_. As a result, I won't buy audiobooks. I don't think I'm totally alone. I can't say much past that.
- endemic 3y ago
  I can watch the whole (insanely expensive to produce) TV series for $16/month.
  - troupo 3y ago
    No, you can't. What you can is have a million or so people pay $16/month which pays for these insanely expensive series. So, let's assume Netflix. It has 247 million subscribers. You do the math. An audiobook (and audiobooks in general) don't have that.

by tekkk 3y ago

cheschire 3y ago

And many other folks will keep wondering what the story is for 41€! My bad puns aside, thank god for libraries. Otherwise these stories would be truly lost to the rich.

yourusername 3y ago

Audiobooks are just expensive in general. A song of Ice and Fire is $39 in Audible on android (well it's on sale now for $27). Sadly $20-40 is a fairly normal price for a audiobook.

tekkk 3y ago
Yeah I think they are though artificially inflated by Amazon and co since why on earth can Audible sell them 8$ every month. Luckily there are a lot of old public domain books that you can listen to. Reading what Brandon Sanderson has to say about Audible to me was really revealing.

troupo 3y ago

What do you think it would cost? It's a professional reading/acting out a full book in a professional studio, with at least an editor, a production team, a corrector. And the market for audiobooks is still very minuscule.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
If a band of professional musicians can put out an album with original music and multi-track mixing for $10, a pre-written book with a single voice performer and minimal production crew shouldn't cost multiples of that.
- TuringNYC 3y ago
  > If a band of professional musicians can put out an album with original music and multi-track mixing for $10, a pre-written book with a single voice performer and minimal production crew shouldn't cost multiples of that. Not saying this is fair, but musicians often do economically sub-optimal things for the love of creation and because it is a passion. Hopefully, the musician also gets added revenue from concerts. The voice performance doesnt get the fame nor after-performance revenue -- so naturally they are charging market rates for their time reading. Further, most of the credit/glory goes to the author, not the voice performer. I doubt most people know who the voice performer is on audiobooks.
lsaferite 3y ago
> the market for audiobooks is still very minuscule > A song of Ice and Fire is $39 in Audible Is this really surprising? Production costs for a single audiobook are _significantly_ less than something like a movie, but the audiobook is more than double the cost of seeing a movie?!? I straight up refuse to buy audiobooks based on the price alone. Ebook prices are bad enough, but audiobook prices are ludicrous.
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  Movies amortize their cost over a much, much larger audience than books do. A book that sells a 100,000 copies is a fairly successful book. A movie that sold 100,000 tickets is a complete flop.
  - rickdeckard 3y ago
    Then add on top that Audiobook sales-volume in total is still smaller than book-sales, that Audible controls the majority of the US Audiobook sales, while the majority of consumption is actually their monthly subscription tier (which probably doesn't pay much at all). Then Audible takes a revenue-share of 30~50% depending on content, publisher and author also want to earn money,... Then the audiobook of "A song of fire and ice" is apparently 33 hours and 46 minutes, which is more than 3 times the average length [1], so just the narration production-cost is 3 times higher than the average audiobook. So overall there's not so much left to make a profit, leave alone break-even. [1] https://wordsrated.com/audiobook-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/audiobook-statistics/
    - lsaferite 3y ago
      The statistics on that page are interesting. > Younger people are more likely to consume audio format, as 57% of Americans younger than 50 listened to audiobooks in 2021. I know I only have anecdata (I'm in that cohort), but that seems off based on my personal experiences and the people I know. Perhaps 2021 was an outlier? > Over 23% of Americans listened to at least one audiobook in 2021, 15% more than in 2020. This also seems off. Almost 1 in 4 Americans listened to an audiobook in 2021? That seems... high. I couldn't find a link to the source data used to generate those statistics. Based on your link, you'd be looking at something in the range of $24,000 for ASOIAF. Even if you double that you're looking at $48,000. If we factor in 50% (WTF?) rev share with Audible, that's ~2400 units to break even. And then they are clearing ~$20/unit after that. Yeah, I know I hand-waved a bunch of minutia, but my point is that the volume of sales needed to start making a profit, even considering a large rev share, isn't _that_ high. I can't stack that against sales numbers, but I'll say this, even if it's a legit price based on costs and volume that it doesn't _feel_ legit to _me_. As a result, I won't buy audiobooks. I don't think I'm totally alone. I can't say much past that.
endemic 3y ago
I can watch the whole (insanely expensive to produce) TV series for $16/month.
- troupo 3y ago
  No, you can't. What you can is have a million or so people pay $16/month which pays for these insanely expensive series. So, let's assume Netflix. It has 247 million subscribers. You do the math. An audiobook (and audiobooks in general) don't have that.