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
Libby is incredible. I hope others know about it.
Audiblegate
21–30 of 362 posts
Re: Audiblegate
#22The 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 increa…
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 c…
> 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.
Re: Audiblegate
#23The giant nosed character shown in the twitter preview for the audiblegate.com site brings to mind some uncomfortable and hopefully unintentional stereotypes.
Same here. I found myself hoping it was supposed to be Bezos?
Re: Audiblegate
#24The 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 increa…
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 c…
It seems pretty surprising to me. When the supermarket offers a discount, they don't then turn to their providers and say "since we sold this at a discount, we're going to pay you less for it".
The terms on which Amazon want to offer Audiobooks are their business, but as I consumer I certainly wouldn't expect them to affect any downline incomes.
Re: Audiblegate
#25The 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 increa…
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 c…
So this means Audible can have promotions ("first month free!") and basically share the CAC with the producers?
Re: Audiblegate
#26Please stop
...communicating...
via ...
multiple ...
twitter posts...
please...
... write an article, blog, book, youtube video
anything but these spread out posts.
Re: Audiblegate
#27I 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.
Re: Audiblegate
#28The 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 increa…
> 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.
Re: Audiblegate
#29I'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.
Re: Audiblegate
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 c…
It seems pretty surprising to me. When the supermarket offers a discount, they don't then turn to their providers and say "since we sold this at a discount, we're going to pay you less for it". The terms on which Amazon want to offer Audiobooks are their business, but as I consumer I certainly wouldn't expect them to affect any downline incomes.
> When the supermarket offers a discount, they don't then turn to their providers and say "since we sold this at a discount, we're going to pay you less for it".
No, they negotiate those things ahead of time. It does t matter though, as there’s a huge difference between an item that is infinitely reproducible and a commodity that has per-unit production costs.