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Audiblegate

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Re: Audiblegate

#41

Post by HWR_14 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #27

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 bei…

Setting up teams to fail to calculate royalties correctly could be deliberate. I'm not saying you intentionally set out to defraud anyone, but supplying technically correct information that could be misinterpreted may have been a way for Amazon management to engineer the errors they want.

Re: Audiblegate

#42

Post by WoahNoun »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #39

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

Shipping a product directly from China when ordered versus a "Prime" label with a 0-2 day shipping isn't the same thing.

Re: Audiblegate

#43

Post by csours »

conradev wrote: post #8

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

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.

Re: Audiblegate

#44

Post by delgaudm »

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.

Re: Audiblegate

#45

Post by [deleted] »

axxl wrote: post #11

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 increa…

[deleted]

Re: Audiblegate

#46

Post by harry8 »

ALittleLight wrote: post #27

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 bei…

It's not theft because it was "accidental" every single time in our favor is a new one. Don't think many courts would view it favorably if you don't have the extremely high priced lawyers Amazon will use to deter and defend this.

You can't make mistakes like this any more than you accidentally burn one of Bezos' house to the ground "accidentally" trying to get proper restitution ringing his doorbell and it all going wrong somehow. It's just not an accident in any meaningful interpretation of that word. It's a level of incompetence that we don't accept as any kind of defense.

Re: Audiblegate

#47

Post by weird-eye-issue »

WoahNoun wrote: post #42
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #39

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

Shipping a product directly from China when ordered versus a "Prime" label with a 0-2 day shipping isn't the same thing.

The products are shipped from China to Amazon's warehouses...

Re: Audiblegate

#48

Post by eyejay »

falcolas wrote: post #40
axxl wrote: post #11

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 increa…

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…

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.

Re: Audiblegate

#49

Post by wyattpeak »

djrogers wrote: post #30
wyattpeak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nah, I disagree with you there. I don't think the nature of the product being sold affects my opinion or expectation of whether or not producers are expected to shoulder the cost of a discount given by a middleman.

For the record, I also disagree with your blanket claim that supermarket discounts are negotiated ahead of time. Some are.

Re: Audiblegate

#50

Post by WoahNoun »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #47
WoahNoun wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping a product directly from China when ordered versus a "Prime" label with a 0-2 day shipping isn't the same thing.

The products are shipped from China to Amazon's warehouses...

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.
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