Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Audiblegate

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 362 posts

Re: Audiblegate

#51

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

I think it happens a lot more than people want to acknowledge.

I worked on a discount calculating service with no prior knowledge.It was supposed to replicate an existing system, so we went through the oroginal specs and general litterature to get a sense of what we were supposed to make.

First day of test with a employee in the field, and it appears that they have specific calculation rules that are so obvious to them that it didn't warrant to be written. Welp. And a few iterations after we were still hitting blocks of "what ? didn't you know that in case of X you do Y?" due to us being outside of their field.

Real world systems are hard. I'd still blame Amazon for not having caught these issues very early in the process, that's on them. But bugs and gross calculation errors are par for the course.

Re: Audiblegate

#52

Post by falcolas »

eyejay wrote: post #48
falcolas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Audiblegate

#53

Post by avazhi »

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.

Re: Audiblegate

#54

Post by cool_dude85 »

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…

Since you're so willing to share your experience, was your initial product overall saving Amazon royalties or causing them to pay out more in royalties?

Re: Audiblegate

#55

Post by phs318u »

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?

Re: Audiblegate

#56

Post by weird-eye-issue »

WoahNoun wrote: post #50
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: Audiblegate

#57

Post by jjulius »

phs318u wrote: post #55

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 consump…

>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.

Re: Audiblegate

#58

Post by falcolas »

csours wrote: post #43
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.

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.

Re: Audiblegate

#59

Post by BR-549 »

chrispeel wrote: post #14

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

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!

Re: Audiblegate

#60

Post by ALittleLight »

harry8 wrote: post #46
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…

Actually, in the case I experienced we were overpaying publishers. The error was going against Amazon and we decided not to ask for our money back because we thought it would hurt customer trust. (This decision not to do anything about the amount we already overpaid was made above my paygrade, but that's my understanding of it).
Post reply on HN