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Audiblegate

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Re: Audiblegate

#61

Post by anyfoo »

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…

I'm of the variety where I consciously listen to every word, thinking it wouldn't be in the book if it was irrelevant. That may seem extreme, but the difference between missing a word and missing entire sentences is tiny when it comes to audiobooks and podcasts. There's a lot of rewinding.

So when do I listen to them? When driving, when eating, when exercising, when doing chores that don't require much thought (laundry, folding, dishes, cleaning, ...), brushing teeth, walking to somewhere... there's a lot of time to listen to books and podcasts, even though it becomes pretty much infeasible the moment something requires actual thought, and even though I don't commute anymore.

Re: Audiblegate

#62

Post by axxl »

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…

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.

Re: Audiblegate

#63

Post by MetallicCloud »

duped wrote: post #37
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…

Why was this not defined in a spec document and checked in a unit test? Everywhere I've worked where there were defined formulae (or formulae to be defined) this kind of thing was meticulously checked for correctness. No one should have shipped the service without knowing if the calculations were correct!

At faang companies, there's never a spec document.

Re: Audiblegate

#64

Post by ShroudedNight »

wyattpeak wrote: post #24
jsnell wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

> 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".

Not necessarily because of sales, but one of my parents' neighbours (he was previously a fairly senior guy at a flour manufacturer) spoke from experience of big supermarket retailers "renegotiating" unit price after the fact (and after delaying payment until duress) under the threat of removing all their products from sale if they don't accept.

Re: Audiblegate

#65

Post by xyzzyz »

MetallicCloud wrote: post #63
duped wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was this not defined in a spec document and checked in a unit test? Everywhere I've worked where there were defined formulae (or formulae to be defined) this kind of thing was meticulously checked for correctness. No one should have shipped the service without knowing if the calculations were correct!

At faang companies, there's never a spec document.

In FAANG, if people had to write accurate spec in addition to all of the other steps of the process to launch something at a big corp, nothing would ever get done.

Re: Audiblegate

#66

Post by 83457 »

djrogers wrote: post #28
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…

> 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.

You should listen to better books then.

Re: Audiblegate

#67

Post by jacksonkmarley »

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?

I listen when what I am doing does not require conscious thought. Driving a car, going for a walk, repetitive exercise.

Also, I can actually focus on a somewhat dry topic better if I have something mentally undemanding going on in the background, I don't get bored as easily.

In fact in many cases listening to an audio book while e.g. driving makes both pastimes better than they would be alone.

Re: Audiblegate

#68

Post by wildzzz »

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…

I listen to lots of novels and podcasts during my long commute or when I'm doing chores, the types of mindless activities you are normally doing idle thinking. It's more difficult to pay attention to them when I'm driving in heavy city traffic but it's easy on the highway. It's really easy to wash dishes, fold laundry, or vacuum when listening to something. I mostly like doing novels with lots of narrative prose because it's hard to listen to something like a self-help or technical subject audiobook when you can't easily reread a sentence or quickly look at a diagram. Having long blocks of narrative prose let you miss some things when your attention wanders rather than missing dialogue where you may miss some important part of the story. Books that do rely on visual aids include PDFs for you to browse but that's very difficult to do unless you are just sitting down doing absolutely nothing.

When I was working from home everyday at the start of the pandemic, I was building up a large backlog of podcasts and was not able to keep up with audiobooks I had rented from my local library through Overdrive.

Re: Audiblegate

#69

Post by IIAOPSW »

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…

Amazon doesn't get sued for the instances that are not in their favor. Consequently, you never see those in the news.

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*lFhFi-5JsP-zhW7Al...

Re: Audiblegate

#70

Post by alar44 »

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…

Are you seriously asking how someone can listen to something and do another thing at the same time?
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