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Audiblegate

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Re: Audiblegate

#91

Post by weird-eye-issue »

WoahNoun wrote: post #88
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fees are broken out into line items. Shipping and inventory costs is a relatively small part. General marketplace fees are much higher. Have you ever sold on Amazon or done any research on this?

The general marketplace fees are the same whether you use FBA or not. Your original comment was complaining about FBA fees which are separate from the marketplace fees.

I'm not sure how you interpreted it that way. I was talking about Amazon's fees in general

I'm not sure why you are so stuck on shipping costs. I was clearly talking about all the fees.

Re: Audiblegate

#92

Post by harry8 »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #69
harry8 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't get prosecuted when I visit someone's house and don't burn it down when I ring their bell.

There is no excuse for this. None.

Re: Audiblegate

#93

Post by vzaliva »

the twitter thread and linked web page are doing poor job making the case agains audible. Someone should be able to write a succinct 1 page summary in plain English explaining the scheme coherently.

Re: Audiblegate

#94

Post by sdoering »

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 couldn't agree more. Also this person scandalizing and stirring things up sounded to me like trying to weapponize public opinion for personal gain.

I know from other, let's call the traditional, authors that classical book royalties were more in the 10 - 20 percent range for printed books. The upper range if you were a long published best seller with bargaining power.

So I was already irritated when he stated that 40% exclusive royalty (as a not so well known author I assume) was very little earnings per book. Without providing context that already was him trying to weapponize my opinion (at least that was how it felt to me).

Publishing that one feels there is an error on Audibles side in calculating royalties is not only legitimate but appreciated by me. I want to know that errors occur and ideally how they are fixed. Trying to manipulate me into enragement "porn" and wesponizing public outrage might be good for business or might feel like a valid approach when feeling wronged by Goliath but is - at least on my side - just off-putting.

So I do wish for all authors to be compensated based on the contracts they have with Audible. But I couldn't care less about this person's vendetta.

Re: Audiblegate

#96

Post by davnn »

atty wrote: post #18

I am confused. I spent a decent amount of time reading the thread and the linked article, and I see no proof, only an accusation that Amazon/Audible are manipulating their calculation of “Net Sales” in “shady ways”. Is the accusation that people are getting paid a percentage of an audible credit instead of a percentage of the retail price when a credit is used? Or that they don’t get paid when someone returns a purch…

I feel the same. It‘s really strange that the „forensic accountant“ suggests to calculate the royalty from the retail price, is that common practice anywhere? At least in my country, everything business related is calculated from the net prices.

However, what may not be clear for creators is that they will mostly sell their books cheaper than retail because of the subscriptions.

I don‘t understand the hype/gate.

Re: Audiblegate

#97

Post by Thorrez »

jsnell wrote: post #31
axxl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, e…

Across the system, not per-user. The only funky thing is that IIUC the computation of the total income across the whole system is done based on credits sold that month, rather than deferring the income from selling a credit to the month in which the credit is spent.

That funky thing sounds like it would work in authors' favor overall. I would guess there's some percent of credits that are sold but never used. So if Amazon only paid on on used credits, Amazon would be able to keep that money. If Amazon pays out on sold credits, the authors get it. Although the distribution between the authors can be wrong, leading to some individual authors losing out even if authors overall benefit.

Although if Amazon is always paying out some contractual minimum instead of the shared amount, then none of this makes a difference.

Re: Audiblegate

#98

Post by Ansil849 »

> a bizarre returns policy, where the consumer could return their AB whenever they pleased, and the PRODUCER shouldered the cost.

I don't understand, what's supposed to be bizarre about this policy? Why the seemingly snarky "where the consumer could return their AB whenever they pleased" comment?

Re: Audiblegate

#99

Post by yessirwhatever »

I’m no fan of audible but what you’re saying here is just epic-style whining that you’re not getting what you want, in which case I’ll tell you to stop putting your audiobooks on Audible and stop your whining.

In regards to returns, I like that policy. Not sure why you you’re being snarky about it.

To call this Audiblegate is like calling a fart a nuclear explosion.

Re: Audiblegate

#100

Post by rtpg »

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!

What happens in reality is someone writes the spec as "40% of the unit price" or something, and that gets taken from some DB table at Amazon that has "unit price", but the meaning is different from what the spec refers to as "unit price".

Meanwhile both sides of the interaction (Amazon and the publishers) are using words they recognize, but with different meanings behind them! And both sides are so used to seeing the words that _of course_ it's the right thing (until it's not!).

Of course the reality is probably more subtle than this, but spec documents don't save you from domain knowledge (or lack thereof) 100% of the time. Definitely helpful as a reference document, of course! And it eliminates a large class of discussions.

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