Audiblegate • Hacker News Board

Re: Audiblegate

#141

Post by marcus_holmes » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:00 AM UTC

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…

My mum was a textile artist, which means she spent a lot of her time looping bits of string through other bits of string. She listened to audio books because her hands could do all the looping by themselves with minimal required attention.

Re: Audiblegate

#142

Post by KingOfCoders » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:03 AM UTC

Not that I would agree, but this is the standard accounting practice of record labels and publishers for at least the last 50 years.

Re: Audiblegate

#143

Post by bitcharmer » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:03 AM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #116

bitcharmer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like this saying because it generalises too much. For example, if you follow this line of thought you'd never investigate murderous cops simply because their cameras where turned off due to their incompetence rather than purposeful, malicious action.

The first two words of the rule are "never assume ".

Reductio ad absurdum.

If you were really honest about the meaning of the quote you should say "never assume malice" because that's the actual statement here.

Re: Audiblegate

#144

Post by bitcharmer » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:07 AM UTC

koide wrote: post #130

bitcharmer wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just copy my comment from another leaf of this thread: I don't like this saying because it generalises too much. For example, if you follow this line of thought you'd never investigate murderous cops simply because their cameras where turned off due to their incompetence rather than purposeful, malicious action.

You're misunderstanding the quote. It doesn't mean to never investigate, but to never start with the assumption that it is malice. You can complement it with the famous "trust, but verify" quote. Or with "giving the benefit of the doubt".

Nope, the quote is quite limited in terms of conveying the idea. It never says anything about verification or trust. It basically says: "never assume malice if it's possible that incompetence took place".

That's pretty naïve way to see the world, especially in this day and age.

Re: Audiblegate

#145

Post by patrec » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:07 AM UTC

UweSchmidt wrote: post #127

tjbiddle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Never assume malice for that which can be better explained by incompetence"

It's the other way 'round. We're all good at tacitly accepting broken processes if it benefits us but will quickly fix things if opportune.

Exactly. Just like "Correlation does not imply causation" Hanlon's razor is one of those things people love to trot out to appear sophisticated when it has quite the opposite effect.

Would it also be "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" if Amazon's mistake was cutting their own fair share in half rather than their business partner's?

Re: Audiblegate

#146

Post by iqanq » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:09 AM UTC

aloer wrote: post #131

banku_brougham wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP clarified the opposite here. As former amazon retail I can confirm we commonly lost money to vendors, sellers, and customers. Funny example was prime day promo fat fingered, with several expensive lenses shipped for $99.

Fat fingered is one thing. The best price error I’ve seen was something else: In 2020 the German government lowered VAT in a reaction to covid from 19% to 16%. On the first day Amazon had reduced thousands of products by exactly 19% and only increased by 16% after a few hours. AFAIK they did honor every sale during that time. I can totally see that happening. Who develops systems with short term VAT changes in mind?…

>I can totally see that happening. Who develops systems with short term VAT changes in mind?

I suppose it's the same codebase as any other country's amazon, and there's a different VAT rate in every country.

Re: Audiblegate

#147

Post by marcus_holmes » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:10 AM UTC

I know I'm against the grain here, but I don't have much sympathy.

Firstly, no-one is forcing them to sell through Amazon/Audible. They don't have to. They could build their own storefront, with all the effort and cost that goes with that.

Secondly, publishers are complaining about shady accounting and crooked royalty payments? Publishers of all people? Oh, the irony.

Thirdly, presumably they've done the calculations, and even with the shady royalty payments it's still worth their while going through A/A rather than selling elsewhere (presumably because A/A's reach is far bigger than anything they can do on their own). This is about "we want more of the pie", though granted it's "we want the share of the pie that we were promised".

Lastly, publishers will happily stiff everyone else when they have the power. Appealing to the masses to help them when the shoe is on the other foot is pathetic. I'm much more inclined to schadenfreude than sympathy.

Re: Audiblegate

#148

Post by nigerian1981 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:20 AM UTC

playpause wrote: post #134

delgaudm wrote: post #44

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 mi…

My housemate is an audiobook recording engineer. I just asked him about it. He says in the best case, with a skilled narrator, an hour of audiobook can take only 1 hour 10 minutes to record. In the worst case it can take up to three hours. I asked him if it could ever take up to five hours and he said no way, never.

“Yes, I can hear you, Clem Fandango!”

Re: Audiblegate

#149

Post by gambiting » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

I'm honestly curious about this statement, maybe someone can explain - the author seems to be upset about this part:

"where the consumer could return their AB whenever they pleased, and the PRODUCER shouldered the cost."

....as opposed to who? When you return an item to amazon within their returns policy, who do you think pays you back for that? Is the author assuming that when their book gets "returned" for any reason.....it's amazon who should pay the consumer back, not the author? Why?

Re: Audiblegate

#150

Post by eru » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

iqanq wrote: post #146

aloer wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fat fingered is one thing. The best price error I’ve seen was something else: In 2020 the German government lowered VAT in a reaction to covid from 19% to 16%. On the first day Amazon had reduced thousands of products by exactly 19% and only increased by 16% after a few hours. AFAIK they did honor every sale during that time. I can totally see that happening. Who develops systems with short term VAT changes in mind?…

>I can totally see that happening. Who develops systems with short term VAT changes in mind? I suppose it's the same codebase as any other country's amazon, and there's a different VAT rate in every country.

VAT is baked into retail prices in Germany. And retail prices are typically either something round or end in .99 or so; ie not arbitrary.

So it's unlikely their German prices would just take the same input as eg Dutch prices and changed the VAT around.