211–220 of 362 posts
Can everyone please just stop using Amazon products already? I'm sick of hearing people complain about them and still say "but they're too convenient" or "I've no other option!". You do. Stop using Amazon and related products. Tell everyone you can to stop using Amazon and related products.
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> But then - they offer you a very low percentage if you sell your book anywhere else… and a not so terrible % if you go with them (not great, but not terrible). Audible's network effects can only be dislodged by people not listing their books on Audible at all ; so this shouldn't have much of an effect. > For an individual seller it is worth taking that deal. So they do. But the consequence is that no other market c…
> Audible's network effects can only be dislodged by people not listing their books on Audible at all; so this shouldn't have much of an effect. This isn’t quite right and misses most of what’s going on. Since a book that’s exclusive to A can’t appear on B - B can never get any network effects and thus can’t compete with A. And if B did begin to get any network effects - through an innovative technique ( Eg when book…
Indeed, and it should probably be illegal for a company with a monopoly to buy exclusivity as Amazon is doing. But even if the Justice Department took interest and Audible switched to (say) 35% across the board, that wouldn't by itself be enough to dislodge Audible's network effects.
That's why I described a plan of attack which wouldn't involve the Justice Department: Rather than starting B and asking publishers to list on both A and B, start B and ask publishers to list only on B (or at least, not on A). That would jump-start the network effects on B.
It would require publishers to accept lower profits for a few years while B was getting established and A lost brand; but if the pricing really rises to the level of abusive (as opposed to just less than they think is fair), publishers should be willing to do that.
> And if B did begin to get any network effects - through an innovative technique ( Eg when book depository made ground by offering free shipping) — A would take notice and simply buy B before it was a big enough threat.
Well yes, which is why such acquisitions should be prevented.
This should be absolutely illegal.
I feel like the Twitter thread—for all its focus on royalty math—is missing some crucial context for people not immersed in the sausage-making of audiobooks, specifically Audible's ACX platform. I worked for Audible some years ago, so understand this context a bit better than most, and can explain for those who are interested. I left Audible not too long after ACX launched, but remember many meetings about it. To be…
Conversely, the default state of things where ACX is effectively targeting the "leftovers" that nobody else thought was profitable enough, also represents an opportunity for product marketing. To those authors who have no other choice but ACX, ideally you'd want them to feel like this is a positive for them, a saving grace, a friend helping you out when nobody else would... rather than like say, a loan shark offering usurious terms and a threat to break your kneecaps after you've tried other banks and couldn't get a business loan. Picking an interpretation is really just about a point of view, so the PR/marketing folks better get out there and start spinning the other way (which to be fair, I think there IS a legitimate friendly take here, and IMO I don't think Audible is really the loan shark in this analogy).
For now, the net result is not dissimilar from Uber and its drivers. Uber PR will harp on flexibility and extra side income opportunities that wouldn't be possible without Uber, while detractors will harp on the low earnings potential factoring in vehicle maintenance or the ever present contractor vs employee debate. No matter which side you believe more, the net result is that drivers don't have much leverage and aren't getting a particularly generous deal by any means... So it goes for authors and narrators on ACX too, I think.
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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.
Yes, they do actually. They organize sales and have temporary reduced prices sold to customers and paid to suppliers. That’s why some cereals go on sale and others don’t. It’s not like they decide to take a loss only on Kelloggs cereal. The discount is because they pay less to manufacturers.
Similarly for audible, the contract stipulates this. So I think it would be wrong if Audible unilaterally decided to not pay authors. But they didn’t do that, they have a contract, signed by authors that lets them put books on sale and pay less.
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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 th…
This is a universal problem, it's so universal that there's even a field of development which solves the problem - Domain-Driven Design. It's not exactly rocket-science either - you basically involve domain experts in the development proces directly, and codify their knowledge in a form that they can understand (be that very explicit models, or focussed domain-specific languages).
> It's not exactly rocket-science either
I'd imagine that occasionally "rocket science" is exactly what it is!
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Um. Amazon is a marketplace, it gets a cut. Since the sale is void, the seller gets 0, Amazon gets some percent of that, which is ... 0. what the hell. how else could it be? if Amazon is billing sellers for "transaction" costs (or presence on platform cost), that's one thing, but that should be a fixed dollar amount. even using the term "cost" makes no sense, because it's not a cost, it's "would have been revenue", a…
Yeah I genuienly think that the author expects Amazon to just eat the cost of returned books. Looking at their other arguments, I guess it's simply because "they can afford it". And while that's true, I don't see any reason why it should work this way - even actual real life bookstores return unsold books to publisher and the publisher has to eat that cost.
People need to understand that the people making these tweets have incentive to create outrage for more exposure/followers. “Introducing Audiblegate” - Maybe I’m jaded, but you JUST KNOW they were hoping someone like The Verge would eat that up as a headline and link their Tweet in the ensuing article.
Amazon has done some really shady stuff in their lifetime, but cmon.
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…
You are describing incompetence born from undirected malice. While it is true the malice did not lead directly to the greedy behaviour, it leads to an absolute lack of continuous knowledge (due to employees constantly leaving the company). The fact that this is not addressed in a way that actually works makes it at least indirectly purposeful. In that sense, Amazon as an entity is in fact being greedy and it is also…
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If you run out of credits, you can also buy 3 extra for £18 (I'm not sure what the USD price is). That's significantly cheaper than buying 3 audio books at full price. Credits with frequent 2-for-1 sales, £3 sales and £1 sales, there is just no reason to ever pay retail price on Audible.
I suspect the retail price is just there as a psychological suggestion to make you think you are getting a good deal with the credits.