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Audiblegate

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Re: Audiblegate

#321

Post by advael »

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…

1. I doubt errors of this magnitude are tolerated for long when the financial beneficiary of the error is not Amazon, and if I'm correct in this, a systematic selection pressure of this kind is indistinguishable from greed in this context

2. I am no less uncomfortable with monopolistic publishers who exploit creators out of incompetence after becoming the only game in town and making any ability to walk away from negotiations with them a Hobson's choice at best than I am with ones where all of that is true except the harm is due to greed/malice instead

3. Corporations aren't people and even if you believe (as I don't) that they can meaningfully have intentions in the same sense that people do, those intentions do not matter in a context where the behavior is on the scale of an organization, and so separating incompetence from malice is a distraction in the first place

Re: Audiblegate

#322

Post by jboy55 »

a2800276 wrote: post #121
Abodono wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe it's greed in this case, but in my time at Amazon I saw many teams in "Keep Lights On" mode where one or two people with vague memories of how services are supposed to work try to keep them running I worked for Amazon as well, and I'd say it is greed, not in that the behavior was purposely designed to be malicious, but in the way they don't properly fund developers to work through their tech depts, and spend…

I'm always amazed that people can't see this as greed. If the CEO of a medical equipment company said: "screw all these expensive software engineers, physicists and testers, I have a 14 year old niece who can code up our radiation therapy machine for nickels" no one would be blaming incompetence of devs. I don't see how all the lack of solid requirements, software development process, testing and means of recourse ar…

Its not just company greed, you can't get any engineers to agree to maintain a service in Keep the Lights on mode. Its not in their interest, let me explain.

First, there's 0 chance at promotion doing maintenance work, so L4 (jr) engineers will bounce after a year or so as they have a clock running and have to move up or out. L5 engineers will stagnate and they will at risk for URA as they are supposed to keep improving. Frankly the work isn't L6 worthy, an L6 maintaining this as the only thing they are doing won't last a quarter.

So these services that just 'do the job' get bounced around from team to team and perhaps when they get old and creaky enough, an L4 can promo themselves doing an upgrade/refactor. Until then, they just exist and are a bane to some team where they only produce off hour pages, even if a whole publisher segment depends on them to get paid.

Re: Audiblegate

#323

Post by [deleted] »

thereddaikon wrote: post #244

Not a judgement on the content of the post, but is anyone else annoyed at the lazy trend to dub any controversy "something"-gate? Watergate was called that because that's the name of the hotel. Gate is not some synonym for scandal. It's just a gate. We used to have more appropriate names for things. At least the Panama Papers had a proper name, even if everyone forgot about it and nothing ever came of it.

[deleted]

Re: Audiblegate

#324

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Audiblegate

#325

Post by [deleted] »

belter wrote: post #26

Please stop ...communicating... via ... multiple ... twitter posts... please... ... write an article, blog, book, youtube video anything but these spread out posts.

[deleted]

Re: Audiblegate

#326

Post by altairprime »

lolinder wrote: post #270
werber wrote: post #265

What is the best option for someone who mostly listens to books read by the author and has relatively low brow taste? Recently two of my favorite musical acts, sleater Kinney and Liz phair released audible exclusives that I loved. I hate the idea of artists being screwed over, but, I’m at a loss for where to turn. Audible is a huge part of my life, but I don’t want to support artists being screwed over.

You're fine to keep using Audible, in that case. This Twitter thread is overblown. Read through the top few comments here and you'll see that what is happening is exactly what the artists sign up for: they get a portion of the net sales of credits , weighted by length/price of the book. Audible's business model is selling subscriptions. Artists get a share of that revenue, and their share is comparable to that from a…

Would it be comparable to Spotify Premium crossed with a Jukebox service of some sort in that regard, or is the credits model unusually unique to Audible here?

Re: Audiblegate

#327

Post by CraneWorm »

eru wrote: post #156
matsemann wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those promotions should be a cost of Amazon, not the authors. Weird how Amazon can take your product, sell it for a quarter of the price, and then claim they now owe you no money.

Eh, a company should be free to offer any bad deal they can dream up. If you don't like it, your job is to turn down that offer.

> If you don't like it, your job is to turn down that offer.

Sure, and disappear, because you're not listed by the bad deal company that has container-ships-of-money for marketing.

Re: Audiblegate

#328

Post by [deleted] »

rplnt wrote: post #174

It needs to be repeated that twitter is the worst medium for anything like this. Also, don't hook people with "40% is too low", because it isn't, and you might lose them before getting to the point. Especially easy on twitter, see above.

[deleted]

Re: Audiblegate

#329

Post by altairprime »

Ansil849 wrote: post #98

> 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?

I believe what’s bizarre about the policy is the following:

1. Buyer pays Amazon $xx for sale of audiobook.

2. Amazon credits publisher $xx and debits published 40-83% of $xx for handling fees.

3. Buyer is refunded $xx by Amazon

4. Amazon debits publisher $xx.

So as I understand the thread, Amazon is doing the equivalent of charging a ‘restocking fee’ equal to their share of the sale price, so that the publisher ends up paying out of pocket.

(Corrections welcome if I misread here.)

Re: Audiblegate

#330

Post by j_d_b »

Librivox is a community-supported free audio book service featuring the world's literature read by volunteers. They also have most new titles available. It is the perfect alternative to Audible.
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