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Why none of my books are available on Audible

doctorow.medium.com

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Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#51

Post by temporalparts »

icyfox wrote: post #36

Audible has some flagrant dark patterns in their design for consumers as well. While you _could_ buy independent audiobooks at cost, their most popular model is to subscribe to a monthly membership where you earn one credit a month. This monthly credit can buy any audio book. The dig comes if you decide you have too many credits cached. Perhaps because you can't get through one audiobook a month. If you cancel a subs…

But the credits are SOOOOO much cheaper than the raw audiobook cost. Since books are over $40 whereas credits are at most $15.

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#52

Post by yojo »

nprateem wrote: post #50
yojo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Doctorow is doing this for the reasons he outlined, but let’s be clear: his brand is all about being anti this kind of shit. Selling out on his principles to make half a million in the audible store might still be a net financial negative if it causes him to lose credibility with the many people who buy his other books and pay his speaker fees.

No one would probably have thought about it or cared if he hadn't made a big fuss about it.

Maybe? You do enough of this kind of stuff and you’re going to lose credibility. Possibly your devoted fans let you off the hook for the first offense. But Audible has a pretty scummy reputation in some circles (as evidenced by other comments here).

Also, making a big fuss about it is content marketing, which works because of his brand. He’s on the front page of HN with a blog post that mentions a bunch of his offerings/plays up the quality of his audiobooks. More financial incentive to forego the Audible dollars.

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#53

Post by SilasX »

exotree wrote: post #14

“ My agent tells me that if I’d been willing to set aside my ethics and allow Audible to slap DRM on my books, I’d have made enough money to pay off my mortgage and save enough to pay for my kid’s entire college education. That’s a price I’m willing to pay.” I have to be honest and say… I think I would be very frustrated with my spouse if this principle cost us so much potential financial freedom in other parts of ou…

Doctorow still has a mortgage? (Like, and not because the interest rate is so low that he’d pay it as slow as possible? And even then, why use that as your standard of “having a lot of money”?)

I guess I overestimated the returns to fame?

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#54

Post by chrisseaton »

icyfox wrote: post #36

Audible has some flagrant dark patterns in their design for consumers as well. While you _could_ buy independent audiobooks at cost, their most popular model is to subscribe to a monthly membership where you earn one credit a month. This monthly credit can buy any audio book. The dig comes if you decide you have too many credits cached. Perhaps because you can't get through one audiobook a month. If you cancel a subs…

Audio books seem to cost like £25 each, but credits are £8 a month. Seems like an absolute no-brainer if what you want to do is actually listen to books? If you're accumulating credits then you shouldn't be subscribed in the first place.

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#55

Post by honkler »

temporalparts wrote: post #51
icyfox wrote: post #36

Audible has some flagrant dark patterns in their design for consumers as well. While you _could_ buy independent audiobooks at cost, their most popular model is to subscribe to a monthly membership where you earn one credit a month. This monthly credit can buy any audio book. The dig comes if you decide you have too many credits cached. Perhaps because you can't get through one audiobook a month. If you cancel a subs…

But the credits are SOOOOO much cheaper than the raw audiobook cost. Since books are over $40 whereas credits are at most $15.

price is arbitrary. Bits and bytes are free.

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#56

Post by egypturnash »

exotree wrote: post #14

“ My agent tells me that if I’d been willing to set aside my ethics and allow Audible to slap DRM on my books, I’d have made enough money to pay off my mortgage and save enough to pay for my kid’s entire college education. That’s a price I’m willing to pay.” I have to be honest and say… I think I would be very frustrated with my spouse if this principle cost us so much potential financial freedom in other parts of ou…

It’s relative to how much money you have already. A quick search for “Cory doctorow net worth” suggests he is well-off enough to be able to turn that down.

Heck, in this article he mentions spending $50k on recording a previous audiobook, which looks to be the cost of two years at Harvard. I’m pretty sure he’s got a lot of financial freedom already.

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#57

Post by lioeters »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #31
Agingcoder wrote: post #22

Tangential question (and a serious one, since I'm pretty much baffled by the whole thing) : I don't use audiobooks, since I find them 'slow'. Why do people listen to them instead of reading books? Is it because, say, listening to one while driving is better than not being able to read since you have no time to do so? Or is there a specific pleasure in listening to a book read by someone else?

> I don't use audiobooks, since I find them 'slow'. Audiobook players all have speed controls that let you make them go faster.

That reminds me when I learned how blind people use the screen reader, the setting for the voice can be at an incredibly fast speed, where the words turn into "bits" of sound.

I know people who watch YouTube videos like that, and my brain cannot process spoken words so fast.

It also reminds me of hip hop, some of those raps are like a machine gun of words that overload the brain.

It's probably about personal preferences in "modes of thinking", visual, verbal, auditory, etc. I much prefer to read something than to watch a video or listen to audio, and can consume information the quickest.

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#58

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

lioeters wrote: post #57
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't use audiobooks, since I find them 'slow'. Audiobook players all have speed controls that let you make them go faster.

That reminds me when I learned how blind people use the screen reader, the setting for the voice can be at an incredibly fast speed, where the words turn into "bits" of sound. I know people who watch YouTube videos like that, and my brain cannot process spoken words so fast. It also reminds me of hip hop, some of those raps are like a machine gun of words that overload the brain. It's probably about personal preferen…

> my brain cannot process spoken words that fast

Not at first. This is something that people train themselves to do gradually. For me it didn't take very long to get to 3x playback speed for audiobooks, which untrained people usually find incomprehensible, but I started out much slower and then increased the speed a little every day because I wanted to be able to listen to more books.

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#59

Post by kybernetikos »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

I missed the call to action. Is there an alternative store the author recommends? A policy cure? Or is this a pure problem statement? (Which is fine.)

Yes I was hoping that he was announcing a collaboration with others with similar problems. One of the things that leads to this kind of abuse is industry dominance, and one of the things that encourages industry dominance is that average consumers don't want to have to think about more than a couple of places to go to get their content. A collaboration of those who have been bitten by audible would be much better than each of them doing their own thing.

Re: Why none of my books are available on Audible

#60

Post by em-bee »

Agingcoder wrote: post #22

Tangential question (and a serious one, since I'm pretty much baffled by the whole thing) : I don't use audiobooks, since I find them 'slow'. Why do people listen to them instead of reading books? Is it because, say, listening to one while driving is better than not being able to read since you have no time to do so? Or is there a specific pleasure in listening to a book read by someone else?

reading requires 100% focus. you can't listen to anything else. you can't use your hands unless you read off a computer screen, and then you still need to switch pages somehow, you can't move around either. people watch tv on a treadmill, but reading won't work because you need to keep the focus on the current line. reading while commuting with public transport works at least.

on the other hand listening opens up a number of other activities at the same time. i started listening on my commute. when that went away i discovered going for a walk as a replacement exercise and as a great way to get some listening time in. in fact because i want to get more time to listen, i end up going for longer walks.

besides audiobooks i also listen to audio drama and podcasts. i started with the latter. audio books came later, when i decided that i wanted to read more, and it allowed me to start picking up some books without changing my habits.

i love reading. i was a bookworm when i was a kid. i stopped because i got to busy and just would not find the time. i was also traveling a lot and didn't want to carry books around. if i pick up something to read now i loose track of time.

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