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Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

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Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#141

Post by OO000oo »

chromoblob wrote: post #132
OO000oo wrote: post #106

Pure silliness. The problems at hand are political economic matters. Individualist virtue signaling like refusing distribution with DRM is a good way to build a brand but will have no role whatsoever in actually accomplishing said goals.

This is just author's decision to distribute his audiobook without DRM. I don't see that this decision must necessarily be tied to the actual goals. Maybe author has other goals too and doesn't want to act in conflict with them.

Fair enough. I don't see why he would do it otherwise but I see your point.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#142

Post by marcus_holmes »

Backed. Always willing to support authors selling DRM-free work.

I haven't been on Kickstarter for years. I felt kinda odd to buy an already-written book there ("your reward may not happen" warnings when I'm clearly just buying a book rather than backing a project). But I see a lot of "projects" are basically pre-sales there. Where do people go for genuine crowd-funding of bluesky projects?

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#143

Post by marcus_holmes »

TylerE wrote: post #100
taeric wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I covered this in other threads, basically. In truth, I was largely responding to this angle at the outset. DRM feels like a red herring that almost certainly exists due to demands from publishing houses. (I'll have to check to see if you can get any non-DRM files from libraries. My expectation is going to be a big no on that from any library that lends out audio books.) The odd complaint here is that the authors are…

The audible drm is also pretty trivially stripped if you actually care about such things. It aint exactly AACS.

That's good. But it shouldn't be on there in the first place.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#144

Post by gorgoiler »

brightlancer wrote: post #136
bitwize wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creators as well. Talk to anyone who works in a creative field that isn't programming. They want DRM. They love it. And the reason why is simple: DRM works. It does the job. It doesn't stop all piracy, but it greatly attenuates it allowing the creators to make a buck. I remember discussing this with a writing group in the 90s, when the first e-readers came out. They vastly preferred the DRM-encumbered platforms becau…

> Take DRM away, and creators will just stop releasing things digitally. Is that guaranteed? Album sales rarely made money for musicians; they made their money from live performances and merchandise. Plenty of musicians have released their music online as MP3s to drive folks to their concerts. And long before DRM, we used to record things off the radio. It's easier than ever to share music but instead people pay mont…

In the 90s I really wanted this one song by REM. I can’t even remember what it was. The band had just rounded out their deal with one record label and moved to another, and the old label closed out the deal with a “greatest hits” record from everything up and including Document, I think.

That CD cost me $16. That’s $30 today. For an hour of music. Record label culture reeks of greed.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#145

Post by figmert »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #142

Backed. Always willing to support authors selling DRM-free work. I haven't been on Kickstarter for years. I felt kinda odd to buy an already-written book there ("your reward may not happen" warnings when I'm clearly just buying a book rather than backing a project). But I see a lot of "projects" are basically pre-sales there. Where do people go for genuine crowd-funding of bluesky projects?

I've been doing that through Crowdcube. You don't always get products, but you do get actual real shares.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#146

Post by eslaught »

taeric wrote: post #98
eslaught wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 40% cut makes sense in a world where Amazon pays the voice actor. My understanding is that is not how this works. The author pays the voice actor, or the publisher does. Amazon is paying for hosting an audio file, basically, and the development of the player app, and that's it. I think in the very early days, Amazon may have paid all the voice actors itself (because no one was on board with audio yet at that point)…

My understanding is that it will depend on the book? I'd love to see more discussion on that whole ecosystem, honestly. Some of the first searches seem decent to read on. I just know that, even today, the audio books I purchase are far cheaper if I get them from Audible than basically anywhere else. Unless it is a book on CD I get from the library, for obviously different reasons. I also know that things are byzantin…

My understanding is that Amazon runs imprints, like Audible Originals [1], that basically act like a publisher. I.e., they buy the rights, produce the audio, pay the voice actor, and the author gets some royalty (presumably smaller than 40%).

But my understanding is that the large publishers mostly do this themselves (and therefore have to pay the voice actor out of the 40% cut they get). Similarly, independent authors won't get access to this level of service; in some cases they're literally reading the book themselves, but they still only get the 40% cut (and that's with exclusivity).

The reason why audiobooks are cheaper is due to the subscription model. That's the chief innovation that Amazon pioneered with Audible. Now, their clout certainly also had something to do with it, and the burgeoning Kindle ecosystem. But the issue of price is really a matter of subscriptions being stickier and keeping customers in the ecosystem longer, making it possible to make aggregate more money. It's the same business model as Netflix, Dropbox, Adobe CC, etc.

[1]: https://www.audible.com/ep/audible-originals

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#147

Post by fatfingerd »

taeric wrote: post #113
Snarwin wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think these authors intend for you to interpret their criticism of Audible's business practices as a statement about your moral character. One of their central points is that Audible's business practices have severely limited consumer choice in the audiobook market. You can't be held morally responsible for a choice that's been taken out of your hands.

May not be their intent, but at large declaiming something is bad and "enshitifying" the internet is a very transitive label? And again, there is no evidence that audible is lessoning consumer choice? There is some evidence that they lesson producer practical choice. But even that is weak? With few exceptions, mostly audible produced works, I can find all of the books I care about elsewhere.

The cumulative point of this thread seems to be that they are getting to work with 75% of 90% of the audible book market (you claim books are available elsewhere = 25% commission).

You can call that whatever you want, but it sounds a lot like the descent to pre-Internet situations that weren't markers of stable quality and that many people who survived the 1980s don't want to see again.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#149

Post by warkdarrior »

freedomben wrote: post #82
warkdarrior wrote: post #72

Looking forward to download the book from LibGen.

Care to explain why you want to steal from the author? Has he offended you with his high level of consideration and respect?

The Kickstarter page shows that the author has already received the amount of money they asked for (and more). So they should be OK with their book being distributed for free to the rest of the world.

Or do you think the author should use some form of DRM to control what people do with their book?

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#150

Post by sgregnt »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #73
taeric wrote: post #5

I have a hard time getting behind some of these criticisms of audible and the like. Its annoying, as I am against most DRM schemes out there. But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. A ridiculously large portion of "tech" is perfectly fine with sending copies everywhere. Is literally how many of us get our operating system. Music files and shareware copying were huge before the internet. Mod f…

How about Brandon Sanderson's criticism of Audible? [1] > If you want details, the current industry standard for a digital product is to pay the creator 70% on a sale. It’s what Steam pays your average creator for a game sale, it’s what Amazon pays on ebooks, it’s what Apple pays for apps downloaded. (And they’re getting heat for taking as much as they are. Rightly so.) > Audible pays 40%. Almost half. For a frame of…

Sorry, I just don't understand the complaint, if you don't like audiable, then don't do business with them? You can sell your book yourself directly.
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