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Audiblegate

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Re: Audiblegate

#191

Post by gwd »

LeonB wrote: post #187
gwd wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Total monopolistic practices with abuse of market power. In a competitive environment no producer would accept this. Hasn't Audible's business model been basically unchanged since its inception? Everyone who puts their books on their knows the price of a credit, which is normally like $15, and so knows they'd get at best $6 per book sold on there. How would Audible become a monopoly if people didn't like those odds…

The moat is massive. Their existing market power means that by not being on audible you’re walking away from most of your potential readers. That bit doesnt seem too bad… 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). For an individual seller it is worth taking that deal. So they do. But the consequence is…

> 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 can achieve comparable power.

Right; so the approach would be for BetterBooks, before launch, to talk privately to a large number of publishers, with an offer like, "You agree to drop Audible and only go with us for 3 years, if we can get 60% of publishers to agree to do the same." If Audible's deal is really as horrible as this person is making out, it should be easy for any individual publisher to agree to that; and easy to get 60% of publishers on board. Then when BetterBooks launches, they have loads of great titles which Audible is lacking.

Re: Audiblegate

#192

Post by regularfry »

morelisp wrote: post #164
radicalbyte wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Sorry, but domain-driven design is actually when you have "class Licensor; class Licensee; class RoyaltyPayment". What you're describing is competence and attention to detail, and that's too much to expect from development teams.

And that's why DDD doesn't just involve development teams. It explicitly calls for people who are competent in the domain and know the details that need attention to be involved in the design process.

Re: Audiblegate

#193

Post by doctor_eval »

bitcharmer wrote: post #143
throwanem wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not at all. If you have two equally likely possibilities - malice and incompetence - you should assume incompetence.

I have another saying though: “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”.

Re: Audiblegate

#194

Post by LeonB »

gwd wrote: post #191
LeonB wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moat is massive. Their existing market power means that by not being on audible you’re walking away from most of your potential readers. That bit doesnt seem too bad… 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). For an individual seller it is worth taking that deal. So they do. But the consequence is…

> 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…

if it was easy as you say… it would take a massive investment - and that’s a demonstration of a moat right there.

But it wouldn’t be that easy - because Amazon can afford to give better deals to the top 1% of popular authors and thus the cost to achieve what you’re saying would be far higher.

Re: Audiblegate

#195

Post by jsnell »

estaseuropano wrote: post #109
jsnell wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Without having read the whole page, I understand form your summary that: A) amazon alone decides when to float credits and their price B) authors are promised a certain rate (40%) of the price, but in reality this credit system destroys that %% completely C) in the end amazon makes always a >60% profit off each book, irrespective of the price sold. D) Their incentive is thus to sell as many units as they can, underpr…

> A) amazon alone decides when to float credits and their price

Yes.

> B) authors are promised a certain rate (40%) of the price, but in reality this credit system destroys that %% completely

No. They are not promised a rate of the retail price. They are promised a share of the net sales of credits, proportional to how many of the credits were spent on their books. They should know the key parts of the business model here: Audible sell the credits for significantly cheaper than the retail price, and the narrators are being paid based on the actual amount spent on the credits not based on the retail price.

> C) in the end amazon makes always a >60% profit off each book, irrespective of the price sold.

No. The minimum revenue per-book guarantee is being hit every single month. So the narrators are being paid a bigger share than the contract promised, and Amazon is paying that difference from their cut.

> D) Their incentive is thus to sell as many units as they can,

And since the earlier points were incorrect, this conclusion doesn't actually follow.

Re: Audiblegate

#196

Post by LeonB »

gwd wrote: post #191
LeonB wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moat is massive. Their existing market power means that by not being on audible you’re walking away from most of your potential readers. That bit doesnt seem too bad… 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). For an individual seller it is worth taking that deal. So they do. But the consequence is…

> 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 depository made ground by offering free shipping) — A would take notice and simply buy B before it was a big enough threat.

Hence again - individuals and normal market forces can’t displace an established monopolist.

And the moat is huge.

Re: Audiblegate

#197

Post by conor_f »

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.

Re: Audiblegate

#198

Post by aloer »

speleding wrote: post #190
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?…

> Aldi iirc just kept the old prices and simply gave a 3% discount at checkout I get your point, but they probably gave a discount of 1-(1.16/1.19) =~ 2.5%

Right. Since it was limited to a few months only I believe they just accepted the loss, put out some ads with 3% discount etc. Same with the lower VAT for food products.

Probably also rounded down in favor for the customer but I can’t remember the details

Re: Audiblegate

#199

Post by aloer »

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.

I looked this up just now and apparently Amazons case is more complicated due to things like sold by Amazon (16%) vs third party sellers (they got to choose if they pass it down to the customer or not). It was an economy stimulus after all.

And apparently fixed book prices (printed on the back) were up to every single publisher to decide about

Then you also have different VAT rules depending on the product category. Food is 7% in Germany.

Lastly I also remember that Amazon gift cards were weird for a few hours. Something like you pay 48.50 and got 50€ worth of credit. I can’t remember if you could then use that credit to buy new gift cards.

Lots of ways where this becomes quite a complex problem real fast

Re: Audiblegate

#200

Post by delgaudm »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #182
playpause wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your housemate doesn't re-listen the recorded book, doesn't make edits, doesn't clear up passages, cut and rearrange unwanted silences? He is either wildly underestimating it by only taking the "talk into a microphone" part in consideration, or I feel terribly sorry for anyone listening to his audiobooks.

This is correct.
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