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Audiblegate

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Re: Audiblegate

#311

Post by reddog »

mrleinad wrote: post #233
reddog wrote: post #227

He lost me at the start by complaining about Audibles listener friendly return policy. How is the producer "shouldering the cost" when I return their crappy, overwritten, poorly narrated audible book for credit?

Not sure what the limits are for returning content, but I'd set some if they haven't already. You shouldn't be able to return the content if you listened on its entirety, for example.

I agree that its dishonest and despicable to return a book that you've completed and enjoyed (or even found mediocre). In fact I wish there was a Audible tip jar that let me give extra money to writers who have changed my life with a great book.

But if you've read enough you've probably had the experience of finishing the last page of a book and hurling it across the room in anger and frustration. It could be that that writer has pulled you though the story by making narative promises that painted him into a corner resulting in a maddening it-was-all-a-dream type conclusion. Or maybe you get to the last few pages of a book and start to realize that the story is not going to conclude and this book is in fact the first book in a planned 12 volume epic that the 75 year old author is going to finish over the next 30 years.

In those cases I think the reader is out more than just a credit. Where do we go to get back the 20 never-to-be-relived hours of our lives that we just poured into this deadend crap?

And for the record, I have a couple of hundred Audible books in my library and only returned one that I completely finished. It resulted in a letter from Amazon fussing at me for doing so and telling me not to make it a habit.

Re: Audiblegate

#312

Post by snek_case »

krageon wrote: post #184
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…

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…

Anecdotally, I've heard lots of negative things about working at Amazon, no positive. In contrast I've known many people who work at Google and they seem generally happy with their jobs, have been there for years. The people I know who work in tech and are more desirable candidates would never choose Amazon as their first pick. I'm surprised that Amazon works as well as it does, as a company. There's a real cost to high turnover.

Re: Audiblegate

#313

Post by frosted-flakes »

gambiting wrote: post #180
contravariant wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, taking it to absurd levels it would be something like if Spotify were to claim they are 'selling' songs to people who are currently listening to them and they are 'returned' when people stop, with Spotify just paying royalties over the difference. The situation with audiobooks is far less extreme, but there is a cost attached to lenient return policies. Though you'd expect Amazon to be losing more money on it t…

I'd love to know the stats for how many people listen to the entire book(or 90% of it) and then return it. I have refunded books on audible before, but it was always because I didn't like the narrator, I listen to books while driving and sometimes the narration works in the car, sometimes it really doesn't - that's when I refund and get something else, but it's always within the first hour of listening.

Furthermore, Audible only lets you return 2-3 books self-serve before you have to go through customer service. This small friction is a real impediment to abuse of the system, and I highly doubt Audible won't refuse returns if you return one every month.

I think I've returned 4-5 books total, out of 62 over the last 6 years[1]. All were because either I really didn't like the book, or the narration volume wasn't very well balanced (road noise means turning the volume up to hear the quiet parts, then getting your eardrums blasted out on the loud parts).

[1] It's hard to believe that I've spent 35+ entire days listening to audiobooks. That's nuts.

Re: Audiblegate

#314

Post by frosted-flakes »

chrispeel wrote: post #14

I used to use Audible, then I got a few public library cards (they're easy to get), and now use Libby on mobile and desktop

My library has a crappy selection though. Not Hardly even worth even checking if they have a book, because they won't.

Re: Audiblegate

#315

Post by falcolas »

vasachi wrote: post #82
falcolas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ACX producer here. You get as much say in the contract as you do the average EULA. If you want to use Audible without a publisher to negotiate on your behalf, you get a 40% royalty rate, but not always (hence the complicated math comments). Some purchases are worth nothing (literally invoiced at a 0% royalty rate) to the authors/producers.

Why are they 0%?

Looks like it's promo codes. Which authors can generate and sell/give away outside of audible. Technically, so can producers too.

So, still sketchy, but for different reasons.

Re: Audiblegate

#316

Post by falcolas »

prepend wrote: post #221
axxl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it, so it seems like the contract is just heavily skewed in favor of Amazon, where the content is subsidizing all of the deals and discounts that Audible provides. Although how they can get a 0% royalty on certain sales in is baffling to me. > But it’s Audible. What choice is there? Yeah, they sadly seem to be lacking in meaningful competition. People on twitter are talking about libro.fm which has a slew of anti…

> Although how they can get a 0% royalty on certain sales in is baffling to me. Wouldn’t this be a situation where they gave out promotional copies through free trials and stuff like that?

It looks like promotional codes are indeed the cause. That said, promo codes are also be sold through third parties. I think that's what's happened in my case.

Re: Audiblegate

#317

Post by falcolas »

throwthere wrote: post #283
falcolas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t dug into it too deeply myself, but here’s some numbers from late last year. Note that this as a producer sharing that 40% with the writer half and half (royalty share contract). One month saw 21 sales of a $19.99 audiobook. Amazon reported net sales of $76, so I made around $11. EDIT: looking closer, 17 of the sales occurred in a market/purchase combination that resulted in no royalties at all. The invoice…

Thanks for giving actual data. My take is many producers are surprised about the royalty share-- Amazon could be more upfront with expected revenue. The terms are monopolistic, but I mean, they have a monopoly.

The 60% cut is egregious and deserves more condemnation, especially with how much people gripe about Apple, Google's, and other parties 30% cut of payments.

Plus, I have yet to see a single retail price purchase. The biggest price someone has paid for a book I've seen a royalty payment on was $4.50.

Re: Audiblegate

#318

Post by falcolas »

axxl wrote: post #62
falcolas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t dug into it too deeply myself, but here’s some numbers from late last year. Note that this as a producer sharing that 40% with the writer half and half (royalty share contract). One month saw 21 sales of a $19.99 audiobook. Amazon reported net sales of $76, so I made around $11. EDIT: looking closer, 17 of the sales occurred in a market/purchase combination that resulted in no royalties at all. The invoice…

Got it, so it seems like the contract is just heavily skewed in favor of Amazon, where the content is subsidizing all of the deals and discounts that Audible provides. Although how they can get a 0% royalty on certain sales in is baffling to me. > But it’s Audible. What choice is there? Yeah, they sadly seem to be lacking in meaningful competition. People on twitter are talking about libro.fm which has a slew of anti…

> Got it, so it seems like the contract is just heavily skewed in favor of Amazon, where the content is subsidizing all of the deals and discounts that Audible provides.

With how much guff Apple and Google get for their 30% cuts, and they don't offer all kinds of "unauthorized" discounts off the retail price... yeah, Amazon's being a bad actor here.

Re: Audiblegate

#319

Post by Aachen »

Tepix wrote: post #289
Aachen wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author mentioned, and the only one I know of, is buying directly from the publishers. Problem is: those are ridiculously expensive, like 35 euros for a single audio book that I don't even know if I'll like the contents because you can't browse it. Physical books are usually 15 euros and then you have unit and shipping costs. Somehow the publisher is fine putting it on audible (where I pay €10) and getting a few p…

> This author (publisher?) is clearly not interested in getting sales via means other than Audible I guess the 40% instead of 25% (in reality: 21% and 13%) that Audible offers are the reason

But they can't get the higher percentage because there is technically another sales avenue, so it's not exclusive, even if barely a soul would make use of it.

Re: Audiblegate

#320

Post by Aeolun »

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…

> apart from the potential consequences being non fatal

Kind of a major factor though.

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