Peadar Posted November 21, 2020 Share Posted November 21, 2020 According to this link, Audible may have found a neat way to avoid paying creators for their work. If true, it's pretty horrific. Apparently, when people finish listening to a title, even if they loved it, they are permitted to exchange for another and the content creators don't get paid. "You can return it for any reason, no questions asked." Amazon, of course, is still getting the subscription money. I mean, I could understand it if you listened to the first third of a book and realised you hated it, but to go all the way to the end and then exchange it? Bah. Also, humbug. To make it all worse, they've been using strange account reporting methods to make it more difficult for the authors in question to realise what has happened to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dog-days Posted November 22, 2020 Share Posted November 22, 2020 Thanks for bringing this up. I already felt bad about using Audible because it's owned by Amazon, but this is an incredibly scummy thing to do the people that create the content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peadar Posted November 23, 2020 Author Share Posted November 23, 2020 Yeah, I use amazon for all sorts of things myself, but I'm feeling very stupid right now. Lots of people warned what would happen if they and other companies were allowed to become giants and here we are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poobah Posted November 23, 2020 Share Posted November 23, 2020 On 11/21/2020 at 10:23 PM, Peadar said: According to this link, Audible may have found a neat way to avoid paying creators for their work. If true, it's pretty horrific. Apparently, when people finish listening to a title, even if they loved it, they are permitted to exchange for another and the content creators don't get paid. "You can return it for any reason, no questions asked." Amazon, of course, is still getting the subscription money. I mean, I could understand it if you listened to the first third of a book and realised you hated it, but to go all the way to the end and then exchange it? Bah. Also, humbug. To make it all worse, they've been using strange account reporting methods to make it more difficult for the authors in question to realise what has happened to them. When a normal person does it it's piracy, when Amazon does it it's business as usual. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dog-days Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 Audible has changed its policy a little, but not enough, IMO. Seven days is way too long to allow someone a book without royalties going to the author. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peadar Posted November 29, 2020 Author Share Posted November 29, 2020 3 hours ago, dog-days said: Audible has changed its policy a little, but not enough, IMO. Seven days is way too long to allow someone a book without royalties going to the author. Agreed! Personally, I'd be happy enough with a percentage of the book -- say, 30%. It gives somebody a fair shot of saying whether they like the book or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ants Posted November 30, 2020 Share Posted November 30, 2020 Hell no. I've got plenty of books on my kindle that I've yet to read for multiple reasons. If was with Prime and had downloaded them without reading them, I'd be pissed that the author didn't get any money. But then, I suppose that is why I buy all my content, even if I don't read half of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted November 30, 2020 Share Posted November 30, 2020 I can weather this audiobook storm and so can a lot of other Audible dependent authors like those who work for Crossroad Press but I know some narrators, particularly those who depend on payments from royalty share, that this has effectively wiped out the income for. The number of returned audiobooks is not at all a small amount. One of my friends actually has not made ANY money in 3 months because of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peadar Posted December 4, 2020 Author Share Posted December 4, 2020 On 11/30/2020 at 4:40 AM, C.T. Phipps said: One of my friends actually has not made ANY money in 3 months because of this. That is absolutely disgusting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted December 4, 2020 Share Posted December 4, 2020 As far as I can tell, I think this absolutely has to be illegal but they have the money to just ignore it and the monopoly to say, "Whatcha gonna do?" I am going to go through the SFWG and hope they have a position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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