Audiblegate

I've been quiet the last week in order to finish A Virtue of Child. However that doesn't mean things aren't happening in the publishing world.

I talked about Audible and their atrocious return policy last month. The return policy that essentially turned Audible into a subscription service.

Writers and publishers were steamed. Steamed to the point that The Authors Guild, which is primarily trad publishing folks, and the Alliance of Independent Authors, which is primarily indie folks as the name says, teamed up to tackle the issue.

Now, there's Audiblegate.com, a clearing house website that collects info about Audible's shitty practices. It promotes awareness to those who have been screwed over by Audible and a warning to those who haven't been yet. The website is run by two talented, brave women, Colleen Cross and Susan May. Check out the website. If you're having an issue with Audible and your royalties, contact them. Otherwise, I hope you'll support their campaign for author justice.

Side Note: If you're an author who's been screwed over by Audible, contact your state attorney general's office and file a complaint. Also, contact your state and federal legislators. Audible's serial disregard for their own contracts will be of interest to investigators looking into Amazon's overall business practices.

Audible and Its Return Policy

Audiobooks. Listeners love them, but they are fucking expensive to produce, especially if you're an indie author. That's why I haven't done any audiobooks yet.

ACX, Amazon's production arm, introduced a split- royalty program for the writer and the voice talent. However, many books don't make back their production costs. So a lot of voice talent refuse to do the split payments anymore.

I can't blame them. When I looked into the costs for producing an audiobook version of A Question of Balance, I was looking at $2,000.

Minimum.

That's a lot of work for little or no return.

But it's Audible's latest stunt that has the writers and publishers up in arms. Amazon ended up in a class-action suit filed by customers for how they charged and refunded monies. So executives at Audible went too far the other way. Customers could return the audiobook any time for any reason, or no reason at all.

For the price of one audiobook, customers could return and buy audiobooks multiple times. Suddenly, monies that had been already paid to authors and publishers were being charged against their accounts with no record of any returns.

Not only did the policy exist, Audible actively encouraged customers to use the company as a library for the price of one audiobook.

First of all, I have no problem with libraries or people using actual libraries. However, the writers and publishing believed they had made sales. Months later Audible then claimed the writers and publishers owed them money. There was no explanation why.

Transparency seems to be Audible's big problem.

And this isn't the first time they've ended up on writers' shit list. Two years ago, the Association of American Publishers went after Audible for showing the book's text while the audio played. Audible's parent company Amazon had already been in legal trouble for using the Kindle's text-to-speech function to do the opposite, read the book aloud.

The Authors Guild has teamed up with indie writers to pressure Audible to not dock the writers and publishers for returns. However, Audible hasn't delivered full accountability for the sales lost.

In my humble opinion, there's a recurring theme here. Amazon is turning into another conglomerate looking to screw whoever they can, just like Walmart did after their founder's death. It's a shame, but there's an end to everything. This is the chance for some other company to take over the audiobook field.

And I think it's already starting.