At the end of July, Fantasy News YouTuber Daniel Greene posted a video warning about Audible’s new royalty program, demonstrating how it’s going to hurt indie authors. Now, bestselling fantasy author Michael J. Sullivan ad his wife are encouraging readers to sign a petition for Amazon to remove this new program.
Over the last year, Audible created Audible Plus, where subscribers can stream unlimited books from a curated selection alongside their monthly credit purchases, much like they do on Kindle with Kindle Unlimited. When customers use credits to buy indie books but also stream Plus titles, the revenue gets divided among all consumed content, which, overall, results in lower pay for Amazon authors.
Michael J. Sullivan is the fantasy author of the Ryria Revelations series, one of the first major independent self-published fantasy authors to achieve mega-success with his work. He’s done so by putting out quality books over the years and being ahead of the curve for various publishing initiatives. He follows business trends for authors very carefully, as they impact his business directly.
He posted to Facebook:
Over a year ago, Audible announced a new royalty model was coming and they claimed it would mean higher royalties for authors and publishers, but unfortunately the devil is in the details, and now that we've finally learned the details of this new model, we are gravely concerned.
While the headline announcement increases the royalty percentage as promised, buried in the fine print are scenarios which will lead to reduced royalties for authors who will be forced to subsidize money for titles in their All You Can Listen programs.
In short, They're taking money from higher value titles—that people pay for—to give to lower value titles that Audible themselves describe as "free."
I do not believe this is in the best interest for the vast majority of audiobook publishers, nor do I think it is aligned with how listeners would expect the creators of these stories to be compensated.
Robin has proposed that Audible keeps the pools separate to remain consistent with the revenue value of each audiobook. If that sounds good to you, please sign the petition so we can get Audible to understand our frustrations, and if you'd like a detailed explanation of how I got here, please read on:
He then links to a Change.org petition titled, “Convince Audible to revise it's New Royalty Model.”
The petition gives an entire scenario demonstrating how this is bad for authors, but it’s summed up in one of the paragraphs what happens:
As you can see, when a Premium member buys a title with a credit AND they also consume content from the all-you-can-listen library, income of one author is redirected to other authors. In essence, this sets up a "zero-sum game" where one author benefits at the expense of their fellow authors. To make matters worse, this model makes me complicit in this behavior even if I don't put any titles in the all-you-can-listen program.
The net effect is it hurts authors, much like the Kindle Unlimited program gives authors on average about 1/3 of the income from actually selling an e-book, diminishing the value of e-books on Amazon over time.
With AI fast coming, more and more indie authors are going to be able to put up audio versions of their books with very little to no cost, quickly flooding the market in what once was a difficult barrier to entry for many because of the cost of narration. Amazon is looking to capitalize on yet more subscription programs, but in the end, it seems that authors are going to be the ones hurt in the process.
What do you think of Amazon screwing authors with a new Audible program? Fandom Pulse stands with independent authors and urges everyone to sign the petition.
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NEXT: The Cancel Mob Returns To Harry Potter For Audiobook Outrage At Actress
Wealth redistribution based on Equity of outcome VS compensation based on equal opportunity and Merrit.
This is your brain on communism! Fuckin fagget kikes!
I agree that Audible screws authors over. On a side note, I’ve read a couple of Sullivan’s books. Good imagination and world building, but the story was very, very predictable. I haven’t had a desire to read any of his books since.