Amazon Prime #AudibleGate

[Husky_Khan]

So this turned up in my Youtube Feed.



Long story short, this Channel released a Graphic Novel on various platforms including Patreon and Google Books and Audible and soon found out among the poor customer service they get in general, that Audible's profit sharing is abysmal. Exclusive creators get a 40% cut and non-exclusive creators get a 25% cut... but apparently after some investigation, they and many other creators discovered they are actually getting a 13% revenue payout and its hidden from the Creators by Amazon. Furthermore any returns of audiobooks result in the revenue being clawed away from the Creators instead of being shared between Audible and the Creators collectively.

Google Books meanwhile, comparatively only takes half... and says that up front apparently instead of trying to hide hidden profits through various chicanery.

There's apparently an alliance of Creators and whatnot that set up a website and petitions and analysis of the whole affair as well.

Audiblegate Petition: Background & Principles

Audiblegate campaign background, principles, and petition. Authors signing up to this email campaign put their name to this petition.

www.allianceindependentauthors.org

 

[Bacle]

Wow, that is some bullshit.

I love Space-docks shorts about different ships from different series.

Hope the groups is successful with this.

 

[Laskar]

Yeah, this is old news, it's just been flying under the radar for the most part.

Audible sells itself on the policy of free returns. If you buy an audiobook, you can return it free of charge, whether you've finished it or not. You get a refund for the book, or you can exchange it for store credit and get another audiobook.

Of course, Amazon isn't going to pay for this out of their pocket, no. That would be the ethical and sensible thing to do, and if there's one thing we know about the company that Jeff Bezos runs...

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Could a class action lawsuit be launched for contractual fraud?