Link: https://twitter.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1772446997313671226

To summarize, this dude complains about Amazon's shitty payout policy towards audiobook authors, then proceeds to blame "soulless communists" (I guess he's talking about Amazon?) and reveal his bizarre an-cap brainworms. Using his own an-cap logic, since labor is a "voluntary exchange", why is he so upset about this I wonder?

  • charlie
    ·
    8 months ago

    For those of you reading this who don’t know me, I’m Robert Zangari, the younger half of a multi-award winning and best selling father-son co-author team who write epic fantasy adventures.

    I think he might have a different perspective if the person writing the tweet just writes stuff that doesn’t sell. The estimates for production of the books lines up at least.

    Edit: I read all that and it just reinforced my belief that margin is bullshit.

    • charlie
      ·
      8 months ago

      When I first started selling audiobooks, I picked through our royalty reports, hoping to figure out the exact dollar amount we were getting for credit purchases. To my surprise, the answer was simpler than I expected.

      For purchases in the US Audible store, we received a royalty of $6.23 per credit purchase. Now, I know that several credit purchases were made with the discounted $11.98 credits, but I didn’t see a $4.79 royalty, nor have I ever seen a $4.79 royalty on a US Audible credit. In the three years I’ve been tracking my sales, every single US Audible credit generated a royalty of $6.23.

      The 21% in this lie is derived from taking that $6.23 royalty and dividing it by $29.99 (the suggested retail price). It comes out to 20.77%, but I’m sure they rounded up for convenience. I’ve read and commented on the article by Colleen Cross which originally cites these numbers, and the way the math is presented is flat out wrong. There is no “shortage” of royalty when Audible never collected that amount in the first place.