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?
*describes theft of labor value, a fundamental requirement of capitalism*
“This must be communism.”
The greatest trick capitalism ever pulled was convincing the world it was communism.
soulless communism, i.e. when the big corporation has all the power over me.
These chuds are so dumb they think anything that slightly inconveniences them is gommulism
wow this is actually great to learn, I will now simply pirate audiobooks lmao fuck giving money to amazon I thought the authors and voice actors etc. got at least a bit of it
edit: did some more research and audible credits do give money to authors so I don't know what the person in this screenshot is talking about https://legendsofkalda.com/blogs/news/what-does-audible-really-pay-indie-authors
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.
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.
cory doctorow writes/talks about this. it's called "audiblegate" if you want to look it up. it is pretty shitty.
anarcho-capitalist revolutionary
When capitalism happens, it's actually communism
I thought rule one of anarcho-capitalism is that there is no minimum wage and companies can do what they want without regulation. How you suffer the consequence of a company exploiting exactly that and then claim ancapism is the solution is very confusing.
Consider: it's based when he gets to exploit other people. Not very based when he gets exploited. Simple, really.
This guy's literal 1st world petty bourgeois... if his economic status takes a hit, boo hoo, he'll turn into some minor labor aristocrat and that's all....
Top 10 anime betrayals holy shit.
But then, I'm having the same fucking experience over on reddit because I cannot stop punishing myself.
Consumers like "Boston Matthew" probably think that authors are somehow getting paid out of his subscription fees.
Nope.
His subscription fees pay Audible, not authors. Authors get 20%, but only if he pays with money, for the individual purchase. If he pays with a "credit", well, no.
Is this true of Libro.fm? If my monthly credit goes solely to the local trans bookstore I guess it’s better than Amazon, but I’d like authors to get some of that money too.
Fuck, if all the money I’m paying for books and audiobooks just goes towards supporting the infrastructure to sell me that book and not the author then I don’t see any problem with pirating everything you get, and just donating some money to the author directly.
Definitely! Return to the patreon arts! The irony being capitalism provides a rent seeking vessel for that.
Honestly, patreon is the least evil version of capitalism besides like, Kofi, but there's a reason people pay for the extra features.
it would be cool if patreon workers got together to form collectives to share some portion of income and even to support less popular ones. I have never heard of anyone doing that even with some very massive left-type "creators". A voluntary rate of 3%-10% would make a good size pot.
but what we really need is taxation and funding.
https://comradery.co does that, in that it's a coop so some cut of subscriptions are shared by everyone on the platform. I think Luna Oi's on there
The reason Audible is such a great deal for Matthew is that it allows him all the benefits of stealing, without having to do any of the actual stealing himself... someone has already done it for him, and he doesn't even have to know. His conscience is clean unless he does a bunch of research he has no incentive to do. And why would he look into it? He doesn't even know there's anything to look into.
Writing and producing a book in 12 months is barely feasible. It's possible for experienced authors who already have everything planned out and have an established deal with their agency maybe. But 6 months? That's impossible. Either you're writing a 20-page book for babies or you're writing utter trash worse than 90% of content on ao3
or you're writing utter trash worse than 90% of content on ao3
Brandon Sanderson has entered the chat
sorry creatives, I am once again sticking to my principle that infinitely reproducible digital works should be copied and shared freely.
https://libbyapp.com/shelf
https://audiobookbay.fi/
http://libgen.is/
the only reason i have for doing creative (and foss) stuff is for people to enjoy them as much as possible.
Practically this means that the more people get too have it, the better.
The problem is capitalism, since it makes it hard to pay the bills...
So well.. i will probably end doing some shitty software dev work, because being a creative under capitalism is shit.
it's all good, I'll pirate the software you make too.
