For seven years after they spend thousands to produce their own audiobooks, they are locked to Amazon, regardless of Amazon’s policy changes. You can read his Twitter thread, where he makes the point about how unfair Amazon’s practices are.Īmazon gets to change its deal with creators when it wants to, but the creators don’t get to change their deal with Amazon. The quandary for authors is that there are few alternatives when it comes to selling audiobooks.Īmazon Audible ACX and Apple iTunes monopolize the market.Īccording to Cory Doctorow, Audible controls 90% of the audiobook market. If you are an ALLi member, you can find out a lot more about its campaign and receive regular updates.īut the crux of this issue is that Amazon is deceitfully and dishonestly taking money from authors and using it for its own gain. This is a serious issue, and all authors need to be aware of Amazon’s actions now before publishing audiobooks. Others are still being debited for returns on audiobooks that were removed from sale nearly a year ago. One author had over 100 returns debited to their account, obliterating their income for the month. Only when the number of returns exceeds the number of sales, leaving the author owing Audible money, does it become obvious that Audible has been drawing from the wallets of its content creators. To the author, it just looks like a slow month for sales. They have no way of knowing that 30 additional sales were zeroed out thanks to Audible’s “generosity” to its customers.

This deliberate obfuscation is perhaps the most egregious part of Audible/ACX’s abusive policy, and the part of the scheme that may land them in legal trouble - or in more Congressional hearings in the US and other places, as Amazon faces renewed calls for stronger anti-trust regulation around the world.īecause only net sales are reported, an author who sells 50 books may only see 20 sales on their report.

However, this short quote will give you a clue as to how big this problem is for Amazon authors. You should read its article about How Audible ACX Betrayed Authors to understand better the issues involved. Luckily for authors, there is a small ray of hope.Īlli (The Alliance of Independent Authors) had taken up the challenge of demanding a better deal for authors from Amazon.

Acx for audible