“Audible is promoting this easy exchange policy as a benefit to increase its subscriber base, allowing listeners to purchase and listen to entire audiobooks and then return them for a refund or exchange them for a new book-all at the detriment of authors’ earnings. The Guild alone represents more than 10,000 members. The complaint was addressed to Audible CEO Bob Carrigan and Audible general counsel Stas Zakharenko and, functioning as a petition, is said to have collected thousands of signatures. The gravity and magnitude of this complaint from the writers’ corps was captured in the Authors’ Guild’s letter from executive director Mary Rasenberger, posted on Friday (November 20) and objecting to Audible’s practice of deducting earned royalties from authors’ accounts when subscribers returned or exchanged audiobooks. Audible has responded today (November 25) by reducing the 365-day period to seven days.They want a full accounting of returns handled in this way since the policy was implemented. The authors claim that they have now been able to detect and document between 15 and 50 percent of their anticipated ACX revenue removed this way.The authors also demand “that Audible show the total number of unit purchases and returns on author dashboards, not just the ‘net sales’ already adjusted for any returns.'” That practice of not itemizing these deductions of royalties has caused many authors not to know this was occurring until recently.Not surprisingly, the writers have risen up to say that this is a policy hostile to the authors on which Audible and its ACX program depend for its products, and that the policy must go.Audible has allowed a subscriber to return or exchange an audiobook within 365 days–and has deducted an author’s royalties from her or his account when that happened if the audiobook was distributed through “ACX,” the Amazon-owned company’s Audiobook Creation Exchange.And word from the authors’ side is that the change isn’t adequate. By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | Society of Authors: A ‘Wrongful Practice’ In a show of strength, the United States’ Authors Guild and writers’ organizations in at least four other countries have caused Audible to blink in the ongoing controversy called #Audiblegate by writers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |