Comment by axxl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by axxl | Hacker News Reader

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> there's no substance just a lot of charged language.

Yeah, this was my issue with all I could find so far. It seems like 'working as designed'. Perhaps those who publish on audible would like to be able to opt in or out of various sales/credits etc but as a customer I prefer that I can get anything with a credit.

> Basically Audible splits the money spent on credits among the books that the credits were spent on, except weighted by the retail price

Is that all credits in the system (similar to how Spotify was weighting streaming subscriptions (to my understanding)), or per user. I would prefer the money from my credits to go to the books I purchase, not be weighted with purchases by all other users.

Across the system, not per-user.

The only funky thing is that IIUC the computation of the total income across the whole system is done based on credits sold that month, rather than deferring the income from selling a credit to the month in which the credit is spent.

That funky thing sounds like it would work in authors' favor overall. I would guess there's some percent of credits that are sold but never used. So if Amazon only paid on on used credits, Amazon would be able to keep that money. If Amazon pays out on sold credits, the authors get it. Although the distribution between the authors can be wrong, leading to some individual authors losing out even if authors overall benefit.

Although if Amazon is always paying out some contractual minimum instead of the shared amount, then none of this makes a difference.

I wonder if authors are the ones who pay for the free Audible subscriptions that American Express Platinum card holders get now?

There is a huge a “Hollywood accounting” problem that never really went away (it’s how Warner Brothers markets HBO Max for free, how bands on major labels & even indies never recoup, and now possibly know how Amazon grows audible at no cost to themselves).

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