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Something went wrong. Please contact support fatherly. Like fatherly on Facebook. Something went wrong please contact us at support fatherly. By Emily Kelleher. This entire blog post feels like a bad Ayn Rand-parody. Hi, Tore. We support authors, bookstores, and consumers by forming a bridge between them in order to support local communities.
We understand if your viewpoints differ from ours. Thanks for joining the conversation. Giving authors full ownership of their creation is one thing.
Narrowing their distribution platform to one company is quite another. This is textbook empire-building — the type I thought we decided to reject back in with the Sherman Act. Without it, authors will be little more than serfs under feudal lord Bezos. Instead of trying to shame indie authors who are trying to sell enough to pay the rent, why not support them by offering an equal or better deal? Hi, IndoorCat. The authors audiobooks will be available on Libro. When authors elect to make their audiobooks Audible Exclusives, it limits the customer pool who is able to access the audiobook, which in turn earns them less money in the long run.
I am an indie author who has never been exclusive for ebooks or audiobooks. I train authors on distribution. It is true that, in the U. Audible does distribute to iTunes but the royalty is small compared to what you can get going direct or through a different distributor. Going wide with audiobooks opens my market to thousands of libraries as well as bookstores with Libro.
What about the promotion? In ebook, Amazon promotion is all about sales and reviews. They purposefully make the price at or above their subscription whenever they can. Their 1 goal is to sell more subscriptions. I get it that authors are busy—most of them working a full time job and writing on the side.
However, there are other ways to get distribution without going exclusive. Use an aggregator. Most good aggregators can get your ebook to all the majors including Amazon if you want. Amazon and Audible are good platforms, but they are not the only platform nor the best. Why not reach more readers and libraries and bookstores by not going exclusive.
Most listen on their phones anyway or a tablet. They just download the appropriate App Libro. This is a poorly researched article. Pretty much every Kindle ebook can have font and lighting adjusted to maximize readability, and almost all are compatible with the text-to-speach software on my phone.
Same cannot necessarily be said for every Overdrive ebook. Also, guess what? They are not designed for walker or wheelchair users. Furthermore, most indie bookstores are not on the bus route, and most do not have enough or any? Indie bookstores are not, and have never been, for disabled people. We have always been an afterthought. Libraries, on the other hand, have provided me, and people like me, excellent experiences and resources.
My local library even provided free WiFi hotspots during the Covid closure for people without internet at home. Did indie bookstores do that? Indie bookstores are run by snobby, white, able-bodied, neurotypical hipsters. They hold people like me and people I care about in contempt. Do not try to pretend now that you give a single fart about disabled people. Libraries do. They made affordable, accessible ebooks before anyone else. Furthermore, I know and love four close friends who are disabled, who used to live in poverty, who now are financially safe because of Amazon.
Three of them write ebooks, often Kindle exclusive, and one narrates on ACX from home. Not wealthy, not even middle class, but no longer in danger of missing copays on meds or getting the lights shut off.
Indie bookstores are for pretentious people who had the luxury of going to an expensive college and grad school. You never supported us when we struggled in school and in the job market. Maybe actually interview some disabled writers and disabled library patrons before making claims on our behalf. We are NOT your allies. Hi IndoorCat, thank you for taking the time to share your perspective.
Unfortunately, Audible Exclusives hurt libraries as well as bookstores, as libraries cannot lend Audible Exclusives. We do understand why some have chosen the Exclusive route, but we hope that sharing this information widely will educate everyone on the implications of exclusives. But the national library for the blind can make an audio version of any book they want, and they do take peoples suggestions into account. Audible has done more to make audiobooks affordable than any other company.
Exclusives are nothing new, but an audioboon for most books published is. Audible is also partially responsible for that. Hi, Benjamin. We agree that any effort to make audiobooks more prevalent and available is good for listeners and for the community. Making the content exclusive, however, hinders access by creating unnecessary barriers and hurdles. IndoorCat, I feel like you are not grasping the point of this article.
No one is suggesting not using Kindle or Amazon, or that all content on every platform should always be made available for free. These are not like Netflix Originals which are produced by Netflix. These are books from many authors and publishers whose distribution is completely controlled by Amazon.
If access is important to you, and it sounds like it is, this is a situation you should not support. Also, just as you do not wish to be spoken for, your characterization of indie bookstores does not at all match my experience of them.
For the record, I am a disabled person. This seems more like a PR rant slating the competition than a balanced and informing article. In my view, offering an author or publisher more money to exclusively use a platform that you spent money either building or buying is a justifiable strategy.
Take Bandcamp as a usecase. They were faced with a highly contested spot in the music streaming space, and they became the champions of the indi music community. Also, they are not forcing anyone to do anything — they have an advantage, and they are using that to maintain their lead. Spend some money, pay a genuis strategist to make your offering more compelling: to both your customer and authors and publishers. Hi, Billy.
We are proud to support the indie bookstore community, and also partner with librarians and educators who use audiobooks to make an impact within their communities. Many listeners have asked why they are unable to access certain audiobook titles on our platform.
Those titles that are Audible Exclusives cannot be sold through independent bookstores, or lent through libraries. I knowingly gave up a lot of free content when I switched away from Audible. Where are those big bookstores now? I like a solution that helps me sleep at night. This is what I get as spam in my email? This is how you introduce your company to me — by complaining about another company? Hi, Chris. Thank you for alerting me to this disturbing phenomenon.
I got Born a Crime a few years ago from a free sign-up offer on Audible, and it is my favorite audiobook ever. I had no idea how lucky I was. Is there a good way to contact Trevor Noah about it? I assume he is aware. Hi, Amy. No problem! We hope that by making authors more aware of the restrictions that Audible Exclusives pose, more will opt out of exclusionary audiobook avenues.
For all other books I use Libby which lets you check out audiobooks from the library. Sharing the article to spread the word and maybe convince authors to drop their Audible exclusivity.
How is this different from Netflix creating their own content and restricting to Netflix subscribers? Audiobook versus movie? I find this post to be pretty weird and disingenious. I no longer will be subscibing to libro. You should focus on innovating and competing instead of slinging mud. Just my two cents. Thanks for commenting, Brian! We firmly believe that audiobooks and the knowledge and perspectives they contain should be accessible to a wide audience, including bookstore and library patrons.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. However, the way this article was phrased frequently makes it sound less like a well reasoned argument against exclusivity and more like simply bashing a competing company. Probably you do.
Thanks for the feedback, Mikkela. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Refer a friend. See the List. Mark Pearson. Previous Reading. Once you've perused the offerings, please add your suggestions in the comment space below. Into shorter recipes? Try personal essays or books organized in segments that you can dip into and out of, even when after-dinner cleanups leave you feeling like it's been a very long day.
They are both narrated by the author, one of my favorities, who died in It was like having Nora back -- and with me -- in the kitchen. Or, maybe you crave more substance to accompany the nesting and nurturing. Albom visits him weekly to chronicle his declining health and enduring wisdom. During another cooking spree I plugged in The Last Lecture , written by former Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch after his diagnosis with terminal cancer.
In the book, narrated by Erik Singer, Pausch, dispenses good life advice for his kids, who were young when he died at age 47, about everything from pursuing dreams to the lost art of thank-you notes.
The format works especially well as an audiobook, but after listening to it I purchased a hard copy, thinking that I would like to reread certain sections and it would be easier to locate them in the print version. Mindless chores. Long stretches spent doing laundry or ironing; walking the dog; pulling up weeds; or even in hobbies like woodworking or knitting, give you plenty of opportunity to focus on a lengthy novel. Truth be told, I could never get into the printed version, which is more than pages long.
After all, it will only take me 27 hours and 21 minutes to finish it. Meanwhile, I can get a lot of other things done. Poetically enough, Mark Decker, director of digital imaging at Forbes, happened to be listening to Bleak House as he painted, hour after hour, four different rooms of a farmhouse he and his wife had purchased.
A potentially tedious task became completely absorbing, he says. Janet R. Last summer she revisited L. All are narrated by John Lee. Or take a page metaphorically speaking from I'm Here to Win , by triathlete, Chris McCormack, as he opens his playbook about what it takes to become a champion. But when exercise is concerned, the proof is really in the pudding — or perhaps more precisely, on the scale.
Commuting and road trips. For those stuck on public transit or behind the wheel, a good audiobook can certainly take the edge off. Sammler's Planet , narrated by Wolfram Kandinsky and Mr. Prefer male comics? It won several Audie Awards in May -- those are the Oscars of the audiobook industry.
Words to the wise: On long road trips, steer clear of droning narrators or potentially sleep-inducing subjects. Ganser he has a day job as a real estate agent. Chances are you'll move between activities with this one, too, because the book is so hard to put down. Foreign travel. Books set in foreign locales can give you a sense of place and help you get smart before a visit. It probably would not have held my attention nearly as well in the print version pages as it did in an audiobook, read by Jesse Boggs 25 hours and 17 minutes.
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