ACX drops royalty rates

First step to Amazon not being quite so SP-friendly (ie, now we've got them where we want them...)? Their answer to "Why the change?" seemed to circle around quite a bit...

Right. They have such a monopoly on audiobooks, they can do what they want.

Which really makes me think that authors need to be careful not to let them get a monopoly on ebooks too. For me that means never signing up to Select. Because I like those 70% royalty rates and I want them to stay.

girlyswot said:

Right. They have such a monopoly on audiobooks, they can do what they want.

Which really makes me think that authors need to be careful not to let them get a monopoly on ebooks too. For me that means never signing up to Select. Because I like those 70% royalty rates and I want them to stay.

Click to expand...

Absolutely. I would never want to be dependent on Amazon exclusively. Even if you get higher sales through Select than otherwise, which may or may not be the case in individual circumstances, you're missing out on the opportunity to build sales at other retailers that may be essential to your long-term survival.

They made this change because they could. As has been already pointed out, they're close to having a monopoly on audiobooks and I agree with above posters when I say I would never enter into select.

Apparently they need a little bit more of that thing they call money. (Fallout 2 reference)

shadowwalker said:

First step to Amazon not being quite so SP-friendly (ie, now we've got them where we want them...)?

Click to expand...

Amazon has never been author-friendly.

It has only worked with self publishers in the way that it has because it recognised there was a good income stream there.

Do you remember when Amazon removed the "buy" buttons from ranges of books, insisted that POD publishers only use Amazon's own POD facility, insisted on higher and higher discounts from trade publishers? These were ways it increased its own income without thought for the writers whose books it was holding hostage.

We need to be very careful when we consider Amazon to be the self publisher's friend. It is not.

Old Hack said:

Amazon has never been author-friendly.

It has only worked with self publishers in the way that it has because it recognised there was a good income stream there.
...
We need to be very careful when we consider Amazon to be the self publisher's friend. It is not.

Click to expand...

I should have put "SP-friendly" in quotes, because I know it's never been truly friendly, but merely exploitative.

All along, there have been folks here on AW predicting that at some point, the haven for SPs that Amazon presented itself as would start disappearing. After reading about the Gazelle Project, it only reinforced my agreement with those predictions.

Here's and interesting agent blog post on it:

Did You Feel the Tremor in the Industry Last Week?

heh, just about finished the production of my audiobook when i got this news. It's lovely =/

Ah well, they're paying my narrator and that's great, I guess. This is frustrating though, when I've spent all this time to find the right narrator and finally get things produced. Grr.

I haven't been in a position to even make an audiobook... and now I think I'll continue to let that slide until something better comes along.