Audible Pirates
Last year, right when we were publishing Legend 3, I got a DM from a voice actor who wanted to audition for my book, The Legend of Lady MacLaoch. At the time, we’d been audiobook-curious but hadn’t gotten very serious about it, and we definitely weren’t holding auditions. But the woman was detailed in her description, our book was out for audition.
When you first discover that someone has hijacked your work, the first thing you want to do is find their hovel where they’re using AI bots to harvest book rights and punch them in the mouth. It’s mine. Not theirs. punch. But at the end of every brawl, you realize that you’re right back to where you started. So, I set aside my rage (they’ll be a character in a book I someday push off a cliff), put on my administrative pants, and sent an email.
Now, if you’ve ever sent an email to an address that starts with info@ or support@, you know there’s a high likelihood it is going directly to a SPAM folder or to an address that receives thousands of emails a day, with only a single person responding. It could take weeks for a reply to come. So, I sent it off, then set about figuring out how to contact an actual person within the monolith that is Amazon Publishing.
I didn’t have to wait long. I got an email back right away. Turns out pirating titles is a lucrative gig and a loophole that Amazon’s ACX hasn’t squashed because the audiobook industry is closing in on making a billion (yes, billion with a b) dollars in the next three years. What’s a little side hustle for industrious folk, right? Wrong. This is how lawsuits start, and that’s priority #1 for the administrators answering support emails. (They need to be seen doing something about it, just not systemically crushing the problem.) I was whisked immediately off to a rights retention representative, and Legend was rescued from the clutches of ne’er-do-wells.
It seemed like that was it, but there’s been fallout. The first being that to secure my titles from being hijacked again, I needed to align them with an audiobook company on the spot, or it would happen again, and again. Because anyone (yes, you read that right, anyone) can claim the rights to published written works on the ACX platform if it hasn’t already been claimed. (Is this legal? Anyone with deep pockets wanna find out for us? Thanks.) The options for audiobook distributors are limited at best right now. And those that are there are opportunistic fucks. Harsh, yes, but did I mention this industry is growing at an unprecedented rate and that they need product (lots and lots of product) to meet growing demand and make their margins as fat as bacon? And the indie place is just the locale. Most of us aren’t savvy with rights, and 40% royalties sounds good! But when the distributors all take their cut (and OMG, there are so many middlemen in this part of the industry), authors are maybe making about four bucks on a $20 title. (ACX has an odd structure that can make it more like $1, depending on how they categorize your title.) This means that for Ha’ikū Press to make their money back in a timely manner, they’d have to price the book close to $30. Then there are the rights. Each platform (like ACX) has its own rights agreement, and the one we were forced into (remember: The pirates are coming! The pirates are coming!) was a 7-year contract at 40%.
For indie digital media, 40% and a 7-year contract is abhorrent. My ebooks are 75-85% royalties, and very few middlemen for those distributed via IngramSpark (zero for Amazon, the same company that owns ACX). The paperbacks, depending on the distributor, are 55-60%. And that’s for a physical medium that has to get on a truck at some point and be handled by a human, including middlemen. Plus, I can publish my ebooks anywhere; I’m not locked into a 7-year contract. The real question is why ACX (Amazon) doesn’t have a similar pay structure as its other digital media or even its paperback, is a question I’d love to have answered. Maybe it’s a timing thing? They took over ACX and may slowly integrate them into the pricing structure that works for KDP? Dunno.
For now, I’m sitting out this messy market adjustment. Our titles are secure with Audible (ACX), for now. The market is primed for its first royalty-and-rights lawsuit. I’m a small fish in this business, and the big fish indie publishers who are used to making 75% on a million books sold will want more than a mere 40%. It’s already starting to take shape, as ACX has reluctantly agreed to raise the number to 50% (for exclusive distribution). If the ebook case has anything to teach us from back in 2012, the lawsuits will fly until a compromise is reached. ACX (and Amazon) will love the billions it makes until the first lawsuits take a bite out of that profit. Then maybe we’ll see the structure get forced into the KDP way.
Sadly, it also means a few more years without Legend titles on audiobook, since it will take thousands of dollars to create them (see my blogpost about this here) to the quality my readers so love and expect from Ha’ikū Press and me. And twice as long to recoup the cost at 40% royalty rate. But who knows, maybe we’ll have a breakout title or heck, win the lottery, and we can start holding auditions tomorrow!
Peace and optimism,
