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July 26, 2022 8:52 AM Subscribe
Why none of Cory Doctorow books are available on Audible. A brief history of audiobooks, and a criticism of DRM, Amazon and Audible. A post which Doctorow has also turned into a free audiobook, titled Why None of My Books Are Available on Audible
And Why Amazon Owes Me $3,218.55 through Amazon's ACX platform. ACX facilitates scamming authors, like Doctorow, who avoid or reject Audible's platform.
Doctorow argues that Amazon's check on licensing for creating an ACX version of a book is limited to if there is already an audiobook edition in Amazon's catalog. And concludes that "if a writer refuses to sell on Audible because of their DRM policies, Audible will use that boycott as an excuse to let ripoff artists bilk the writer, the narrator and the listeners – because if there's no Audible edition, they assume that the audio rights must be up for grabs."
Of course a non-DRM version is also available from Doctorow's podcast.
Doctorow argues that Amazon's check on licensing for creating an ACX version of a book is limited to if there is already an audiobook edition in Amazon's catalog. And concludes that "if a writer refuses to sell on Audible because of their DRM policies, Audible will use that boycott as an excuse to let ripoff artists bilk the writer, the narrator and the listeners – because if there's no Audible edition, they assume that the audio rights must be up for grabs."
Of course a non-DRM version is also available from Doctorow's podcast.
I would pass endless hours shelving and repairing books while listening to "books on tape" from the library's collection.
The most surprising thing about this is someone who can literally shelve books while paying attention to an audio story. That's 1.5x more brain-track than I have, ever.
I've never enjoyed Doctorow's fiction, but I'm feeling an overwhelming urge to buy one of his books because fuck DRM.
As someone living in incredible poverty I've made my peace with having to borrow what I can and torrent the rest and buy only on rare occasions now. It sucks to no longer be able to support authors the way I desperately desire to, but I'd be a much worse citizen without the books I couldn't otherwise access.
Knowledge wants to be free, and that goes tenfold if you actually buy the damn book. Fuck DRM.
For fellow resistors I have elite status on a book-only tracker. If you want an invite, hit me up. It will involve a conversation, because my reputation is on the line, but I'm generous.
posted by liminal_shadows at 9:17 AM on July 26, 2022 [17 favorites]
The most surprising thing about this is someone who can literally shelve books while paying attention to an audio story. That's 1.5x more brain-track than I have, ever.
I've never enjoyed Doctorow's fiction, but I'm feeling an overwhelming urge to buy one of his books because fuck DRM.
As someone living in incredible poverty I've made my peace with having to borrow what I can and torrent the rest and buy only on rare occasions now. It sucks to no longer be able to support authors the way I desperately desire to, but I'd be a much worse citizen without the books I couldn't otherwise access.
Knowledge wants to be free, and that goes tenfold if you actually buy the damn book. Fuck DRM.
For fellow resistors I have elite status on a book-only tracker. If you want an invite, hit me up. It will involve a conversation, because my reputation is on the line, but I'm generous.
posted by liminal_shadows at 9:17 AM on July 26, 2022 [17 favorites]
How should I parse "scamming authors, like Doctorow"? "Authors who scam, like Doctorow" or "the scamming of authors, of which Doctorow is one"?
posted by emelenjr at 9:36 AM on July 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by emelenjr at 9:36 AM on July 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
@emelenjr, the latter.
posted by jrishel at 9:45 AM on July 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by jrishel at 9:45 AM on July 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
So I learned a few things. Namely that Doctorow has decided what comfortable means to him, and he isn't willing to sell out to be more comfortable (the details about mortgage, education). That means in my estimation, he's a giant of a man.
Re: people don’t go to authors' sites to see if they sell directly—no, almost no one does that and I would like to highly encourage it. I’ve personally emailed authors a few times in the past to ask them if they’d sell to me directly, in any format they like, and I’m willing to pay more than what it sells for on amazon, plus shipping. Once I got no response, but a few times I did buy, and the copy I bought came signed from a gracious author. If nothing else, sometimes you get to have a bit of a chat with someone whose brain you like.
Part of the problem here is search engines (even the non-google ones generally scrape google), and the difficulty in finding author websites, when they even exist. Searching has become WAY MORE difficult unless they spend massive amounts of time on SEO or are very, very popular. I read a lot of niche authors and authors who aren't into tech enough to even have a website.
Illegal ACX audiobooks, jfc. Burn these people at the stake.
“But you know what will be available on Audible?
This. This essay, which I am about to record as an audiobook”
I'm still chortling and the malicious compliance subreddit is calling.
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:09 AM on July 26, 2022 [17 favorites]
Re: people don’t go to authors' sites to see if they sell directly—no, almost no one does that and I would like to highly encourage it. I’ve personally emailed authors a few times in the past to ask them if they’d sell to me directly, in any format they like, and I’m willing to pay more than what it sells for on amazon, plus shipping. Once I got no response, but a few times I did buy, and the copy I bought came signed from a gracious author. If nothing else, sometimes you get to have a bit of a chat with someone whose brain you like.
Part of the problem here is search engines (even the non-google ones generally scrape google), and the difficulty in finding author websites, when they even exist. Searching has become WAY MORE difficult unless they spend massive amounts of time on SEO or are very, very popular. I read a lot of niche authors and authors who aren't into tech enough to even have a website.
Illegal ACX audiobooks, jfc. Burn these people at the stake.
“But you know what will be available on Audible?
This. This essay, which I am about to record as an audiobook”
I'm still chortling and the malicious compliance subreddit is calling.
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:09 AM on July 26, 2022 [17 favorites]
liminal_shadows: Re: people don’t go to authors' sites to see if they sell directly—no, almost no one does that and I would like to highly encourage it.
I found out that a writer I liked, Daniel Keys Moran, was selling his novels as ebooks a while ago -- and very approachable via email when someone wanted to buy them for me but his platform didn't allow it. Nice guy, very reasonable.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:26 AM on July 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
I found out that a writer I liked, Daniel Keys Moran, was selling his novels as ebooks a while ago -- and very approachable via email when someone wanted to buy them for me but his platform didn't allow it. Nice guy, very reasonable.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:26 AM on July 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
FTFA:
posted by wenestvedt at 10:37 AM on July 26, 2022 [13 favorites]
...manufacturers who design their products with a thin skin of DRM around them can make using those products in the ways you prefer into a literal crime – what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model."OK, that's a really good line.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:37 AM on July 26, 2022 [13 favorites]
Man, remember when end users were the pirates? They told us the DMCA and the crackdowns on filesharing were necessary in order to "protect artists." Now the big platforms are making money selling straight-up pirate editions of books and paying musicians fractions of a penny for thousands of streams, and no one's holding them accountable for it. It's almost like preserving profit-making opportunities for exploitative middlemen was the real goal all along!
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:11 AM on July 26, 2022 [29 favorites]
posted by Gerald Bostock at 11:11 AM on July 26, 2022 [29 favorites]
Also I checked out libro.fm a few months ago, which Doctorow mentioned as a DRM-free source of audiobooks and it looked great, but they didn't have the volumes I was looking for. It was actually my last purchase on Amazon. I signed up for Audible, immediately bought it and canceled.
If anyone knows where to find a DRM-free source of an audio recording of "Blomsterdalen" by Niviaq Korneliussen, or a good source of other DRM free non-english audiobooks, I really really want to know about it.
posted by liminal_shadows at 11:12 AM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
If anyone knows where to find a DRM-free source of an audio recording of "Blomsterdalen" by Niviaq Korneliussen, or a good source of other DRM free non-english audiobooks, I really really want to know about it.
posted by liminal_shadows at 11:12 AM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Namely that Doctorow has decided what comfortable means to him, and he isn't willing to sell out to be more comfortable (the details about mortgage, education). That means in my estimation, he's a giant of a man.
He's also incredibly nice at conferences to nobodies like me. I had maybe a half-hour conversation with him about voting rights for Canadians who live outside Canada at MidSouthCon a few years back, and he was gracious when I approached him, delighted I wanted to talk about this weird niche topic, told me a funny anecdote, and remembered my name two days later when we ran into each other in the hotel lobby.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:42 AM on July 26, 2022 [8 favorites]
He's also incredibly nice at conferences to nobodies like me. I had maybe a half-hour conversation with him about voting rights for Canadians who live outside Canada at MidSouthCon a few years back, and he was gracious when I approached him, delighted I wanted to talk about this weird niche topic, told me a funny anecdote, and remembered my name two days later when we ran into each other in the hotel lobby.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:42 AM on July 26, 2022 [8 favorites]
liminal_shadows: "Re: people don’t go to authors' sites to see if they sell directly—no, almost no one does that and I would like to highly encourage it. "
It's interesting. If you go back to the early days of the Internet becoming a popular phenomenon—say 1995—you'd see the word "disintermediation" a lot in publications like Wired. The idea was that gatekeepers would fade away. Readers could get material directly from authors.
And in a trivial sense, it's true that it is more possible now than it was before, but what we've seen is that people gravitate toward "platforms." People don't want to host their own blog, they want Twitter or Facebook. They don't want to run their own online shop, they want Ebay or Etsy (or Amazon). This is even true for technically adept people. There are counter-examples. I have a friend who moved off Etsy during the "Etsy strike" and set up her own online shopfront.
The thing that kills me is that self-hosting has gotten really easy. I set up a self-hosted online store, and I had it up and running in an afternoon. Setting up a self-hosted blog is pretty much a one-click proposition. There are some things that platforms make easier, for sure—discovery and interconnections—but I think that if there was more momentum behind a decentralized model, those benefits would follow. The enabling technologies have existed for years.
posted by adamrice at 12:04 PM on July 26, 2022 [12 favorites]
It's interesting. If you go back to the early days of the Internet becoming a popular phenomenon—say 1995—you'd see the word "disintermediation" a lot in publications like Wired. The idea was that gatekeepers would fade away. Readers could get material directly from authors.
And in a trivial sense, it's true that it is more possible now than it was before, but what we've seen is that people gravitate toward "platforms." People don't want to host their own blog, they want Twitter or Facebook. They don't want to run their own online shop, they want Ebay or Etsy (or Amazon). This is even true for technically adept people. There are counter-examples. I have a friend who moved off Etsy during the "Etsy strike" and set up her own online shopfront.
The thing that kills me is that self-hosting has gotten really easy. I set up a self-hosted online store, and I had it up and running in an afternoon. Setting up a self-hosted blog is pretty much a one-click proposition. There are some things that platforms make easier, for sure—discovery and interconnections—but I think that if there was more momentum behind a decentralized model, those benefits would follow. The enabling technologies have existed for years.
posted by adamrice at 12:04 PM on July 26, 2022 [12 favorites]
for the cognoscenti, Daniel Pinkwater has a number of free audiobooks available on his website, narrated by same
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 1:21 PM on July 26, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 1:21 PM on July 26, 2022 [9 favorites]
the difficulty in finding author websites, when they even exist
Goodreads (owned by Amazon) has a place in the author bios for both a website and a blog feed, I believe. If an author has not claimed their own bio, librarians (a GR specific role that users can apply for) can add those to the bio page. So, in a way you can use their own tools against them.
posted by soelo at 1:28 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Goodreads (owned by Amazon) has a place in the author bios for both a website and a blog feed, I believe. If an author has not claimed their own bio, librarians (a GR specific role that users can apply for) can add those to the bio page. So, in a way you can use their own tools against them.
posted by soelo at 1:28 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
for the cognoscenti, Daniel Pinkwater has a number of free audiobooks available on his website, narrated by same
ivan ivanych samovar: Thank you so much for this! We own Chicago Days/Hoboken Nights on tape, and I had been missing it so much since our tape player died. My spouse and I bonded early after meeting when we discovered our mutual delight in Daniel Pinkwater.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:49 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
ivan ivanych samovar: Thank you so much for this! We own Chicago Days/Hoboken Nights on tape, and I had been missing it so much since our tape player died. My spouse and I bonded early after meeting when we discovered our mutual delight in Daniel Pinkwater.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:49 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
the difficulty in finding author websites, when they even exist
Are there authors with their own websites that will not come up if you search Google for "[author's name] author homepage"?
posted by straight at 2:18 PM on July 26, 2022
Are there authors with their own websites that will not come up if you search Google for "[author's name] author homepage"?
posted by straight at 2:18 PM on July 26, 2022
The thing that kills me is that self-hosting has gotten really easy. I set up a self-hosted online store, and I had it up and running in an afternoon. Setting up a self-hosted blog is pretty much a one-click proposition. There are some things that platforms make easier, for sure—discovery and interconnections—but I think that if there was more momentum behind a decentralized model, those benefits would follow. The enabling technologies have existed for years.
And the thing that always kills me is the privilege in the argument that it's "easy" to self-host that always gets trotted out. Not everyone has the skill set to function as a digital self-proprietor, nor do they have the desire to do so. That's how those very platforms came about - they provided people with a managed system so they could do the things they saw as important.
There's this persistent myth that middlemen as a whole add no value that just isn't true. Some middlemen don't, but others do provide support and services for people who have neither the skill nor the desire to handle those tasks.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:35 PM on July 26, 2022 [11 favorites]
And the thing that always kills me is the privilege in the argument that it's "easy" to self-host that always gets trotted out. Not everyone has the skill set to function as a digital self-proprietor, nor do they have the desire to do so. That's how those very platforms came about - they provided people with a managed system so they could do the things they saw as important.
There's this persistent myth that middlemen as a whole add no value that just isn't true. Some middlemen don't, but others do provide support and services for people who have neither the skill nor the desire to handle those tasks.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:35 PM on July 26, 2022 [11 favorites]
I have a website but have largely stopped using it because nobody visits it. It used to be kind of happening - I had an online journal and maybe 50 people read it regularly, but then around 2004 everything kind of died off. It's a lot easier to reach readers through Facebook or Twitter or whathaveyou. I have recently decided to try to move partially back to updating my own space because of the increasing throttling on Facebook (my primary social media, which gets worse with every iteration and which I would have left years ago if I could have convinced even a minority of my friends to follow me elsewhere).
posted by joannemerriam at 3:43 PM on July 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by joannemerriam at 3:43 PM on July 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
I spent about $50,000 recording a stupendous audiobook edition of Walkaway,
Spread the wealth and kudos to you, but not a lot of authors are in a position to do that. I know I'm not. Anyway, for authors looking for options besides Audible, such things do exist, and I expect more will come along as time goes by. Can't speak to the various pros and cons mentioned in the link below, but I have to think it's not all bad news. (I'd be interested in hearing anyone's experiences in any of these platforms, good or bad.)
https://selfpublishingadvice.org/audiobook-publishing-alternatives-to-acx/
posted by BWA at 4:28 PM on July 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
Spread the wealth and kudos to you, but not a lot of authors are in a position to do that. I know I'm not. Anyway, for authors looking for options besides Audible, such things do exist, and I expect more will come along as time goes by. Can't speak to the various pros and cons mentioned in the link below, but I have to think it's not all bad news. (I'd be interested in hearing anyone's experiences in any of these platforms, good or bad.)
https://selfpublishingadvice.org/audiobook-publishing-alternatives-to-acx/
posted by BWA at 4:28 PM on July 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
I’m quite … Ok with kobo. You can only play through their app and not on a computer, but on a Device. The playback controls are remedial, but sufficient. I generally only borrow from the library, but tried them in a pique when the middle book of a series was on hold for a month.
I also know several authors making a rather good living selling books largely and almost solely through their presence on Tumblr. Three off the top of my head who I followed before they started publishing and all of whom have a nominal presence anywhere else. All maintain their own website through which you can buy their books. The author blog isn’t dead, it’s just moved.
posted by Bottlecap at 8:58 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
I also know several authors making a rather good living selling books largely and almost solely through their presence on Tumblr. Three off the top of my head who I followed before they started publishing and all of whom have a nominal presence anywhere else. All maintain their own website through which you can buy their books. The author blog isn’t dead, it’s just moved.
posted by Bottlecap at 8:58 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
And the thing that always kills me is the privilege in the argument that it's "easy" to self-host that always gets trotted out.
Yep. I mean, the challenge isn't so much setting up an online place to sell my books. The challenge is running it. Dealing with returns. Dealing with people who can't sideload, or get confused about formats. Dealing with people who [insert customer service problem here].
Never mind the enormous difficulty of visibility and just getting people to visit my own little bookshop in the first place.
Persuading people to view my books on Amazon is difficult enough! As an unknown writer, expecting new readers to buy books directly from me, and managing that process is just not something I can afford to spend time on. Not if I want to get any writing done.
posted by Zumbador at 9:07 PM on July 26, 2022 [6 favorites]
Yep. I mean, the challenge isn't so much setting up an online place to sell my books. The challenge is running it. Dealing with returns. Dealing with people who can't sideload, or get confused about formats. Dealing with people who [insert customer service problem here].
Never mind the enormous difficulty of visibility and just getting people to visit my own little bookshop in the first place.
Persuading people to view my books on Amazon is difficult enough! As an unknown writer, expecting new readers to buy books directly from me, and managing that process is just not something I can afford to spend time on. Not if I want to get any writing done.
posted by Zumbador at 9:07 PM on July 26, 2022 [6 favorites]
the challenge isn't so much setting up an online place to sell my books. The challenge is running it. Dealing with returns. Dealing with people who can't sideload, or get confused about formats. Dealing with people who [insert customer service problem here].
This is definitely an advantage of Mr. Doctorow's that is difficult for other authors to reproduce: an audience that is, if not tech-savvy, tech-comfortable.
posted by MrJM at 9:29 PM on July 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is definitely an advantage of Mr. Doctorow's that is difficult for other authors to reproduce: an audience that is, if not tech-savvy, tech-comfortable.
posted by MrJM at 9:29 PM on July 26, 2022 [3 favorites]
This is definitely an advantage of Mr. Doctorow's that is difficult for other authors to reproduce: an audience that is, if not tech-savvy, tech-comfortable.
Even so, it seems like it's barely worth it, in terms of raw dollars. Like he says he reclaims the cost of his audio books and stuff, but just barely.
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:59 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Even so, it seems like it's barely worth it, in terms of raw dollars. Like he says he reclaims the cost of his audio books and stuff, but just barely.
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:59 PM on July 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Doctorow isn't self-hosting for financial reasons as much as he is to Make A Point. He notes early on that "disintermediation" and people's reluctance to run their own servers means that both readers and writers will deal directly with the platform. Self-hosting is essentially quixotic (I should know, I have been running my own little web site for over 20 years and share a mail server with a friend). The appropriate answer for regular readers and writers is regulation, the problem with getting to that answer is lobbyists and corruption... at which point the quixotic pursuit of independence looks slightly more reasonable.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:37 PM on July 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:37 PM on July 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
They told us the DMCA and the crackdowns on filesharing were necessary in order to "protect artists."
Book piracy didn't destroy bookstores. Amazon did.
posted by AlSweigart at 4:06 AM on July 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Book piracy didn't destroy bookstores. Amazon did.
posted by AlSweigart at 4:06 AM on July 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Obligatory Cory Doctorow Visits A Radio Shack.
CORY DOCTOROW: Ahh, PDFs are DRM-encumbered as per secret instructions contained in the Patriot Act!
EMPLOYEE: But I could still print it out for you. Listen, let me know if you have any more questions; now I have to get back to my other customers.
CORY DOCTOROW: There’s no one else here.
EMPLOYEE: Oh, I thought maybe there was.
(AWKWARD SILENCE)
CORY DOCTOROW: Google maps 37Signals with Flickr iPod.
EMPLOYEE: What?
CORY DOCTOROW: I didn’t say anything. Now, about this cell phone…
posted by viborg at 4:33 AM on July 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
CORY DOCTOROW: Ahh, PDFs are DRM-encumbered as per secret instructions contained in the Patriot Act!
EMPLOYEE: But I could still print it out for you. Listen, let me know if you have any more questions; now I have to get back to my other customers.
CORY DOCTOROW: There’s no one else here.
EMPLOYEE: Oh, I thought maybe there was.
(AWKWARD SILENCE)
CORY DOCTOROW: Google maps 37Signals with Flickr iPod.
EMPLOYEE: What?
CORY DOCTOROW: I didn’t say anything. Now, about this cell phone…
posted by viborg at 4:33 AM on July 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
Wow. So much ridiculously sketchy behavior from Audible/Amazon documented in that post. The part at the end about the spurious takedown by Amazon over the cover art is icing on the cake.
posted by mediareport at 3:45 AM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mediareport at 3:45 AM on July 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
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