02/18/2024
What is it with audiobook distributors?
I started producing audiobooks in 2015, due to the demands of my audience. I chose ACX, or Audiobook Creation Exchange, as my distributor to get to Audible and Apple. It was through them that I met Nick Sullivan, who narrated all my books. Then Audible decided to allow their users to basically listen and return like a library, no charge, no foul, oh.... and the author will eat the cost of the return and the distribution fee. They sold thousands of my audiobooks for a royalty of less than zero dollars. I gave them my audiobooks to SELL not give away.
So, two years ago, I dumped Audible and ACX and partnered with a new distributor, Findaway Voices. Shortly after that, Findaway was acquired by Spotify.
If you're a working musician, you know how scary that was.
Last week, Spotify announced their new Terms of Service. It would have been the biggest, most egregious rights grab in the history of publishing. Here's a short excerpt of the new terms of use.
Accordingly, you hereby grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, fully paid, irrevocable, worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from (such as transcripts of User Content), distribute, and otherwise use any such User Content through any medium, whether alone or in combination with other Content or materials, in any manner and by any means, method or technology, whether now known or hereafter created, in connection with the Service, the promotion, advertising or marketing of the Service, and the operation of Spotify's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including for systems and products management, improvement and development, testing, training, modeling and implementation in connection with the Spotify Service.
A couple of definitions:
You - Anyone who distributes audiobooks through Findaway.
The Service - Findaway and Spotify's distribution service.
User Content - The audiobooks, as well as music, podcasts, and anything else they can get their hands on.
Derivatives - Additional audiobooks Spotify's AI computers will create using my content, characters, locations, themes, prose, tropes, or style.
Translate - Spotify's AI computers will translate English audiobooks into foreign languages with no royalties paid to the English creator.
Royalty-free - The AI computer doesn't get paid for what it creates. Nor does the author/rights holder of the original work, because they didn't create the new robo-garbage derivatives.
If you read between the lines, this whole rights grab is about artificial intelligence, or AI. Spotify has hundreds of thousands of audiobook at their disposal, they paid Findaway over $100 million to get them. Why? To teach their AI computers with. And they have the data from Findaway, as to what books are selling well, and by that I mean on an hour by hour basis, not year to year. AI can create a full audiobook in a matter of minutes. And they will be directed toward the hottest selling segment of the audience.
Spotify recanted within hours due to the massive blowback, and they removed a lot of the scary clauses. But the AI learning is still there. They've spent millions more creating the technology and promised their shareholders 40% when they acquired Findaway. As a distributor, they only get 30%. That should have been the first indication of what they were planning.
Fortunately they peeled back the curtain and let us have a look at what they really wanted.
So, that's strike two. I've used two distributors and both ended up being ripoff artists in Armani suits. But I'm willing to give the industry one more shot.
As soon as possible, my team will begin moving my entire audiobook catalogue--over 40 titles--to Author's Republic, another audiobook distributor. What this will mean as far as availability at retailers like Apple, Barnes & Noble, Chirp , and Google, I'm not sure yet. There will probably be a short interruption in availability, and it's likely that all the prior sales data and reviews will be lost. Again.
It's really simple.
I assign distribution rights to someone, and they send my audiobooks to retailers to sell in their stores.
Anything beyond that, I'm not interested in, not would 99.99% of the human population with a brain.
The freaking ToS that Findaspot proposed were ten pages long. I did it in one sentence. I can even do it in just five words.
You can SELL my audiobooks.
And in MY terms of use, I can change that second word to "can't" in half a heartbeat.
We are a small book publishing company, currently only accepting submissions of Sea Adventure novels. But, we're growing,
