Amazon JUST rolled out the rebranding of their Kindle Unlimited as Kindle+ Guess what? They’re including audiobooks now!
Yippee! You know I immediately went to enroll both The GAUNT, and My Darling Clementine. But this is what I found:
I clicked through to find out why my audiobooks, produced with much love and effort, are ‘Not eligible for KDP Select.’ And THIS is what I found:
WAIT, not so fast. So only audiobooks narrated by either AMAZON’s AI BOTS, or a pre-paid producer, can enroll in this new distribution method? Audiobook projects created through a Royalty Share agreement (meaning some or all of the work is produced with a contractual agreement to share profits) are EXCLUDED. But AI voiced audiobooks are welcome.
Human collaborations, on a profit-sharing basis, are denied. Why? Both The GAUNT and My Darling Clementine were created through ACX, an arm of AMAZON, met their exacting QUALITY standards, and are included in the mandated ‘NEW ROYALTY MODEL(*)’ with its All-You-Can-Listen catalog. HOW is this any different?
Amazon is now promoting AI generated audiobooks, deliberately undermining human created, authentic, human created work.
Not just that – Amazon encourages EVERY AUTHOR publishing through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) to create an AI voiced audiobook. And with the tsunami of AI generated books flooding the market (Amazon in particular) there will be hundreds of thousands of AI generated books, with audiobook versions in standardized voices, complete with soulless readings, guessed at inflections, and mispronunciations.
It’s as if Amazon WANTS to drive human creatives from the book biz, making it more and more difficult for Indies to publish and sell.
Soylent Green Alert, people! We’re sacrificing humans to the corporate machine.
Once they get us used to AI speak in writing and reading, they’ll be ready to engulf us in a totally commercial experience. TV actors will go first, episode costs will shrink dramatically. And think of the savings in roses if you have AI generated bachelorettes.
(* from the ACX site) How does the new royalty model calculate royalties? In the new model, royalties for Audible’s membership offerings will equal Member Value multiplied by your contractual royalty rate. Member Value for each offering will be shared with you on your earnings statement.
What is “Member Value”? How is it determined?Member Value is what’s net new in the updated royalty model. It represents the value of a member’s listening behavior.To determine Member Value, we first look at which plan a member is subscribed to in a given marketplace (e.g. Premium, Plus, Standard or monthly AYCL plan) and capture that monthly membership revenue minus discounts, taxes and fees. This amount is Member Value at the most basic level. We then look to see if the member used an additional credit on a title above their plan allowance, in which case the amount of Member Value will be increased. The total Member Value is then divided up and divided proportionally among each title the member engaged with, based on the a la carte price of those titles. This step ensures a fair share of Member Value is divided among each title before multiplying by your contractual royalty rate to get to royalties due.
Genta: Yeah okay. Totally not vague at all…
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