Brandon Sanderson vs Audible

[Uncle Robin]

Some interesting information here:
https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sta...anderson-2022/

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Some interesting information here:
https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sta...anderson-2022/

Eye opening. I didn't realize Audible was THAT bad to authors. That really sucks.

Thanks for posting this.

[Quoth]

And it's Amazon. Makes massive profits, hardly pays tax.
See also how KDP Select and KU (Kindle Unlimited) work and cheat ordinary readers and most authors.
Dishonest marketing of Audible on Kindle ebook pages (Includes Free audible, except never does, that's only if you have a subscription).

[theducks]

Me confused.
An Audible book has 2 components: 1) The Story by the Author, 2) The performance (the cast or Narrator)

Some Writers can do their own creditable performance.
Others should not even think of that (no matter how much the fans beg). For those, their share should be bigger than if a voice actor has been hired.

I won't even try and figure out which should be paid more .
How do Movie adaptations pay?

[Quoth]

Honestly I'm a bit confused as to what he is referring to.

Also IMO Kickstarter and similar only applies to writing a Graphic Novel / Comic where you are writing only and can't do art and have no art partner (see original Asterix books, one wrote the other drew). We aren't all Schultz, Watterson or Hergé (Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbs, TinTin). Or a board game. Neither novels or audiobooks need Kickstarter.

You can pay someone once off to perform a reading and oddly because it's a "hire" they get no royalty or share of profits.

Or if you are good at narration you can record yourself.

Or the "publisher" may have audio rights and have or hire people to narrate. Then the writer gets the usual meagre royalties from a big publisher.

It's not clear what Sanderson is talking about. If Audible or whoever made an audiobook using own staff or hire, then it's a bit like royalties from a movie, except higher, because the book has to be made to a screenplay and then the production compared to recording and editing an audio book is massive costs. You can get a good enough audiobook recorded and have full rights of the audio file(s) as well as the text for maybe $2,000.

So if I gave someone e-retailing copies of files I wholly own I'd expect to get maybe 70%. But if I only own the text then 25% is very generous.
So I don't know what the Audible 45% exclusive and 25% non-exclusive refers to.

IMO narration is a totally different talent and experience needed different to writing.
Narration & audio editing is unrelated to writing-proof-edit cycle. If you have any audio editing experience then editing in Audacity might be easier than making a badly formatted word processor file into an ebook or paper book. However the Narration takes a lot longer than the final hours of the finished product. An average novel might be 10 to 14 hours of narration/listening. It's certainly much less work than writing a first draft of a novel, which might be 1/2 to 1/10th of work (unless you are Antony Trollop or Enid Byton who mostly just wrote & published without edit).
Also narration isn't as creative as acting. It's mostly being good at reading out loud. Audio drama, such as radio soap or radio play isn't the same thing at all as an audio book and both have existed in parallel more than 20 years before radio using recordings and live real time telephone that multiple people could connect to. Hence radio was called Wireless Telegraphy before voice added, or TSF in France (Transmission Sans Fil = literally Transmission without Wire).

So if Audible or anyone else is getting the ready made audio files, then payment per copy should be no different to Apps or eBooks.

If the audio book seller is only getting the text, then while it's not like a screenplay for a movie, you certainly ought not to get as much. If the audio book seller or distributor is charging the entire cost to make the audio book, then that's just like paying someone to reformat your MSS for ebook or paper.

Actually a reasonable 10 hour audio book production might cost less than paying a professional company to fully edit/proof/format a draft novel to files for ebook and paper. So comparison with screenplay and movie costs, or even novel that movie company pays make the screenplay (mor common) and produces the movie is wrong.

[Quoth]

I'm surprised at what Spotify is allegedly offering because they are miserably mean to musicians.

[rantanplan]

Originally Posted by theducks

Me confused.
An Audible book has 2 components: 1) The Story by the Author, 2) The performance (the cast or Narrator)

Some Writers can do their own creditable performance.
Others should not even think of that (no matter how much the fans beg). For those, their share should be bigger than if a voice actor has been hired.

I won't even try and figure out which should be paid more .
How do Movie adaptations pay?

It's quite clear that the audiobooks are already done. How else would it work? The backers will get them, Spotify has it and also Speechify. So this isn't a case where Audible has to produce the audiobook. Sanderson will have a royalties deal with the narrator in place.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

It's quite clear that the audiobooks are already done. How else would it work? The backers will get them, Spotify has it and also Speechify. So this isn't a case where Audible has to produce the audiobook. Sanderson will have a royalties deal with the narrator in place.

That's was my original understanding, then I wondered.
Of course Sanderson could have paid a once off fee for narration. That's like hiring a session musician for backing or paying someone to type up a longhand MSS or hiring sound engineers for the recording studio or stage production.

IMO Digital stores should pay whatever the content owner asks per copy and charge whatever they like. In UK & Ireland it's been forbidden to do otherwise for years in physical shops. Books and Pharmacies where the last holdouts. The supplier set the exact retail price and the retailer margin was set by secret deals or a standard wholesale price.

Internet, Social Media & digital content markets seem to think existing laws shouldn't apply to them.

[Wiggo]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Honestly I'm a bit confused as to what he is referring to.
…

Thx for the insight.
I personally don't listen to audiobooks, but I'm a big fan of radio plays and wonder how much they cost?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Wiggo

Thx for the insight.
I personally don't listen to audiobooks, but I'm a big fan of radio plays and wonder how much they cost?

If you want some excellent radio dramas, get yourself the radio dramas for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Excellent.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you want some excellent radio dramas, get yourself the radio dramas for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Excellent.

Yes, better than the the books, because done for radio. Often he was still writing the end of an episode at the start of the recording.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” —Douglas Adams.

Only the first 3 books of the 5 book trilogy count.

The scripts can be bought, but I'm not sure how accurate they are. I was working in the BBC at the start of the series, but not studio related engineering. My first real job.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Wiggo

Thx for the insight.
I personally don't listen to audiobooks, but I'm a big fan of radio plays and wonder how much they cost?

Hugely more. BBC sadly dramatically cutting back on radio drama.

You need a studio instead of a booth.
You need a group of actors
Script
Music and effects (both seriously detract from audiobooks)
Much more gear. A mixing desk, mic per person. Audiobook only needs one or two mics and a pocket Zoom H4N or similar is totally fine for recording.
Maybe practising and several takes for some bits. A good narrator can simply sit down and read for 30 minutes to an hour and might record a book in 10 to 25 sessions. Some people can only do one or two sessions a day. Others can manage maybe 4 or more in a day. A voice Actor and good Narrator can be the same person, but often different talents, skills and experience. A good narrator's recording will need little editing and few or no retakes.
Director, Producer, sound engineer on mixing desk, editor.

Last time I was in anywhere with studios was Lyric FM (RTE) in Limerick a few years ago. Tape was gone by then. When I started the audio recording was on tape and editing involved cutting it up. Time code editing video tape came in first. Then by 1990s audio and video was all workstation based digital. Free Audacity today on a laptop with a Zoom H4N for recording is better than 1990s. A laptop is too noisy in the same room unless SSD and fanless. The H4N and newer replacements can do maybe 10 to 12 hours of uncompressed four channel recording on an SD card just on Alkaline AA cells. Longer on two channels.

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discus...tinuing-dramas (TV)
A TV soap episode is cheap drama. Only reality TV without celebrities is cheaper (which is why it was invented, no actors, no script, low production values).
TV is still stupidly costly. It's why there was outrage IN the BBC in 1970s about video tape being reused instead of archived. Maybe €85 then for a " width tape reel. But production cost maybe £5,000 to £50,000 per episode.
No Dr Who or other BBC episodes lost. Deliberate destruction. They even scrapped 16mm film to save a pittance on storage

Radio Drama on the BBC is about £20,000 per hour. TV is x10 to x20 that.
So 10 hours of Radio drama about £200,000. Maybe 10x to 50x the cost of a no-name narrator and an audiobook.

DIY Audio book is just about possible and once off outlay of hardware less than €300 if you have a PC or laptop, recorded in your bedroom. At a minimum a radio drama needs experienced amateur actors, about x4 as much time per hour of drama, a proper studio with separate control booth, mixing desk and multitrack digital recording (used to be firewire from desk to PC, but it's maybe 20 years since I was involved).


BBC R4 radio drama is the hidden jewel of BBC and they are killing it.
BBC R4 has had a massive drop in listeners in the last two years purely due to the BBC. Not old listeners dying.

[DiapDealer]

I especially enjoyed how Sanderson repeatedly mentions how much he likes Audible (the people), while repeatedly shining a light on the huge risk he is taking by avoiding them for the foreseeable future for his new books. So brave and selfless.

[Wiggo]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you want some excellent radio dramas, get yourself the radio dramas for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Excellent.

Unfortunately, I'm not so into hitchhiker

Originally Posted by Quoth

Hugely more. BBC sadly dramatically cutting back on radio drama.

You need a studio instead of a booth.
You need a group of actors
…..

Thank you very much, very enlightening.

In the early 90s there was a radio play on LotR by WDR in Germany, 30 episodes a ~20 min - very very good. I huddled in front of the radio and recorded it on DAT.
Your explanations made me curious and I googled the production costs - nowadays around 500.000 €.

In Germany, radio plays are still being produced to some extent. There is also a very prestigious prize for it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hörs..._Kriegsblinden

[Dazrin]

The BBC radio play adaptations of The Lord of the Rings were excellent. Not unabridged though if that's important to you but they weren't intended to be that way. They're available in Overdrive if you have access.