Authors’ Guild vs. Kindle
Cory Doctorow makes many of the points I would about the Authors’ Guild’s grumpiness over the Kindle’s text-to-speech function:
Continuing to take Blount at his word, let’s assume that he’s right on the copyright question, namely, that:
1) Converting text to speech infringes copyright
2) Providing the software that is capable of committing copyright infringement makes you liable for copyright infringement, too
1) is going to be sticky — the Author’s Guild is setting itself up to fight the World Blind Union, phone makers, free software authors, ebook makers, and a whole host of people engaged in teaching computers to talk.
But 2 is really hairy. If Blount believes that making a device capable of infringing copyright is the same as infringing copyright (something refuted by the Supreme Court in Betamax in 1984, the decision that legalized VCRs), then email, web-browsers, computers, photocopiers, cameras, and typewriters are all illegal, too.
That said, a colleague of mine made a good point: It’s sort of the Authors’ Guild’s job to stir the pot. They might be wrong — they might know they’re wrong — but it’s important to have a group trumpeting the issues of concern to their members.
I think the potential win here will be for Amazon and authors/publishers to find well-priced ways to bundle the text and (real, professional) audiobook versions. I’ve never bought an audiobook, but would consider it if the premium weren’t too high.
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February 26th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I love the concept of audiobooks and own a few myself but given that it’s a small studio + a narrator + a book why do they cost sooo much money. Movies cost exponentially more money to produce and yet regularly sell for less than half the price of the audiobook even before discounts kick in.
Yes, you could argue that the market for DVD’s and books are much higher but with these sort of costs it’s never going to grow either. Perhaps part of it is the licencing costs from the book publisher scared of losing sales so perhaps there a bundle would help.
[)amien
February 26th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Bundling the two together is a great idea. What would be even better would be some way of tracking the “bookmark” of both versions, so the user could listen to the audiobook in the car, then pick up in the same spot reading text when they got home.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Damien, along those lines then why would a book cost more than a DVD (which is sometimes the case)? In the case of a book or audiobook, it’s not the cost of production that sets the price, it’s just how the author gets paid.
And don’t forget that with a DVD of a film, the movie has already made money in the theatres and will also make money from rentals, TV showings, and other places. With a book, in most cases, the book and audiobook sales are the only source of income.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Has anyone actually tried the Kindle’s text-to-speech function? If it sounded too much like a robot it probably wouldn’t be something that really cut into the audiobooks sales.
As an author, however, I look at this as another way to potentially reach people without having to actually produce an audiobook. Most books don’t have an audio version and certainly the lower budget books don’t. But now people who like to listen to books could buy a normal book and listen to it the way they want. Maybe the writers in the Author’s Guild aren’t excited about more people buying their books but I for one am.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I think authors should embrace the Kindle. Seth Godin has a good article on improving it, Reinventing the Kindle It’s just another medium for people to enjoy content. It’s new, which is why the Author’s Guild is so stirred up about it. They obviously haven’t developed a revenue plan as effective as the old models, and technology like the Kindle are changing the game. They should be finding creativing ways to adapt, instead of hiding behind the copyright laws that are preserving out-dated distribution models and impeding technological advance.
February 26th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
No. Audiobooks cost what they cost because of units sold vs price of production. Its not a windfall markup. And too few people are interested in taking this much easier route to becoming a pseudo-intellectual especially given the fact that half of them are stuck in traffic jams listening to bail bond commercials 4 hours a day anyway.
Studio time is studio time. – Do you know how many copies of a 9 hour audio book I have to see sold before it makes up for the 9 production days it took 4 people to produce before packaging? The answer is: More than the number of people who want to hear, and choose to pay for the book.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:08 am
Interesting. When I first read your review of the Kindle 2 I assumed that the audio function WAS the audio book version somehow bundled together with the text. As someone unfamiliar with how the actual audio function sounds, I (like Ashley) am wary that it would sound too much like the terrible robotic speech function on an early 90’s Mac.
I would think bundling an electronic version of the audiobook would be a attractive option — eliminating the manufacturing costs of printing and packaging CDs. People are used to just downloading songs off of iTunes, why would they have an aversion to downloading an audiobook to their Kindle?
February 27th, 2009 at 7:25 am
@Ashley:
I’ve tried out Kindle’s text-to-speech function, and it’s exactly what you’d expect: decent for a computer, but nowhere near human. So it’s not really competition now. It will improve, but it’s debatable at what point it could become an acceptable alternative.
@Synthian:
You’re right about the units math for audiobooks. I think there’s an opportunity to sell a lot more for a lot less, but it risks upsetting the current business model, which for now is making a lot more money off audiobooks than e-books.
@Alexander:
iTunes sells audiobooks for iPod/iPhone. But they’re not bundled, obviously.
February 27th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Ah, good points! Thanks for sharing as a follow-up (whether to my comment or not). :)
February 27th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Synthian, I’m not convinced that production costs are that high for an audiobook. It can be done with a voice talent, an audio recorder/editor, and a producer, and the most basic of recording setups.
Sure, there’s cost to that, but it doesn’t seem like it would necessarily be higher than the cost of editing and typesetting the paper version of the book in the first place. With an audiobook selling for $20-40, even if it only sells 1000 copies, that covers 20-40000 in production budget.
It’s definitely an interesting question whether the best strategy for audio books is to price them higher in an effort to make more money per sale, or price them lower in an effort to sell more units (we saw what happened with the music industry). The question boils down to this – would more people buy audiobooks if they were way cheaper, or in other words, is the thing preventing sales from being higher the prices? Or are people just not that interested in audiobooks at any price?
I definitely think having download versions is way more appealing than a big stack of CDs, and it also helps keep costs down.
February 27th, 2009 at 10:16 am
It sounds to me like Synthian knows the business of audiobooks from the inside. I do not, but have some experience in the book trade in general. My guess is that our faulty assumptions include…
Net profit: bookstores usually get a discount of roughly 50 percent off list for audio books, so there goes half your production budget. Wholesalers get an even higher discount, and I imagine Amazon does too.
Total sales: I don’t have a good reference to cite, but the usual figure thrown around is that only one or two percent of all new books published sell 5000 copies or more. And since audiobooks are a much smaller market, the sales for all but blockbusters are likely very small.
So for the sake of argument, say I record one book, hoping for it to hit big. Going by Synthian’s numbers, I hire 4 people for nine days. That’s 288 hours, at an average of $50 per hour (figure pulled out of my keister). That’s $14,400, before paying for the studio, the CDs, the packaging, the marketing, etc. If I do sell 1000 copies at $30 each, with an average discount to the trade of 60%, I’ve grossed $18,000, and almost certainly lost money overall.
February 27th, 2009 at 10:23 am
One more thing, perhaps not widely known. Though attempts are always being discussed to change this, bookstores most often have the right to return unsold books (and audiobooks) to the publisher for full credit during a set window of time- say 6 to 18 months after purchase. For publishers, this consignment arrangment makes accounting much more difficult.
February 27th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Marc, the costs of pressing CDs are tiny – I’d bet the cost of pressing even 5-10 CDs plus packaging is probably in the ballpark of manufacturing a paperback book. That goes down even further with a digital download version – even an incredibly long book is much smaller than the download version of a feature film (which companies are renting download versions for $3-5 or less).
The “studio” required for an audio book is nothing more than a quiet, non-reverberant space, a decent mic, a computer, and a couple pairs of headphones. Again, very minimal costs.
Marketing is mostly covered by the dead tree book version, any separate advertisement of the audiobook separately would be minimal. Even the cover and other art can just get reused from the book with minor tweaking.
Sure, there are costs to creating and shipping an audiobook version, but I don’t see how they are higher than the costs of shipping the actual book itself, probably less. And most publishers aren’t going to bother creating an audiobook version unless they know it is going to sell more than a given number of copies anyway (meaning the author or the book itself is already a hit).
We’re talking about something that probably costs $15-20k to create (and I think that’s probably being generous). If the publisher is worried they may not cover a cost that small, they probably aren’t going to even create an audio version. As you said, 98-99% of books have very small sales. But it’s that other 1-2% that is going to get turned into audiobooks, the ones where the level of sales is going to make the cost of production almost negligible.
Just as there will always be books where the publisher knows it’s a niche and sets a high price expecting low sales no matter what (or the publishing equivalent, release in expensive hardcover, then release a paperback version later at much lower price), there will be similar cases with audiobooks.
But with a mainstream hit, it doesn’t take many sales at all to dwarf the production costs – the “studio time” doesn’t dictate a high price, they could easily sell much cheaper and still give the publisher and author the same profit they’re getting on the book itself.
I wonder if authors reading audio versions of their own books get a recording fee? If I were an author, I’d be more than happy to do it simply for the added sales of having an audio version available.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Mike…
Haha, Ok… Lets delve.
But first, let me ask you a question.
How many people asked you if you listened to The Da Vinci Code?
Done counting?
See… you can say, “But you only need to sell ___!” till you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t even know ONE???
RE: “the movie has already made money in the theatres and will also make money from rentals,” See… there’s the myth. — The money made in theaters is pretty much irrelevant. Much the same with people thinking the audiobook is a parallel revenue stream to the BOOK. Its not. Its a trickle that runs off an already small stream which has hired several people specifically to convince the public, that its a RIVER. I have a friend who wrote a book called NIMM’S ISLAND. — Sold 100,000 copies American, landed a NY best seller slot for 7 weeks in a row, and (I’ll get slapped if I say the numbers — cause she reads this thing) lets just say… she needed to write 2 more books that year, and God-bless-’er… its a labor of love. — THAT, would be the main river. The A.B. would be the trickle off.
You couldn’t have known this, but, the way I’m paying my way along my screenwriting path is: I produce soundtracks for indie films. I have about 9 album credits and 3 of them are audiobooks.
So here’s your breakdown: Best case scenario… I get 25 cents per book. — (To live here I need to sell 160,000 per year. – Scared yet?)
The book cost 2700 to produce. — (That means: I spent 300 a day, for 9 days, between myself and a non-name voice, and worked 12 hours to edit all the way to master after sessions.)
The book was rights free. And American.
10,800 people now need to buy that book in order to pay me. And they know that before it gets a green light. How many copies of this Christopher Moore novel do you think will sell? (P.S. In audiobooks, you use the “Copies Sold” from PRINT to push the recording.)
Above The Line is just as questionable. The idea that promotion doesn’t cost is somehow perpetuated, just like in movies. — But let me just hit the overall point…
“It can be done with a voice talent, an audio recorder/editor, and a producer, and the most basic of recording setups.”
Wow. — Ok… you know how shitty screenwriters look up at the screen and then say, “Shit, I could write better than that! Gimme a word processor! I’m goin to Hollywood!”??? —– THAT. — Its not even an analogy. Its exactly… that. The years of knowledge and accumulation of equipment through trial after trial, which are now part of my subconscious are what people pay me for. — Let me just add a couple thoughts to complete your popsicle-stick house. — Licensing. Legal. Artwork. Packaging. Distro. Author. Lights. Storage. Promotion.
Audiobook Production is basically the process of fighting to spend 200 dollars a day, instead of 400.
BECAUSE: If you go to make one single T-Shirt in Cafe Press… and you color both sides… your T-Shirt costs you $25. — If you go to the place where they make the T-Shirts for Coldplay and order them by the hundred-thousand gross… they cost $1.70. Its not a factor you can reject just by shear force of will. — Ok you can… but you’ll go broke.
ERGO: Audio Publishing is the process of finding something nobody needs, that everybody wants to say they’ve read, producing it in near Cafe Press sized runs… and then passing those savings on to you.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
So do they pay you the $2700 it costs to produce it, or do you do it for nothing upfront and get $.25 per sale and hope it ends up covering your costs?
I’m curious why you bother to work on audio books if there’s no money in it.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
So are there any real sales figures for audiobooks online anywhere? Or even any general statistics, like an average ratio of audio book to traditional books of a given title sold?
February 27th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
No mention of Audible.com yet? Hmmm…
I’m not too worried about Kindle’s threat to “proper” audiobooks, because there’s really no comparison between the nuance of a human reader and even a very sophisticated computer interpretation.
Audible.com and a daily drive between Santa Monica & Burbank have made me a huge fan of audiobooks. I’ve been an Audible member for a couple years now, and I am utterly addicted. $22/mo gives me two credits a month. The prices on the website seem roughly market-based; titles are usually your choice of $20-30 or 1 credit. With some careful shopping, I can score almost $60 worth of audiobooks for $22.
I have my account synced with iTunes, so after I’ve downloaded a title, iTunes automatically imports it, and the next time I update my iPod, the book is copied onto the iPod.
I hope the Audible.com business model is working, because I would be bereft without it. I love the sample audio — so important when choosing audiobooks!, the user reviews, and especially, the member discount even when I’m not using one of my credits.
The only catch is that the best audiobooks are usually not great literature — I’ve enjoyed the hell out of some Richard K. Morgan books, a fantastic Garth Nix series read by Tim Curry, and the first of the Twilight books.
That said, my favorite title of all time is either “Bleak House” or “Middlemarch”; both were amazing, but largely because of the strength of the readers. I can’t imagine slogging through either one as read by a computer.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
@Mike, Oh its not quite that simple. Its called a fade-against-a-draw. You get your production check… then when they break the line, you get a residual. (In the best case scenario that is.) Most small projects, (Alan Watts – The Spirit Of Zen) you get paid for your day the way an extra gets paid for her day. — I did a children’s book where we did different voices for each of the Wizards and the “Wuzzles” and there were songs, and a very, radio-drama type feel. That – got residuals. — And it SHOULD right? – I had to be like… 13 different Wuzzles and a Voodoo lady! — Only thing is. – It never broke the line. – Most books are small entities living in a vast stable full of recordings that survive off the housing provided by a tent-pole.
Oh, there’s a paycheck in it. — I just like people to know, that its not a murder. They really do care and you get the sort of feeling like, they think they’re the ones preserving human knowledge for a time capsule fired into space or something.
@Marc I”ve never heard of an audiobook paying for studio space. Maybe if James Earl Jones was reading the bible. – But really. You just assign it to a person who owns the vocal boot (like me) and just say, “Wednesday then?”
@Hi Kate: I’d say this whole conversation is about Audible. — But Audible isn’t a .com for me. Its “the production company” that put the Talking Book store on the corner. Their CEO is puts his own voice introductions on the front of the production like a prodco does its logo, which I’ve always felt was a little weird cause it would be like Weinstein coming out before the movie and saying, “We’re going to show you a movie now… its a good movie, that good people have worked long hours to produce.” But it gets done. And nobody minds. Because honestly… lets face it… we’re not at the Astrodome. We’re at a coffee shop.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
The Wiki article is pretty good too:
“Audiobooks on cassette or CD are typically more expensive than their hardback equivalents because of the added expense of recording and the lack of the economy of scale in high “print” runs that are available in the publishing of printed books.”
“…economics are on the side of downloadable audiobooks in the long run. They do not carry mass production costs, do not require storage of a large inventory, do not require physical packaging or transportation and do not face the problem of returns that add to the cost of printed books. Received wisdom of market forces suggests that significant price reductions to customers, while cutting into per unit profit margins, will be offset by increased volumes of sales. This will increase absolute profits to the industry while bringing audiobooks to a wider public.”
And as John pointed out: The current model is the current model.
“One of the factors holding back price competition is the fear that low-price audiobooks might simply take business away from more traditional forms of publishing. This is especially significant in the case of publishers who have interests in both print and audiobook publishing.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiobooks#Use.2C_distribution_and_popularity
February 27th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
I don’t do it anymore. I just remember it as the year I needed to become the soundtrack instead.
February 27th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
The Guild’s next move is clear: don’t do whatever it was the Buggywhip Guild did.
March 1st, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I’m a little late to this but…
1 I own one audiobook: Dreams from my Father. Obama himself reads it. He does the voices (including his grandmother). Worth every single penny.
2.: “But 2 is really hairy. If Blount believes that making a device capable of infringing copyright is the same as infringing copyright (something refuted by the Supreme Court in Betamax in 1984, the decision that legalized VCRs), then email, web-browsers, computers, photocopiers, cameras, and typewriters are all illegal, too.”
I’m not a lawyer, but couldn’t you argue that the voice function was like Napster? In other words, sure, it has other potential functions than infringing copyright, but it’s overwhelming, 99.9% of the time purpose is to do just that: infringe.
And doesn’t the whole revenue thing come down to napster as well? It’s true that it’s mostly only relatively big sellers that get audiobooks, and small press books might see it as a bonus to have a “free” audiobook supplied by Kindle, but it reminds me of people saying that Metallica was rich enough, and indie bands were happy to have their stuff shared. Who gets to choose who is rich enough?
And to those who say it’s just a computer voice, well, it is now. But 20 years ago I worked on a Steenbeck. And there was no such thing as a laptop. So if you think that in ten years there won’t be voice software that is near indistinguishable, well, I’d be happy to change the bulb on your Steenbeck.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
John,
For many people who read audiobooks, being able to just listen is the reason they purchase. My mom long ago stopped reading and started listening — she replaced one with the other. So, while I don’t think this suit makes legal for the reasons you mention (caveat: definitely not a lawyer), I too can see why somebody would want to protect that segment of the market.
That being said, even my mom prefers well-read audiobooks, and friends and I have purchased audibooks for long drives based off of a combination of reading talent and the actual book. I think if the software ever gets good enough to be any sort of competition, that’s going to have to be the model for audiobooks — read by high level voice talent, the original author, or produced as audio plays.
And selling electronically for less money is important too — I used to hear people complain that they were paying the same amount for an audiobook without getting the packaging and 6 physical CDs. Audible.com seems pretty good for this, but it used to be that you could get 3 or 4 albums of music for the same price as an audiobook, and one of the benefits of physical books is that they provide more entertainment for cheaper than many of the alternatives. Perhaps there’s an ad revenue model out there as well.
Some audiobooks I would recommend, if you ever want to try one out:
The Edgar Allen Poe Collection, read gloriously over-the-top by Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price: http://www.audible.com/adbl/entry/offers/productPromo2.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&productID=BK_HARP_000718
The Kid Stays In The Picture, read by Roberts Evans himself: http://www.audible.com/adbl/entry/offers/productPromo2.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0362130999.1236024697@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccceadegikkhihecefecekjdffidfkn.0&productID=BK_DOVE_000162
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, spoken word adaptation (read: radio play), with Jim Jarmusch, Harry Dean Stanton, Maury Chaykin, Buck Henry, and Jimmy Buffet (it plays more emotionally disinterested than the movie): http://www.amazon.com/Fear-Loathing-Vegas-Spoken-Adaptation/dp/B000001EAI/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b
March 10th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Oh, Synthian. So much righteous indignation and bluster at my post, and then you don’t even really disagree with me.
Yes, sales of audiobooks are low, we agree on that.
Yes, the cost of recording an audiobook is low – I made an intentionally conservative (high) estimate and you confirmed that the cost and manpower were even lower than that. You agreed with me that an actual studio isn’t really necessary.
My whole point has been that while audiobooks are low sellers, the cost of production (recording and editing specifically) is also relatively low and isn’t the justification for high pricing.
I said: “It can be done with a voice talent, an audio recorder/editor, and a producer, and the most basic of recording setups.”
That pissed you off to no end, but in all your ranting and raving you never disputed that statement. In fact, you said you have done projects where you served as the guy doing the audio recording and editing, and as the producer, so only two people were required. Do you disagree, or are you just mad that someone pointed out that the gear required to do high quality voice recording is no longer astronomical. I know it must make you sad that you’ve spent “years of knowledge and accumulation of equipment through trial after trial” and now someone with a quality mic and a sound card with a decent pre can get pretty much the same quality recording on a dirt cheap computer with the (cheap) software of their choice.
I’d love to know what I left off that list since you haven’t mentioned any gear that I didn’t.
“Licensing. Legal. Artwork. Packaging. Distro. Author. Lights. Storage. Promotion.”
Yep, those absolutely are part of the cost. And those are also part of the cost of creating the BOOK in the first place.
Artwork for example. Many audio books just reuse the book cover. Sure, it costs money to have the artist resize it to CD cover size (in many cases, just adding blank space on the side) and slap “UNABRIDGED” across the bottom. But are you really going to tell me that it doesn’t cost a tiny fraction of what it cost to create the original book cover in the first place? A smart publisher would have the artist just go ahead and create the audiobook cover at the same time as the book cover.
Same goes for things like legal. Sure, it costs money, but a smart publisher (at least one that publishes audiobooks themselves instead of farming them out to a third party) will just work out the audiobook deal at the same time as the book deal.
You seem to ignore how much work and time and cost has gone into creating the BOOK in the first place. Sure, the audiobook takes time and work and money to create. But it’s a tiny fraction of what the book took – you really think that compared to what was required for the book, two people working for less than two weeks is a lot?
As for creating the actual media, yes of course there will be economies of scale. Digital download release works toward minimizing that.
You completely missed the point about DVD versus theatrical release. I wasn’t saying that the situation with books and audiobooks is the same, I was saying it was completely the opposite.
And your friend who sold a hundred thousand copies but only made enough to live for four months on it? Sounds like they are either getting an awful deal or they need to move somewhere where the cost of living isn’t exorbitant. Something just isn’t right in that situation, she is either getting taken advantage of or she needs to learn to live on a budget.
Since cost of creating the actual audio is relatively low, the main reason for the high prices is just economy of scale – I have to wonder if sales are low because people simply aren’t that interested in audio books, or if they just aren’t willing to pay 2-4 times the cost of the book. If a publisher tried lower pricing (particularly with a title they knew would sell enough to cover their costs), I wonder if they would see an increase in sales, and if that increase would be enough to offset the lower pricing.
It happened with DVD sales, the studios drastically lowered pricing but sales went up enough to increase their profits.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Sorry, it happened with VHS sales.