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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

I'll gladly laugh and accept the jab that I'm a little too active in this thread. I don't know why this topic got me today, but it clearly did.

That said, please educate me on where I'm giving a clear lack of understanding on how it works. I'm basically seeing a couple big name authors that are effectively telling me I'm a bad person for buying audio books from Audible. But, far as I can see, every alternative is complete utter shite. Except the library, from which I still gladly get audio books on CD.

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I don't think these authors intend for you to interpret their criticism of Audible's business practices as a statement about your moral character. One of their central points is that Audible's business practices have severely limited consumer choice in the audiobook market. You can't be held morally responsible for a choice that's been taken out of your hands.

May not be their intent, but at large declaiming something is bad and "enshitifying" the internet is a very transitive label?

And again, there is no evidence that audible is lessoning consumer choice? There is some evidence that they lesson producer practical choice. But even that is weak? With few exceptions, mostly audible produced works, I can find all of the books I care about elsewhere.

The cumulative point of this thread seems to be that they are getting to work with 75% of 90% of the audible book market (you claim books are available elsewhere = 25% commission).

You can call that whatever you want, but it sounds a lot like the descent to pre-Internet situations that weren't markers of stable quality and that many people who survived the 1980s don't want to see again.

I'm not clear on this post? What do you mean?

They have 90% of the audio book market, likely. They do not have exclusives on that much, though. I'd hazard that 90% of the available book market is through the major publishers, still. At large, this makes sense, as most books are still written with upfront payments from publishers.

I would also not really shed much of a tear for Audible. I just don't understand the idea that getting rid of them moves us further from the old style. Seems more likely that the publishers would brow beat any future entry into the market so that it was much closer to how things were in the 80s and 90s.

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