Greetings, folks.
As most of you are aware by now, Spotify (Who owns Findaway Voices) did a major stupid and attempted to grab rights. I said no, and I have successfully reclaimed rights to everything. Please note that the following titles were part of the rights dispute, and there may be a temporary outage of them on Audible:
- Fowl Play
- Owl Be Yours
- Whatever For Hire
- Serial Killer Princess
- Hearth, Home, and Havoc
- Last but not Leashed
- Playing with Fire
What does this mean? It means that ACX (Audible) is being an absolute super star. I emailed them, explained the situation, showed them the letter I had composed to Findaway Voices, and issued a rights reversion demand, informing them of the severed rights due to the terms of use change.
ACX replied with a “We’re sending this to our business department, please note that this is a lengthy process, and we’re working on it. We’ll contact you if we need additional information” letter.
This is exactly what I needed from ACX, so I’m super pleased with them. Yes, Amazon/Audible has its flaws, but I didn’t get a canned letter, I got a customer service agent who read my message and acted accordingly.
A special thanks to US law for having little things including “both parties must agree to the changed terms, and rejection from any party equals severance of the contract.”
Once ACX finishes their backend, all of those titles will be transferred to my account. With luck, there will be a minimal outage as the transfer process happens.
Please note that this is temporary, and as soon as I have my rights returned/things put back on my account, I will have these books back online at audible. (If Findaway honored the removals, they should be removed from sale during the account transfer process.)
Next up:
All of the books listed above are being rerecorded. All female parts will be led by Keira Grace, and all male parts will be led by Ivan. I will also be having Cameron Hill doing all versions except for Burn, Baby, Burn. All rerecorded versions will be exclusively available at my Patreon store. (I may see if I can get it set up for a bookfunnel store as well.)
They’re special edition versions, and I’m doing it this way because I want to.
All series with cross-over actresses (Keira Grace or Tracey Rooney) are also being rerecorded. Keira will record the books she has not done yet, and Tracey will record the books she has not done yet. The “extra” versions will also be making an appearance on my Patreon store.
While I am not done the uploading (renaming, etc) process, a bunch of my audiobooks are now available at the Patreon store. You will need to load the unzipped mp3s into a player to play them. There are a lot of options on how to do this, ranging from iTunes, Google’s built in player, etc, etc. Please note that I don’t have any personal experience doing this, I just know I was able to download on my phone, tap the chapter, and sound happened on the device. Hooray!
Go sound go.
I have gotten about a third of my library restored to Kobo Plus, so if you were keeping audiobooks in your streaming library, you can start adding them back now. Yes, I get paid every time you listen to the book. It’s not as much of a royalty as a one-time purchase, but you could, in theory, pay me fifty bazillion times if all you do is relisten to my books over and over.
The same applies for if you read my books through the Kobo Plus system. The more longer you read my books, the more I’m paid, and I get paid for re-reads.
For those of you who are new to Kobo/Kobo Plus, you can think of it as a non-exclusive kindle unlimited library type program. You spend $7.99 or $9.99 a month to gain access to their library. (Ebook OR audiobook for $7.99, $9.99 for access to both.)
Here’s a selection of books in Kobo Plus in genres similar to what I write. (G.P. Robbins/Dead Weight is involved in the promo, woo!) Please give a click if you like fantasy books and want to show some love.
You can also see a similar promotion directly at Kobo here.
Moving onnnn~
I am in the revision process of Iron Unicorn now and drafting Grave Affairs. I also have to do writing on a Sekrit Project. A preorder for Experimental Voyage (from Pets in Space) will be going up either in the next few days or next week. Life has been hard, and I haven’t had the willpower to handle the preorder for it.
On the Patreon front, the audiobook listen along of Moon Tamed (Sirens, Cindercorns, and Spicy Ponies with Bite) tiers is finishing tomorrow. The audiobook edition will be available for a few weeks (you will have to download each mp3 file individually, but the whole book can be yours) if you’re in one of those tiers.
They are currently voting on which audiobook they will listen to next.
I’m taking the rest of the day off. Have a good one. I need the breather.
You are a rock star (here’s hoping Billy Idol doesn’t come after me…)! I have to admit I haven’t done Patreon, but I do do Bookfunnel. I do hope you offer there and are successful. Take Care and I will continue reading your newsletters.
Just a question/comment. I troll your audiobooks on Audible and Chirp looking for new content. While trolling Audible I noticed some of your books are very low in price. For example – Moon tamed is $6.99, Out Foxed is $6.54. The list goes on. In my opinion these books are being under priced. Unless they are included in a sale they should be at least the price of a credit.
Users of Audible/ACX has no control over pricing in that marketplace. You would have to take this up with Audible/ACX. They’re notorious about poor treatment of authors and payment terms. (Literally… anyone selling on audible does not have the right nor ability to set prices.)
It’s great to hear that the reclamation is going well, although, of course, it bites big time that it’s necessary. Take your rest; as much as you need.
Can I clarify if I have lost all my audio books on Spotify? I have 11 bought through authors direct and 5 bought from Spotify.
I have no idea how Spotify will be handling this; they aren’t supposed to take away books purchased from anyone according to our contract, but considering how they’re behaving, I just don’t know if they’re going to be doing it.
Make them give you your money back if they took away your ability to listen to the books you purchased.
But this is why I’m moving more towards direct, where people buy the mp3s and it’s their problem to load them into their listening app of choice. This shit has gotten to be rather ridiculous.
Thanks I’ll see what they say.