Same here. The only time I’ve bought a book is when the price is less than $14.95.

The author seems disingenuous to propose that the retail price in audible is anything that anyone expects. I assume he’s not stupid and is aware of this so not bringing up this point is misleading.

It’s like if someone wrote a blog post enraged that BMG Record Club wasn’t paying them out a percent of retail prices without pointing out that BMG’s whole model was 10 CDs for a penny and then 2 for the price of one (or whatever the ridiculous price scheme was).

I think you're misunderstanding OP.

The way Audible book pricing works is a little byzantine. The "list" price of most titles is somewhere in the neighborhood of $50. Plus or minus.

But as a subscriber you're given one credit each month, for $15. So right there you can get the same title for much cheaper if it's your credit redemption.

But that's not all. If you buy the Kindle edition of a book, it's only $7.50 or so to add on narration with the purchase. The text copy of the title might be $9.99, so the total is still far less than the "naked" audiobook price.

I don't understand why they do it this way. Even if I'm out of credits, I can save $40 or so by getting the Kindle+Audio bundle vs. just the Audible version alone.

If you run out of credits, you can also buy 3 extra for £18 (I'm not sure what the USD price is). That's significantly cheaper than buying 3 audio books at full price.

Credits with frequent 2-for-1 sales, £3 sales and £1 sales, there is just no reason to ever pay retail price on Audible.

I suspect the retail price is just there as a psychological suggestion to make you think you are getting a good deal with the credits.

Back in the 90's I bought several audiobooks on tape for long car journeys; the retail prices listed on Audible seem similar to the price I actually paid back in the day. A lot of the titles are also available on iTunes as well, and the prices were comparable to the retail price listed on Audible. Audible really is a good deal.

Interesting, thanks! I guess both perspectives can be right: the prices are in some sense real, but at Audible they function mostly to tell you what a good deal you are getting (in return to committing to a subscription).

Yes, also because then it feels less like you're committing to buying N books per month from a particular vendor.

Most of the audible books I buy are in the $25-35 range full price. There are a few I've listened to multiple times and now could certainly justify spending full price for them.

With that said, I do think I misinterpreted what they were saying, which was more speaking to the original outcome if full price than what they would do now regarding each book.

And those promotions should be a cost of Amazon, not the authors. Weird how Amazon can take your product, sell it for a quarter of the price, and then claim they now owe you no money.

Audible's whole business model is to sell monthly credits on subscription for $15, which can be used to purchase any audiobook. That's not a "promotion", that's how Audible works.

Now they do also have sales where they sell books for like $5 or something; if those sales are not opt-in, of course that's a problem. But I have a hard time believing they're not opt-in.

Eh, a company should be free to offer any bad deal they can dream up.

If you don't like it, your job is to turn down that offer.

> If you don't like it, your job is to turn down that offer.

Sure, and disappear, because you're not listed by the bad deal company that has container-ships-of-money for marketing.

Nobody is forcing you to work in that particular industry.

And you can put your spoken word content on eg Spotify or Youtube, too. There is competition.