https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/opinion/audiobooks-spotify-streaming-algorithm.html
I make almost nothing from book sales. I actually end up giving away more copies of my books for free than I sell. (Under that "It takes money to make money" guise...) I barely sell any hard copies; more than 99% of my writing income comes from eBooks. Believe me, I'd like to sell more hard copies, but people don't have disposable income like they used to, and books are a luxury item. Kindle books take up less space. A $15/month subscription to Kindle Unlimited gets people a massive library of books including every page of every book I've written. It pays me microfractions of a penny per page read. If someone reads a whole book of mine through KU, I make a bit less than I'd make if someone bought it outright, and I only make like $.31 per copy on a $5 Kindle book. It's pretty brutal. But hey--I'm just glad Uncle Jeff can buy himself another mega-yacht. (Please note the dripping sarcasm of the previous sentence.) Now with Spotify jumping into the mix and giving away 15 hours of free audiobooks for their new Audible-like subscription service, this is getting worse and worse for content creators, and it's getting massively worse for the smallest content creators like myself. People have long been accustomed to getting things like music and books for free, or for nearly free with a monthly subscription. Movie ticket sales are slumping massively because people would rather wait for streaming. (Myself among them...don't think I'm not complicit in this, too...) Fewer than 2% of all TRADITIONALLY published authors actually make a living off their writing. Almost no indie writers can live off their writing. Almost every writer out there has to have a "real" job for insurance, to pay rent, etc... Writing income is a bad second job. And real jobs are paying less and less. Right now, the average earner in America actually has 40% less buying power than the average earner did in 1990. Everything is coming to a breaking point, and Spotify isn't going to help with this. Already, it's a travesty what they pay artists per play. I believe that an artist gets less than $.005 per play. That means an artist has to earn more than 10,000,000 plays to make a decent living off of Spotify. It's possible...but unlikely. Now, if that artist is an indie band with four people, then you have to get 40,000,000 streams to make a living for the band. Point is, selling books and music is hard. I make sure I try to support local authors when I can. I buy physical media of my favorite bands to encourage them to continue to make music. (I try to use Spotify as little as possible.) I always try to review the books, movies, TV shows, and albums that I like to make sure other people might get turned on to them. Hell, I even review restaurants to try to make other people go to them. The corporations are making life tougher for artists, but the demand for books, music, TV, and movies has never been higher. People want to be entertained...they just don't want to pay to be entertained anymore. And big companies giving away hours of free content isn't helping the little guy. Things like this are bad for creators. It rewards the Taylor Swifts and Drakes of the world, the James Pattersons and the Stephen Kings, and filters less money to grassroots and emerging artists, which means less diversity and less creativity in new media. It's the same reason that "best-selling" writers are not always the best writers with the best stories. They're the ones the corporations told people to like, and people who aren't actively seeking the smaller, less well-known stuff will never know they've been led down that path by advertising and marketing. I imagine there will be a breaking point someday, and it won't be pretty. And I know that artists like myself will come out on the losing end. We always do. |
About the AuthorSean Patrick Little is a writer, speaker, editor, educator, and general literary dude from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Click the pictures below to purchase books!
Archives |