A decade ago, when Amazon acquired Audible, the two companies promised that they’d phase out their DRM,
which locked listeners into using their proprietary software and
devices to enjoy the books they purchased. Audible never made good on
that promise, and stonewalled press queries and industry requests about when, exactly, this fairtrade version of their industry-dominating audiobook store would finally emerge.
Ten years later, Audible controls more than 90% of the audiobook market,
making it the last bastion of DRM in audiobooks – competitors like Downpour and Libro.fm sell all the same books without DRM, and the audiobooks you get at your local library have been DRM-free for years.
It’s not surprising that Amazon would choose to use an illegitimate,
anticompetitive technology to lock its customers (and suppliers) in.
Once you control 90% of a market, you are more likely to lose users than
gain them, and so anything you can do to lock those users in to your
platform helps you more than it hurts. It’s a signature Big Tech move,
the kind of thing that monopolies use to shore up their dominance for
the long term.
I saw this writing on the wall more than a decade ago. I’ve given up
hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income by refusing to allow my
audiobooks to be sold with DRM. I even created my own audiobook store so I’d have somewhere
to sell my books. Every time I’ve dealt with someone from Amazon, I’ve
asked them to look into the long-promised DRM-free store for me, and
every time, they’ve promised they would – but no one has ever gotten
back to me.
It’s a far cry from the Amazon MP3 Store, which pioneered DRM-free music
downloads the same year the company bought Audible. Back then, Amazon’s
slogan was “DRM: DON’T RESTRICT ME.”
Of course, Amazon’s DRM-free music store was a collaboration with the
record labels to break Apple’s monopoly over online music (and a couple
years later, Apple followed them into DRM-free land and dropped DRM from
all their music). When Amazon is trying to seize control, DRM is the
enemy; when it attains control, DRM is a must-have.
Now it’s Amazon’s turn in the hot seat.
Google has just launched a DRM-free audiobook store that duplicates
nearly the entire catalog at Audible. When you buy your audiobooks from
Google Play you can download them to any device, play it on any device,
convert them, archive them, back them up. If you decide you don’t want
to use Google products in the future, you won’t lose your audiobooks.
It’s fucking amazing.
Google’s native audiobook player has a lot of cool bells and whistles,
of course (access through Google Assistant and Google Home, synch across
multiple devices, tunable playback speed), but the most important thing
is that you aren’t restricted to using that player. If you don’t like
those features, or if you like someone else’s features better, you’re
able to jump ship, and take your books with you.
I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the audiobook market, and they’ve
all been praying for an alternative to Audible. When Google quietly
informed the publishing world that they were launching a DRM-free
competitor, I immediately heard from multiple, competing major
publishers who wanted to buy the rights to sell my books, now that there
was a store with major backing where they could be sold.
After considering several offers, I’ve signed up with Macmillan Audio to
publish my next audiobook as a Google Play exclusive (at least for
launch time – and I’ll still be selling it through my own little
author-operated store).
What’s that audiobook? Well, that’s the other cool thing I get to talk
about today. My novella “Authorized Bread” has been bought for a
pleasingly large sum of money by Tor Books in the USA, with
UK/Australian/NZ publication by Head of Zeus and German publication by
Heyne. There’s an accompanying screen deal whose details I’ll be
announcing shortly. It’ll be published early this fall, with an
all-DRM-free Macmillan audio edition.
“Unauthorized Bread” is a story about refugees, inequality, DRM, and
class struggle. Its heroine, Salima, is an Arab woman, and I have
Macmillan’s commitment to hire a voice actor of Arabic origin to narrate
the audiobook. And just as I was able to do with my self-funded indie
audiobooks, I’ll be in the studio while the audiobook is recorded, able
to give advice on line readings.
Today is a day that a lot of people have waited a long time for. Market
concentration is a modern scourge, but even by contemporary standards,
the audiobook market is a disaster, with a single company in a position
of total dominance that it uses to squeeze writers, actors, production
staff, publishers, and, ultimately, customers. Anyone who signs an
Audible-only deal for their books after today is an idiot; and anyone
who buys another DRM-locked Audible book after this is just asking to be
kicked in the pants by a giant, uncaring monopolist that has abused its
dominance for a decade.
