The thing with Audiobooks is, Audible never bought a physical item from a publisher they have an licensing agreement, which puts then into a very different space. That agreement could be with
1. Major Publishers Audiobook publishing group, for a recorded audiobook
2. An independent audiobook publisher, for a recorded audiobook
3. Directly with the author for rights to publish, for the rights to publish
4. Directly with the publisher for rights to publish, for the rights to publish
Further, there are Geographic rights publishers only have rights to publish in specific regions. A UK publisher could buy worldwide rights for ebook, print, audio from the author and then license US eBook/Print rights to one publisher and Audio rights to someone else.
The eBook publication rights usually are with the authors publisher, but they can be owned by another publisher (see Open Roads media), or the author.
The problems here is separate publishers have rights to the ebook and audiobook rights. Take Harry Potter, Tim Ditlow from Listening Library bought the audiobook rights for $15k before the book was “big”. Ignore that his company was bought to keep this understandable. If you buy the audiobook and use this feature, the eBook publisher gets nothing which sets up some big conflicts.
Traditional publishers have been pushing for audiobook rights to be part of book deals for a while, the concerning thing I see here is that a response to this could kill the independent audiobook publishers which would take a lot of checks out of authors hands.
The thing with Audiobooks is, Audible never bought a physical item from a publisher they have an licensing agreement, which puts then into a very different space. That agreement could be with 1. Major Publishers Audiobook publishing group, for a recorded audiobook 2. An independent audiobook publisher, for a recorded audiobook 3. Directly with the author for rights to publish, for the rights to publish 4. Directly with the publisher for rights to publish, for the rights to publish Further, there are Geographic rights publishers only have rights to publish in specific regions. A UK publisher could buy worldwide rights for ebook, print, audio from the author and then license US eBook/Print rights to one publisher and Audio rights to someone else.
The eBook publication rights usually are with the authors publisher, but they can be owned by another publisher (see Open Roads media), or the author.
The problems here is separate publishers have rights to the ebook and audiobook rights. Take Harry Potter, Tim Ditlow from Listening Library bought the audiobook rights for $15k before the book was “big”. Ignore that his company was bought to keep this understandable. If you buy the audiobook and use this feature, the eBook publisher gets nothing which sets up some big conflicts.
Traditional publishers have been pushing for audiobook rights to be part of book deals for a while, the concerning thing I see here is that a response to this could kill the independent audiobook publishers which would take a lot of checks out of authors hands.