He lost me at the start by complaining about Audibles listener friendly return policy. How is the producer "shouldering the cost" when I return their crappy, overwritten, poorly narrated audible book for credit?
Not sure what the limits are for returning content, but I'd set some if they haven't already.
You shouldn't be able to return the content if you listened on its entirety, for example.
I agree that its dishonest and despicable to return a book that you've completed and enjoyed (or even found mediocre). In fact I wish there was a Audible tip jar that let me give extra money to writers who have changed my life with a great book.
But if you've read enough you've probably had the experience of finishing the last page of a book and hurling it across the room in anger and frustration. It could be that that writer has pulled you though the story by making narative promises that painted him into a corner resulting in a maddening it-was-all-a-dream type conclusion. Or maybe you get to the last few pages of a book and start to realize that the story is not going to conclude and this book is in fact the first book in a planned 12 volume epic that the 75 year old author is going to finish over the next 30 years.
In those cases I think the reader is out more than just a credit. Where do we go to get back the 20 never-to-be-relived hours of our lives that we just poured into this deadend crap?
And for the record, I have a couple of hundred Audible books in my library and only returned one that I completely finished. It resulted in a letter from Amazon fussing at me for doing so and telling me not to make it a habit.
Not everything needs to be reimbursed, sometimes you'll choose something that won't work for you, and that's ok. That doesn't mean the author was dishonest at all, even if he was not the best writer.
I think that's what reviews are for. If you had a good time, write a good review. Same if you had a bad time, write a bad one and warn others. And check other people's reviews to see if something's worth it or not.
I'm saying that being myself a consumer and not a producer. I would benefit from being able to return books after reading them, but I don't think it's ethical to do so. I might try to sell it again in case of physical books, of course.
There's a bit of a fine line here. I used a credit on an audible book that was just rehashed, mediocre content and empty promises. The gulf between the marketing promise and content was very, very wide.
That was one I read in its entirety thinking that something insightful or useful would come of it and by the end it was clear that the author just read a handful of blog posts on marketing and slapped together a book to call himself an author.
I returned it for a credit.
Now, I should mention that I have over 120 audible books in my library and I’ve only returned two since joining audible 7 or 8 years ago.
But should I have gotten a refund for that book?
On one hand it was a never ending stream of empty promises that were all left unfulfilled. On the other hand, I read the book in its entirety.
Perhaps audible does/should have a mechanism to keep an eye out for abuse. I’d call myself a pretty darn good customer that has read plenty of mediocre books that weren't returned. Someone constantly downloading and refunding books to game the system, OTOH, should probably lose the refund privilege.
