What do you think?
Rate this book
Why None Of My Books Are Available On Audible: And why Amazon owes me $3,218.55
The Kindle edition of a short audiobook I produced to be distributed through Amazon's ACX platform, explaining how that platform's sloppy rights verification and mandatory DRM screws over writers.
- GenresNonfiction
18 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 3, 2022
6 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Cory Doctorow
259 books6,361 followersCory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and
Little Brother
and novels for adults like
Rapture Of The Nerds
and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 25, 2022
I both agree with this book and am an Audible subscriber.
March 19, 2024
well worth the read
A simple, concise, and damning indictment of the way Audible (and Amazon more broadly, not to mention US copyright law more broadly yet) maintain monopolies on entire categories of media.
A simple, concise, and damning indictment of the way Audible (and Amazon more broadly, not to mention US copyright law more broadly yet) maintain monopolies on entire categories of media.
April 5, 2024
LOL
Great fun and informative wee book where Doctorow rails against DRM and thus Audible. Makes me want to read Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age
Great fun and informative wee book where Doctorow rails against DRM and thus Audible. Makes me want to read Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age
October 13, 2025
Ok… this is based
August 3, 2024
This is a short audiobook rant against Audible and against digital rights management (DRM) schemes that make it hard for people to use, organize, archive and resell audio ebooks that they feel that they own. In a move of intentional irony, Mr. Doctorow has made it available on Audible, the platform that is the target of his polemic. It's a tribute to the good sense of somebody at Audible to have made the decision to allow this book on their platform instead of trying to suppress it or make Mr. Doctorow change the aggressive title.
As a user, I like Audible enough that I grudgingly accept the DRM and the problem that my entire audio library will become unavailable to me if I were to ever stop paying my monthly membership fees, though when I think about it, it doesn't really adversely impact anything that I do. I almost never refer back to audiobooks that I have finished. I never imagined that I was building a collection that I might sell or pass on to my children. Once I finish an audiobook, I archive it in the cloud and don't have any desire to organize my audiobooks in any sort of digital library on my home storage devices. It's true that the way that the DRM works offends my instinctive sense of what is my property and what sort of dominion I should rightfully have over my property, but maybe that's my problem in carrying old ideas about property from the physical world to the virtual world. We all need to reconsider what property should mean and how property rights should work. On the other hand, if the copies of audiobooks that I get from Audible aren't going to truly be mine, they ought to be owned by the individual creator or by the public, certainly not by the platform that gives me limited rights in something that is presented as if it were a purchase.
As a user, I like Audible enough that I grudgingly accept the DRM and the problem that my entire audio library will become unavailable to me if I were to ever stop paying my monthly membership fees, though when I think about it, it doesn't really adversely impact anything that I do. I almost never refer back to audiobooks that I have finished. I never imagined that I was building a collection that I might sell or pass on to my children. Once I finish an audiobook, I archive it in the cloud and don't have any desire to organize my audiobooks in any sort of digital library on my home storage devices. It's true that the way that the DRM works offends my instinctive sense of what is my property and what sort of dominion I should rightfully have over my property, but maybe that's my problem in carrying old ideas about property from the physical world to the virtual world. We all need to reconsider what property should mean and how property rights should work. On the other hand, if the copies of audiobooks that I get from Audible aren't going to truly be mine, they ought to be owned by the individual creator or by the public, certainly not by the platform that gives me limited rights in something that is presented as if it were a purchase.
March 15, 2023
Honest & Alarming
Cory puts forth an argument, if not a plea, to encourage readers/listeners to not simply look for convenience but to take pride in what they are purchasing. Even I can admit to not being familiar with the other sites that he mentions in the last few pages for for alternative methods for audiobooks. Worth the read as it isn't a long drawn out sermon but an impassioned plea to realize that the creators and fellows that work on what we read and hear, have essentially lost almost all of their rights.
Cory puts forth an argument, if not a plea, to encourage readers/listeners to not simply look for convenience but to take pride in what they are purchasing. Even I can admit to not being familiar with the other sites that he mentions in the last few pages for for alternative methods for audiobooks. Worth the read as it isn't a long drawn out sermon but an impassioned plea to realize that the creators and fellows that work on what we read and hear, have essentially lost almost all of their rights.
July 24, 2024
Well... this is a reasoned argument against Digital Rights Management (DRM). It mostly benefits the big distributors and doesn't help the authors or the readers/listeners. His argument was convincing and he is a popular author. He is giving up a lot of money by not agreeing to place DRM on his products. You would think the big distributors wouldn't care one way or the other, but DRM keeps most people on their platforms.
The author is doing well enough, but I don't think he has a prayer of changing the status quo.
In any case, I will probably read this essay again.
The author is doing well enough, but I don't think he has a prayer of changing the status quo.
In any case, I will probably read this essay again.
July 18, 2022
✊
Cory produces some of the best audiobooks I’ve ever heard, and DRM across media is an assault on what you’ve spent your money on. Do you think you own all those digital albums and films? If the platform loses their rights, your purchase goes out the window with it. It’s probably no big deal, because they’ll just get you for $10 a month to give you the privilege to participate in shirking artists and authors.
Cory produces some of the best audiobooks I’ve ever heard, and DRM across media is an assault on what you’ve spent your money on. Do you think you own all those digital albums and films? If the platform loses their rights, your purchase goes out the window with it. It’s probably no big deal, because they’ll just get you for $10 a month to give you the privilege to participate in shirking artists and authors.
July 26, 2022
Class A Snark
This short essay is hilarious, biting, and absolutely worth $1. It also lays out a coherent case for why DRM is a fundamentally harmful technology. But you can read about that lots of places. Read about it here because it’s fun!
This short essay is hilarious, biting, and absolutely worth $1. It also lays out a coherent case for why DRM is a fundamentally harmful technology. But you can read about that lots of places. Read about it here because it’s fun!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews