Brave New World for Audiobooks

As most of my readers know by now, I’ve been on a mission to release audio versions of all my work. I eased up off the gas somewhat in that regard while I was working on Replication, but have since tried to pick up the pace. (You can find most of my audiobooks here – I still need to add a few.)

Choosing to release an audiobook can be a weighty decision. For one thing, the costs involved can be significant. (In fact, I recently wrote about the cost of producing audiobooks.)  Almost just as crucial, however, is how you’re going to market your product.  As I’ve mentioned before, authors generally don’t control pricing when it comes to audiobooks. However, for those who produced their audiobooks through Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), there was always the benefit of promo codes.

Basically, in ye olden days, after your audiobook was released, ACX would give you 50 promo codes to promote it – 25 for the Audible US store and 25 for the Audible UK store. A promo code could be redeemed for a credit on Audible, which could then be used to purchase the author’s book. In short, even though you couldn’t put your book on sale, you could give someone a free copy via a promo code.  (Best of all, you still received a royalty when the code was used.)

At first, ACX was incredibly generous with the codes. If you ran out, you just needed to ask them for more and they’d kindly oblige.

You need another batch of codes, hon? No problem…

This largess sort of made up for the fact that the promo code system had a blatant flaw that allowed for rampant fraud and abuse.  In short, once someone had been given a code and redeemed it for a credit, they could use said credit for any book they wanted. There was no way to require them to purchase the book of the author who provided the code. Thus, if you – as an author – gave out 20 codes, you might find that only half of them were used to purchase your book. About two years ago, however, ACX clamped down and adopted a policy of only giving out 25 codes (for each store) per title. So you got your 50 codes total for promotion purposes, and that was usually it. Occasionally you might be able to get more if you got a bad batch of codes (i.e., a number of codes had already been redeemed, and there always seemed to be several), but even then ACX often seemed reluctant to help you out.  So, of the 25 codes you received, 3-5 might be bad; of the remainder, a third might never get used for your book. In short, a batch of 25 codes might net you 15 sales of your audiobook.

Fast forward to today; ACX recently performed a long-overdue revamp of the promo code system.  One of the most notable features is that authors now get up 100 promo codes for each store – that’s 200 codes per audiobook!  Even better, we get to generate the codes ourselves instead of begging ACX for them.  (Caveat: you can only generate 25 codes at a time and at least 10 of the current batch have to be redeemed before you can get the next set, but this is a vast improvement over the old system.)  Best of all, promo codes can now only be used to obtain a copy of the book they were generated for.  In short, this will eliminate a significant amount of fraud and abuse.

Other features include tracking, so you’ll know when a code has been issued or redeemed.  (In other words, if someone gets a code and doesn’t use it, you’ll be able to see that and can re-issue the code to someone else if you desire.)

All of this is good, but as one might expect the system still has a few bugs to work out.  For instance, last week I offered promo codes for my latest audiobook release, Efferus (Fringe Worlds #2).  I went through the first 25 codes in record time, but when I went back to generate more, I couldn’t get into the system due to some type of glitch. However, when I finally did get back in, I couldn’t generate new codes because it wasn’t showing the redemptions, and as noted above, it needed to reflect 10 redemptions before new codes could be generated. (Apparently it only updates with respect to redemptions about once per day.)  All in all, it was incredibly frustrating, not just because I had people asking for codes, but also because the redemptions – coupled with organic sells – were really helping the audiobook rise in the rankings.  Being unable to get more codes really hampered my momentum.

Nevertheless, despite the bugs, this is a vast improvement over the previous promo code methodology and represents a giant step forward. Audiobooks are the fastest-growing segment of the book market and have been for some time, so it’s obvious that Amazon is doing what it can to build a moat around its audiobook castle.  As I always say, if you haven’t listened to audiobooks before I encourage you to give them a try.  If you don’t have an Audible account, I believe most of the books on my Audiobooks Page have a link for a 30-day free trial.  (And if you already have an account and would like promo codes for any of my audiobooks, just let me know.)