Not at all a fan of Amazon, its anti-competitive business models, or Jeff Bezos, but this Twitter thread is a bit ridiculous. Unlike other goods, Audiobooks can be distributed in literally dozens of ways, in hundreds of formats, on quite literally billions of websites, to just about anybody. How is Amazon/Audible some sort of bullying gatekeeper here? If your book is good, it'll get noticed, and word of mouth is more powerful than Google AdWords or Amazon listings. Distribute on your own website.
Crying about unfair bargaining power or exploitation - welcome to the real world, kiddo. There are plenty of criticisms one could level at Amazon (See Nina Khan's law review article for a good synopsis). Amazon's contractual terms vis-a-vis Audiobooks (as usual freely consented to by the authors) isn't one of them, IMO.
Now if Amazon isn't paying its authors the contractually stipulated price, that's obviously different, but this guy's problem seems to originate with his perception that the royalty split is innately unfair.
Crying about unfair bargaining power or exploitation - welcome to the real world, kiddo. There are plenty of criticisms one could level at Amazon (See Nina Khan's law review article for a good synopsis). Amazon's contractual terms vis-a-vis Audiobooks (as usual freely consented to by the authors) isn't one of them, IMO.
Now if Amazon isn't paying its authors the contractually stipulated price, that's obviously different, but this guy's problem seems to originate with his perception that the royalty split is innately unfair.