That’s what agents were after at the Association of Authors’ Agents‘ recent annual general meeting, as some members voicing disquiet at the perceived low level of royalties being offered by publishers for digital downloads of audiobooks, according to Publishing News. The agents’ argument runs along the lines that, compared to a CD, with its associated costs of packaging, warehousing and physical distribution, they would expect the cost to publishers of making available the content for download to be relatively inexpensive. At the moment, royalties of 10-15% are the norm in the UK, but agents want them as high as 40%. “If we agree a royalty at 10 or 15%, our authors will kill us later,” said one agent. “It’s very hard to renegotiate after a year.”
However, audiobook publishers have retaliated, pointing out that the recording costs are the same whatever the means of distribution, and there are many new and not immediately apparent costs in preparing and making recorded content available for digital download. “Whether it is being sold in the high street in a jewel case or downloaded, the cost of making a recording – the reader, the producer, studio hire etc – remain the same,” said Jo Forshaw, Chair of the Audio Publishing Association. “Then there are the additional costs in providing meta data for the ‘digital shelf’ – the digital files and jacket covers. Publishers already do this for physical audiobook product, but much more time-consuming administrative work is involved for digital product – including the ‘Gracenotes’, the world standard for digital data.”