Who can you trust? Your distributor or the stores?

It’s been months since I have taken down ALL my audiobooks from audiobook stores, including Spotify. Why? Because I haven’t seen any mentionable profit since my first audiobook release, Teddy & Lily back in 2017. Also, I simply don’t trust these stores any more. I can’t believe how time flies and how naïve I was to believe, that I would be able to make donations to charities with the profit from my audiobooks! Ha ha!

Indie writers spend so much money for a professional production, not realizing that we will NEVER make any profit. Everyone else such as the narrators and recording studios is making a living except us the writers.

It just doesn’t make sense any more. It’s the same stupid game with music. Indie writers invest time and money in audiobook production and have to put up with a corrupt system! Sooner or later, all these companies will be removed for good because all they do is use indie author’s work like the music stores do. We bring traffic to these billion-dollar companies’ platforms by promoting our work, and they get new subscribers! Who are the fools? Unfortunately, we the indie writers!

While I have published my 10 audiobooks ONLY on LilyAmisBooks.Bandcamp.com, I still discover online stores that have listed my audiobooks. Some mention the product is no longer available. Some say it’s been sold out. I really do wonder why they don’t remove unpublished copyrighted works, but hey, whatever their policies are, I no longer have to put up with their nonsense!

However, this week I discovered Teddy & Lily and Bon Voyage on a Swedish audiobook store! As you can imagine after my recent awful experience with my former corrupt distributor the Swedish Company Amuse.io and Spotify, both Stockholm-based companies, I’m more than alert when it comes to Swedish companies. I don’t trust them! Discovering my work that had been taken down for months was a red flag! So I contacted the CEO and support team by mail, contact form, and Instagram, and to my surprise for the very first time within a day, I received an answer from the CEO, and my request was taken seriously.

I received the following message:

“Thanks for contacting us and informing us about the situation with your books in our service. Our content department has replied to your request via customer care. All books are disabled now, and we are investigating why we did not get a takedown notification from Findaway that normally automatically would disable the books.”

Opposed to the corrupt music stores such as Tidal, Deezer, Audiomack, and my latest annoying experience with the lyrics platform Musixmatch, I didn’t have to waste time on sending out several emails back and forth until my request was respected and taken care of right away! That’s how ALL stores should react when the copyright holder has a problem!

And as you read, according to the stores' feedback, my distributor didn’t do its job. It’s not the first time that I have discovered my work in stores since my take-down request! 

But I have to say, the way people behave and treat writers couldn't be more different than the way people treat artists! While writers work is being respected, the lack of respect and support with artists is shameful and beyond upsetting. It is simply unacceptable! These two worlds couldn't be more different! 

So my takeaway from this experience is: You can’t trust either your distributor or the stores! NONE OF THEM! When you publish a work and use a distributor, you lose control over your copyrighted work. That’s why make sure who you trust before you push the release/publish button! It’s better to have your work listed in one single store than in many across the globe and not knowing how much they actually sell!

DON’T TRUST THE FALLEN ANGELS!