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Amazon Just Changed Audible’s New Subscriber Bounties

Amazon just changed one of the bounties it pays on new Audible subscribers to bring it more in line with how Amazon’s other bounties are awarded.

Scott Carney brought my attention to the news that Amazon now requires authors to use affiliate tracking codes in order to get a bounty when a new Audible user buys the author’s book as their first audiobook.

Under the previous setup, authors earned a $50 bounty simply because that new user got the author’s audiobook as their first purchase at Audible, but now Amazon is requiring authors to show that they were the ones who actually got the new user to sign up.

From the ACX blog:

Today, ACX announced the new Bounty Referral Program, upping the payout to up to $75 for each new Audible member and providing advanced tracking on your ACX Sales Dashboard. You’ll receive new, trackable referral links, unique to you and each of your audiobooks, starting August 1.

Bounties for Royalty Share titles will be divided, with $50 going to the creator whose referral link enticed that new member, and $25 to their creative partner, whose performance or writing helped seal the deal. Bounties are subject to the ACX Bounty Program Terms and Conditions, which can be found here.

That means you’ll want to leverage this URL each time you promote your ACX audiobooks, which we at the blog hope is all the time!

Amazon offers a wide variety of bounties as part of its affiliate program. For example, I can get up to $10 if you sign up for Kindle Unlimited. I can also get $5 if you sign up for either Audible’s general subscription or Audible Romance.

As a blogger, I can’t get any bounty that is even close to what Amazon will pay to an author if they get a fan to sign up for a new Audible subscription, so I think authors should count their blessings.

That said, Amazon’s new setup is not without its problems. Authors are either struggling to share the correct link or can’t find the affiliate links in the first place. For example:

Just got our first bounty links, and it appears each book has a series of links, one for each of the Audible country sites. When I click on a different country’s site, the link does not redirect. This is a problem because I have customers for my ACX books all over the world, and it’s not practical for me to replace my .com links with four individual country links. Can you suggest a workaround?

I don’t have this problem with Amazon.com affiliate links; they automatically redirect to the relevant Amazon country site (or at least they are supposed to).

image by Cordey via Flickr

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Comments


Nirmala August 4, 2018 um 10:11 pm

I was disappointed also that the links do not take someone to their own country’s store. It seems like that would be a no-brainer.


Scott Carney August 5, 2018 um 9:33 am

You think authors should "count their blessings"? In other words, we’re all in a race to the bottom and should just placidly give up more of our revenue to Jeff Bezos?

This is a slippery slope. Royalties have plunged 30% in 10 years on ACX. Bounties are shrinking now, too. What happens in 2020? Just because you don’t get a great deal from Amazon from affiliate links on your blog doesn’t mean that we should just all roll over. All creative types nees to fight for a large slice of the Internet pie. Otherwise we just give all the money to the platforms.

Nate Hoffelder August 5, 2018 um 11:31 am

I almost didn’t want to post this because I’m going to slap you around. But after the way you put histrionic words in my mouth, I decided that you deserved it.

All creative types need to fight for a large slice of the Internet pie. Otherwise we just give all the money to the platforms.

Would you describe your recent actions in re the bounties as effective in that fight? Do you honestly beleive that stamping your foot will accomplish anything?

Here’s the thing: yes, indie creators need to work for every cent they can, but that doesn’t mean they are entitled to a damn thing. Markets dry up, deals end, and no matter how much you may feel you are entitled to the bounty, you aren’t.

You are welcome to do whatever, but I think your time is better spent finding new opportunities to replace the old.

Scott Carney August 6, 2018 um 2:40 pm

You wrote:

"As a blogger, I can’t get any bounty that is even close to what Amazon will pay to an author if they get a fan to sign up for a new Audible subscription, so I think authors should count their blessings."

There’s no way that I can read that except to think you are saying authors should just accept whatever deal they’re given because we, apparently have a better deal than what a blogger gets. I’m not putting words in your mouth. I’m quoting you.

I think raising awareness of and enormous change in the audible ecosystem is useful. I doubt a blog post is going to change Amazon, but it’s a start. There are also other things that I’m working on.

Nate Hoffelder August 7, 2018 um 8:15 am

so we agree that it’s something you read into my post, not something I wrote

awesome


Allen F August 5, 2018 um 5:01 pm

Ah, the audio fad, good for those wanting some background noise as they do something else, but I’ll stick to music for that. 😉

My own excuse for a mental process means audio books won’t work because I’m constantly thinking up side-plots and having to reread what I just read – something audio doesn’t make easy.

As with everything else YMMV … 😉


lucio January 6, 2020 um 4:20 am

Did the bounties for Audible free trial just halved from $10 to $5?


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