Worth noting that extra codes can be requested after 10 of your initial codes have been redeemed and 100 qualified sales of your file catalogue. Which suggests that if you already have a total of 100 sales from previous books that's a moot condition.
For mine, the lack of a royalty payment puts a big dent in the appeal of going exclusive and thus getting codes. But there's not a hell of a lot of other promotional options.

100 qualified sales of your file catalogue is easy peasy, I mean... You don't have to be a big seller.  If it's true, I think it's fine. New audiobook producers will suffer for the first titles, but they'll soon be fine.

I was thinking they wanted 100 qualified sales from an audiobook before giving more codes. If you consider that the codes are for early reviews, which is usually used right after launch, most indies wouldn't be able to benefit from more than 25 codes until it wasn't very useful or relevant anymore.

Edit: just confirmed that I can get more than 25 codes for each market. Yay!

To your second point, I still think that it's better to get the Audible codes because Audible is still the biggest store, and you want your reviews to show up there. Without going exclusive and getting the codes, you'll have fewer reviews on Audible. Then again, I'm not so sure how much reviews influence buyers.

Oh, yes, I agree they wanted to increase audiobook production and wanted authors giving codes to their list, etc.

But I think what they didn't expect were the code farms, and people producing trash content, paying 50/h just to get the codes redeemed and make some quick cash.

In the reddit for narrators they mention a lot those scammy projects... I think it was quite widespread.

We'll never know what they discuss in their boardrooms.

The only thing that surprised me was how long it took the scammers to mobilize and overwhelm the system to the point where ACX decided to cut the incentive.

But I have a prediction the codes will continue to pay out. Why else would they reduce the numbers?

This is the equivalent of the 3000 KENPC cap.

The up-side is the audiobook market is growing, and people are reading more books, which I like a lot.

They are limiting for existing audiobooks,too,  the ones that are getting paid. I think it was too much money going down the drain and they had to stop.

I think it's possible they'll decide to give us more codes once most authors have used up their limited amount of paying codes.

And yes, they want a large market share. Knowing Amazon, I think ideally they want some kind of monopoly.

They might start another program like Audible Escape, but with better payment.

They paid for the old codes (before last year's change) while stating they did not. It didn't blow up, because there was no way to guarantee people taking the codes used them on your books. Back then, the scammers sold the codes on eBay etc., but it wasn't as widespread. The new code system was designed to be exploited in exactly the manner that it has been.

These things don't happen by any accident at all. 

Quote from: angelapepper on March 28, 2020, 03:09:23 AM

Here's a neat idea: there will be more of these new programs. They're probably cooking them up right now.

That's a hopeful thought.

I hope they give authors /narrators other incentives to remain exclusive with ACX and to point their readers to Audible.

Oh, I meant programs that will increase their market share while encouraging scams with lopsided incentives.

Second inflammatory statement: What are the chances these new promo codes will continue to pay out despite the announcement? Think about it. Why are they limiting the quantity NOW that the codes allegedly won't pay out? Shouldn't they increase the quantity if there's no additional cost to them?

Quote from: notthatamanda on March 28, 2020, 12:26:53 AM

Were they getting the bounties on those codes too? Wasn't that like 50 bucks a pop?

No. No bounties for the codes. I wish. 

But I still think the royalties for codes were meant to increase the audiobook market and Audible's market share.

Oh, absolutely, without a doubt. They knew the "usual suspects" would scam the system with junk content. They let it run its inevitable course until the increases in subscribers leveled off. Probably straight from the Kindle Unlimited playbook.

Here's a neat idea: there will be more of these new programs. They're probably cooking them up right now.

But maybe we authors are benefiting from it, ultimately. If you make audiobooks, there's now a larger market of people interested in them. We are reaching consumers who don't read ebooks but will read on their commutes.

Good? Bad? Who knows!