I absolutely do not understand this article. It contradicts itself.
> ACX offers higher royalties to creators (i.e. more money from audiobook sales) if they opt for Exclusive distribution.
Well, then pay more money to the authors, instead of complaining about it.
Also, how is this any different from bookstores having exclusive rights with certain publishers. I remember some books I wanted few years back were available only on Barnes and Noble (back when Amazon was still not that big). How is this different from games being Steam or Epic store exclusives? Like come on, create incentives for creators and they will flock to you. You can't sit around and complain when literally you're a middleman and you refuse to pay your creators more.
Steam however does provide a huge amount of cool features you get for free when you implement their API and use their platform. This effectively creates exclusives because its a pain to implement those things yourself.
That's just offering a good product that people want to use... I find negative views on exclusivity only really come into play when the platform "buys" that exclusivity rather than it being a choice of the creator.
In addition to the other comment: plenty of games are, or at least used to be, available exclusively through steam. Steam doesn't pay for exclusivity, but it still exists
True but that is not a FAULT of steam that is simply the developer / publisher deciding for themselves that is the best place to put it. When I think exclusivity with platforms I only have fault when it's the platform buying that exclusivity ... free choice is free choice.
> ACX offers higher royalties to creators (i.e. more money from audiobook sales) if they opt for Exclusive distribution.
Well, then pay more money to the authors, instead of complaining about it.
Also, how is this any different from bookstores having exclusive rights with certain publishers. I remember some books I wanted few years back were available only on Barnes and Noble (back when Amazon was still not that big). How is this different from games being Steam or Epic store exclusives? Like come on, create incentives for creators and they will flock to you. You can't sit around and complain when literally you're a middleman and you refuse to pay your creators more.