US authors launch Coalition of Concerned Creators to demand more transparency from Spotify  

Bradley Tusk, a New York-based venture capitalist, author and bookshop owner, is among a group of authors, largely based in the US, who have organised a new group called the Coalition of Concerned Creators to demand more transparency from Spotify over their audiobook deals. 

So far more than 100 creators have pledged their support for the campaign. 

Earlier this year the Swedish streaming giant gave premium users in the UK, Australia and US access to up to 15 free hours of audiobook content per month through the Spotify app. All the major publishers entered into deals with Spotify, and several agents reported feeling optimistic about how Spotify’s streaming programme could amplify authors and provide competition to Audible. However, the UK-based Society of Authors (SoA) heavily criticised the development, claiming that writers hadn’t been consulted and that streaming will damage book sales. Now more authors across the globe are calling on Spotify to improve its transparency. 

The Coalition of Concerned Creators kicked off its campaign when author Kim Scott published an opinion column in the New York Times on 13th December titled "Remember What Spotify Did to the Music Industry? Books Are Next". She warned that on Spotify authors will generally get paid only if people listen to their entire book — rather than receiving a full royalty payment for every partial listen, as they typically would on other audiobook services.  

A coalition representative told The Bookseller: “The main goal of the coalition is to demand more transparency from Spotify into royalty structures and author payouts to ensure they are fair and in a creator’s best interest. If that means they need to suspend the product to thoughtfully get the offering right, so be it.” 

The representative added: “Of the various concerns listed on the website, the biggest is the lack of transparency from Spotify. The licensing of 200,000+ books to Spotify has been done with zero input from authors and literary agents. These deals are being negotiated behind closed doors with the largest publishers without transparency around terms for authors.” 

Approached for comment, Spotify responded with the statement: “Although we can’t get into the current deal specifics, our book publishing partners each negotiate licences with Spotify and tell us our payout model is consistently competitive with other audiobook offerings. 

“Publishers have expressed that they are pleased with the results they are seeing since the introduction of audiobooks on Spotify, providing incremental value for their authors.”