Further, Brandon actually folded his boycott without achieving any of his stated goals except to get audible at the table at all. That’s not a victory, that’s taking the first plea deal they put on the table. It’s pathetic and it shows the publisher that shit talks when money walks. A tiny improvement is insignificant in the face of true change. Brandon didn’t change anything. He just screwed everyone who backed him on the project.
I personally think he did an adequate job explaining his position.
Change is often incremental. Sanderson didn’t get everything he wanted, but he moved the needle. That’s meaningful. Allowing perfection to be the enemy of progress is an immature position, in my view.
As for not working with Kindle, using Send to Kindle with the Kindle EPUBs (specifically labeled as “EPUB for Kindle” and formatted to work properly on the Kindle) from the Secret Projects uploaded them just fine to my Kindle and the Kindle app. Progress, highlights, and notes sync just fine between devices. Fonts can be changed and resized. Justification options are all there.
Obviously we don’t get syncing between the ebook and the audiobook, but as far as I know that use of Whispersync is the only thing we miss out on without official Audible and Kindle purchased versions, but that’s a minor annoyance and not something worth being angry about if you ask me.
Maybe there are other accessibility features I don’t use that are missing, I don’t know.
No we aren’t. That’s ridiculous.
Yes, because those are the titles over which he has control of publication.
When he writes a book for Tor, with a Tor editor and a Tor marketing department and Tor advances, Tor has publication rights and decides whether the audiobook is sold on Audible. Same with the other publishers he works with.
The secret projects were published by Dragonsteel, and then licensed out to other publishers for other printings. But that meant he got to control where it was sold, and by whom.
He doesn’t get to make that choice with the other books.
The Kindle version from the Kickstarter works fine for me, I don’t really understand your complaint there. As for the Audible version, you got the audiobook in four formats from the Kickstarter. You got what you paid for. If you want it in the newly available Audible version, you can pay for the Audible version, but no one is forcing you to do so. You can just use Speechify Books or Spotify or anything that works with the M4B version to listen to those books.