Audiobook Distribution Conundrum
Author C.D. Reiss recently posted a video on TikTok regarding her distaste for ACX/Audible and their profit margin to authors who upload and sell their audiobooks through their platform. She has a right to be frustrated and angry over the commission audiobook creators/authors garner from sales using this Amazon owned platform.
At first glance you’ll find that if you choose to go exclusive with Audible, you will receive a 40% share of any sale of one or more of your audiobooks. This isn’t true. I have gone through the past several months of my audiobook sales, and at best, I am receiving and average of 18% return on sales. Some of my books are non-exclusive listings, and a few are still listed as exclusive. Even if all my audiobooks were non-exclusive and my sales commission was at 25% across the board, where is the other 7% of my commission going? A quick answer is here:
“While Audible does not explicitly delve into how they provide royalties, some authors have posted about the 40% and 25% pay out being not exactly true. One blog explained how Audible pays authors on “Net Sales” not individual sales of books, which is easier to manipulate through lowering the price of your book at any given time. Although I can’t confirm this with the Audible site, it’s important to keep in mind that you may not receive the same 40% or 25% of every book bought, if the price keeps fluctuating.” https://www.Qd-up.com
Just for a moment, let me explain the costs associated with creating audiobooks of an author’s novel. Assuming the author is using human voice actors at a rate of $300.00/per finished hour of narration (approximately 9,000 words), for a 80,000 word novel, that is a 9 hour audiobook, costing $2,700.00 USD, but that fee doesn’t include post production, which would easily bring the total cost of a single audiobook into the $5,000.00 range. I am using this as an example, not as a complaint about the cost of audiobook production.
When C.D. Reiss pointed out that ACX/Audible holds no risk in the sales process, she is saying the cost of production is borne entirely by the author. Theoretically, in order for an author to recoup their expense of producing an audiobook, they (in the example above) would have to sell 1,852 audiobooks at 18% sales commission to break even. Most indie authors will never make that number of sales of their audiobook. But to that point, the author is providing another avenue of readership, which is in the fastest growing market of book sales for the past several years.
With such limited profit scale, it behooves an audiobook producer to take the lesser non-exclusive rate from Audible, go wide with a company like Findaway Voices, and also offer the audiobook sale directly from the author/producer of the book via their own website. As much as Audible holds a 41% share of all audiobook sales worldwide, going wide (non-exclusive) makes sense in terms of commission possibilities (which are more generous on other platforms) and exposure.
On another note, Audible does not allow the owner of the audiobook to create sales, or choose which price to charge for the product. That option is only available on other platforms – you know, the ones that offer some level of respect to the author/creator.
