So what do rights holders earn per Audible listener credit? Short answer: Much less than you think. Audible bases much of our earnings on what they call a “listener credit”. We further assumed our “royalty” to be based on the Audible retail selling price. Unlike authors and narrators, Audible/ACX makes zero investment in time and money in audiobook production.Īs rights holders, many of us expected our upfront investment in audiobooks would lead to future profits. It takes many hours to produce one hour of finished audio. Narrators often have out-of-pocket production costs as well. “Royalty” Share (RS) narrators invest many hours in exchange for an uncertain future compensation. Is the Audible “royalty” calculation even fair?Īuthors and rights holders invest thousands of dollars in each audiobook produced. It appears that Audible's Great Listen Guarantee (GLG), a “free return or exchange” scheme, is nothing more than a disguised lending library cementing Audible’s monopoly, and paying nothing to authors and narrators, intellectual rights holders and creators.Īll of this made me wonder what else besides returns (the subject of a future post) is eroding our Audible earnings.
The sparse details on our ACX/Audible “royalty” statements don’t provide enough information on returns or other adjustments made to our earnings. As we await Audible to provide the audiobook returns data requested by authors and narrators since October 2020, it’s time to question everything about ACX/Audible “royalty” payments, or lack thereof.ĭespite producing and publishing more and more audiobooks, many of us see dramatic decreases in our earnings per audiobook.
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