For now, let’s focus only on the result: the amount of money which ends up in your bank. If you’ve ever looked at the Audible ACX contract, you’ve seen the complicated sales earnings math (another future post!). Some even think it’s a glitch because it’s almost too good to be true. Members are led to believe Audible is funding this, not authors. Royalties for this category are earned when members redeem a credit, but are clawed back each time a member returns or exchanges an audiobook. Not so great for authors when this unmonitored scheme is used as a perpetual library-style access to books. $14.95 for as many audiobooks you like a month? That’s a great deal for a listener. It’s to these same members Audible markets their “Great Listen Guarantee” to first sell them a subscription and then habituate them to continue. This is understandable with Audible’s aggressive marketing of the value of membership. The AL category now forms the bulk of rights holder earnings. the a la carte direct sales to non-members, and ALOP (sales to members not using a credit) categories over the last year.ĪL is the most profitable category for Audible, and the easiest to manipulate. The sales in this “royalty” category have dramatically increased percentage wise vs. These are the sales when an Audible member uses a credit to buy a book and is the second royalty category on your ACX monthly earnings statement. This is an important distinction because 60% and 75% commission now sounds pretty expensive, right? Audible Listener (AL) Royalty Category What we pay Audible should be considered commission. Since ACX only supplies a service, and Audible is simply a sales platform and retailer where we list our books, let’s not call our income “royalties.” It’s sales income or sales earnings. Calculate and pay “royalties.” Audiblegate outlines the issues with their opaque accounting and statements, and returns fraud.Delivery of the book to Audible, Amazon and Apple Store.This is potential income loss to authors and creates uncertainty with marketing. All for books for which payment has already been made or time invested by author and narrator with “royalty” share. Since 2019, the time taken for this has stretched from an advertised four weeks to sometimes nine months. Quality control and approval of audio quality prior to sale on Audible.Their loss is not just in time but production costs. This is rife with scam books and narrators can be left spending hours and weeks on a project only to discover it will never be released. A matching service for narrators and authors.ACX.com is simply a website platform operated and controlled by Audible.

What is ACX’s Service?įirstly, for clarity, some facts about Audible/ACX.ĪCX is not a separate company from Audible, despite what some ACX customer service reps tell us. 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.

75 hard audio book