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What your audiobook costs, and how many copies pays for it.
Word count in. Finished hours, four costed routes and break-even units per retailer out, as you type. Every figure carries the source we took it from.
Verified 1 September 2026 · we sell no narration
Your title
Everything below is computed from this number.
Sets the words-per-finished-hour figure: 9,300.
Planning Audible exclusive?
It changes the royalty rate, so it changes every break-even figure below. Undecided shows both.
Nothing here is sent anywhere. No account, no email.
Example · a typical novel of 80,000 words
8.6
estimated finished hours
A finished hour, or PFH, is one hour of edited and mastered audio, not one hour in the booth. ACX puts narration at 9,300 words per finished hour; we move that figure by up to 4% for prose density, and that adjustment is ours, not a retailer’s.
The four routes, costed for 8.6 finished hours
Hire a narrator
$1,290–$3,440
$150–$400 per finished hour
- What it does to your royalty
- Unchanged. You keep the full royalty and the rights.
- What it holds, and for how long
- Nothing. You own the recording outright.
Typical at $250 per finished hour, which is the union minimum for a retail-ready product. Under $150 exists on the open market and over $400 exists at the top.
Royalty share
$0
$0 up front
- What it does to your royalty
- Halved. Your 50% exclusive royalty becomes 25%, and the producer takes 25%.
- What it holds, and for how long
- The title, exclusively, for 7 years.
Exclusive to Audible, Amazon and Apple Books for the whole term. The producer's share cannot be bought out once the contract is signed.
Self-record
$150–$1,260
$150–$400 of gear, plus your own time
- What it does to your royalty
- Unchanged. You keep the full royalty and the rights.
- What it holds, and for how long
- Nothing, other than your calendar.
Your own time: about 53 hours on this title.
ACX puts recording, editing and proofing at 5–7 hours of work for every finished hour. Outsourcing the edit and proof adds about $100 per finished hour, or $860 on this title.
Digital voice
$103–$206
About $12 per finished hour at a paid tier
- What it does to your royalty
- Unchanged where the retailer accepts a digital voice with disclosure.
- What it holds, and for how long
- Nothing, unless you use Audible Virtual Voice, which stays inside Amazon.
Your own time: about 13 hours on this title.
Spotify and Kobo state plainly that they accept digital-voice narration with disclosure. Audible Virtual Voice is a separate path: it needs an eligible Kindle ebook, prices between $3.99 and $14.99, pays a flat 40%, and gives you no downloadable file.
Break-even units per retailer
Computed on a list price of $15.9, the midpoint of ACX’s suggested band for 8.6 finished hours ($11.15–$20.65). These are full-price cash sales.
Hire is costed at the typical $250 per finished hour, not the top or the bottom of its band. Self-record and digital voice are costed at the midpoint of theirs.
| Retailer | Rate | You keep | Hire | Self-record | Digital voice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audible and ACX, exclusive | 50% | $7.95 | 271 | 89 | 20 |
| Audible and ACX, non-exclusive | 30% | $4.77 | 451 | 148 | 33 |
| Spotify, direct uploadreported | 50% | $7.95 | 271 | 89 | 20 |
| Google Play Booksreported | 52% | $8.27 | 260 | 86 | 19 |
| Kobo Writing Lifereported | 45% | $7.16 | 301 | 99 | 22 |
| Apple Books | — | — | — | — | — |
- Audible and ACX, exclusive. New model from 26 May 2026. Legacy titles sit at 40% until the end of 2026.
- Audible and ACX, non-exclusive. New model from 26 May 2026. Legacy titles sit at 25% until the end of 2026.
- Spotify, direct upload. Reported for à la carte sales. Spotify does not publish the rate on its author page.
- Google Play Books. Reported. Not confirmed against a Google page.
- Kobo Writing Life. Reported for titles at $2.99 and over. A paid token redemption is reported lower.
- Apple Books. Apple does not publish an audiobook royalty rate. We will not estimate one.
Royalty share earns you no upfront saving on this table because it costs nothing upfront. What it costs is half of every royalty for 7 years, on an exclusive term you cannot leave.
The one thing this table understates
A cash sale pays the rate above on the price the member actually paid. A membership credit or a Plus listen does not: ACX pays those through an allocation figure derived from what the member’s plan earned, apportioned across the titles they used. ACX does not publish that figure, so we will not invent one. Read every count above as the floor, reached only if every sale is a full-price cash sale.
Where the arithmetic stops
This screen cannot pick your route, write your narrator brief, or list the words a narrator will mispronounce in your book.
That is the Production Plan, and it is not built yet. What is built is the Spec Pass: every submission spec and AI-narration rule for Audible/ACX, Spotify, Apple Books, Google Play and Kobo, read off the retailer’s own page and dated, with the rejection-fix guide. Whichever route above you take, the file still has to pass these.
One payment, $19. 14 days, no questions, full refund. Or have the desk email you this result instead — nothing on this page is hidden behind an email.
Sources, and what each one covers
- 9,300 words per finished hour, and 5–7 hours of work per finished hour
- ACX Help, producing and recording your audiobook
- Royalty rates of 50% exclusive and 30% non-exclusive, the 25%/25% royalty share, and the 7-year term
- ACX Help, how royalties work
- Suggested list price bands by finished hours
- ACX Help, suggested price
- Audible Virtual Voice eligibility, the $3.99–$14.99 price band and the flat 40% royalty
- Amazon, Audible Virtual Voice
- Spotify accepts digital-voice narration for distribution on Spotify
- Spotify for Authors, self-published authors
- Kobo accepts digital-voice narration and carries a disclosure field
- Kobo Writing Life Help Centre, AI narration and audiobooks
- About $12 per finished hour for digital-voice narration at a paid tier
- ElevenLabs pricing
Verified 1 September 2026
Rates marked reported come from published comparisons rather than the retailer’s own page, and we label them that way until we can check them at source. We sell no narration and take no commission from a producer, a narrator or a retailer.