Audiobook Royalties: Where Every Dollar of a Sale Goes

On a $14.99 audiobook sold through a store like Apple Books, the store keeps about half, the distributor takes 20% of what's left, and about $5.40 reaches the author's side. From there it depends on your deal. Pay your narrator per finished hour and that money is yours. Choose royalty share and it is split with the narrator.

An author wrote to us after reading our royalty terms: "You say split on net. What's net, and who takes a cut before it?" Fair question. Most royalty pages give you one percentage and leave out the two or three companies that take their share first. This post follows one sale from the listener's card to your bank account, store by store, with what two years of our own sales actually paid.

Why royalty percentages don't compare

Every company quotes a percentage. The trouble is that each one is a percentage of something different.

Kobo pays a share of your list price. Audible pays a share of what a listener's membership was worth that month, split across everything they listened to. A distributor pays a share of what the store paid the distributor. A publisher, us included, pays a share of what the distributor paid us. So "80%" from one company can be less money than "45%" from another.

The only honest way to compare is to follow one sale in dollars. That's what the rest of this post does.

Where the money goes on one $14.99 sale

Here is a single full-price sale at a store that sells by the copy, like Apple Books, Google Play or Libro.fm, sent there by a distributor.

1. The listener pays $14.99. Sales tax, if any, goes to the government and isn't part of anyone's royalty.
2. The store keeps its share. Voices by INaudio says stores that sell by the copy pay 40% to 50% of list price. Call it 45%. The store pays the distributor $6.75 and keeps $8.24.
3. The distributor keeps 20%. INaudio pays authors 80% of what it receives. Author's Republic also pays 80% of earned royalties. That leaves $5.40.
4. That $5.40 is "net royalties". If you published it yourself through the distributor, it's yours. If a publisher distributed it for you, the publisher's contract splits it.

Two things stand out. First, the store is the biggest cost, and nobody can negotiate it for you. Second, a distributor's 80% sounds like most of the sale. It's 80% of what's left after the store, which is about 36% of the list price.

What "net" means in our royalty terms

When we publish an audiobook, we send it to nearly 50 retailers, libraries and streaming services through Author's Republic. Net royalties are what Author's Republic pays us for your book, after the store and after its own 20%. We don't take anything out before the split, and we don't charge for files, hosting or reports.

Then the split is one of two, and you choose it before your narrator is cast:

• Pay per finished hour. You pay the narrator a rate you set, and own the audio. Net royalties are split 80% to you and 20% to us.
• Royalty share. You pay $350 up front and nothing to the narrator. Net royalties are split 40% to you, 40% to your narrator and 20% to us, for 10 years. After that the narrator's share comes to you, and you get 80%.

So on our $14.99 example, per finished hour pays you $4.32 and royalty share pays you $2.16 (and your narrator $2.16). Which one makes more sense depends on how many copies you expect to sell. We walk through that math in royalty share vs per finished hour.

What each kind of store actually paid us

Percentages are one thing. Here is what really reached us, per copy or per listen, from October 2024 to September 2026. This is 130,871 sales, borrows and listens across our whole catalog, after the store and the distributor took their share.

Read it two ways. Per copy, a sale at Apple or Libro.fm is worth several library borrows. But hoopla and Spotify paid small amounts many thousands of times, and together they were more than half of everything we earned. Audible and Amazon were a third.

That's the case for going wide. No single store outside Audible is big. All of them together are bigger than Audible was for us.

Audible and ACX, sale by sale

Audible is the hardest to follow, because most Audible listens aren't sales. They're credits and memberships.

Since 2026, ACX pays from a pool. ACX's royalty pages describe it: what a member paid that month is spread across the titles they listened to, weighted by price, and your title's slice is multiplied by your rate. That rate is 50% if you're exclusive and 30% if you're not. A royalty share title on ACX splits that with the narrator.

So there is no fixed dollar amount per Audible "sale". Before the change, the Alliance of Independent Authors worked one out: on a $19.95 audiobook, ACX's sale base was about $10.37, so an exclusive 40% rate paid about $4.15, an effective 21%. The new pool model is newer than that example, but the lesson holds. Don't multiply your list price by the ACX rate. Watch your statements.

Amazon's Kindle+ adds one more kind of payment for some ACX titles, paid by the page. We covered who qualifies in Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle+.

Libraries and streaming: small amounts, many times

Library apps pay in two ways. OverDrive, which runs Libby, mostly buys a copy for the library at a library price. That's why one OverDrive copy paid us $4.71. hoopla pays each time a patron borrows, which is why one borrow paid $0.46.

Streaming services pay by listening. Spotify counts listening by Premium subscribers inside their monthly hours and pays from a pool. Storytel, Nextory and BookBeat work the same way in Europe. Each listen pays little, often under a dollar, but listeners who would never buy a $15 audiobook will press play on one they already pay for.

None of these are open to an Audible-exclusive title. If your book is exclusive on ACX, this whole column is zero.

Selling direct: the biggest share of each sale

When a listener buys straight from the seller, there's no distributor in the middle and the store is you, or someone close to you.

• Our store. A $14.99 sale costs about $0.73 in card fees. The rest, about $14.26, is net. On a book we publish, that's split the same 80/20 or 40/40/20, so per finished hour pays you about $11.41 on that one sale. If you only list a finished audiobook in our store, without us distributing it, it's free and you keep 70% of net.
• Your own website. You keep everything after the checkout fee, the card fee and your delivery service. That's the most per sale anywhere. We compared the tools in where to sell your audiobook besides Audible.

The catch is the same for both. A direct store needs buyers. Big stores bring their own. Direct stores mostly sell to readers you send there. Your readers are your best listeners, so we give every author a buy box and a link for their own site.

Do the math for your own book

Here is a quick way to estimate what one sale pays you. It doesn't predict how many sales you'll get. Nothing honest can.

1. Take your list price.
2. Multiply by 0.45 for a store that sells by the copy. That's what the distributor gets.
3. Multiply by 0.80 for the distributor's share. That's net royalties.
4. Multiply by your share of net: 1.0 if you distribute yourself, 0.80 per finished hour with us, 0.40 royalty share with us.

A $19.99 audiobook, per finished hour with us: 19.99 x 0.45 x 0.80 x 0.80 = about $5.76 a sale. The same book on royalty share: about $2.88 to you and $2.88 to your narrator.

Then weigh it against what you paid up front. Per finished hour costs the narrator's rate times the length of your book. Royalty share with us costs $350. Our cost of making an audiobook guide has the numbers.

Where to start

If you don't have an audiobook yet, post your book with us for free. Real narrators audition, every one a real person in their own voice, and you pick. You choose per finished hour or royalty share, and your sales and royalties show on your dashboard every month, store by store, so you can check every number in this post against your own book. See how it works, or read our facts page for every term in one place.

Already have a finished audiobook? We can publish it to nearly 50 stores for $150, and you keep 80% of net royalties.

Questions authors ask

What does "net royalties" mean for an audiobook?

It's what's left after the store and the distributor take their share. With us, it's what Author's Republic pays us for your book. Nothing else comes out before the split.

How much does an author make per audiobook sale?

On a $14.99 sale at a store that sells by the copy, about $5.40 reaches the rights holder through a distributor. With us, that's about $4.32 per finished hour or $2.16 on royalty share. Audible, library and streaming payments work differently and vary.

Why does Audible pay less per sale than its rate suggests?

Most Audible listens use credits or memberships, not full-price sales. Audible now pays from a pool based on what members paid, so the rate applies to a share of that pool, not to your list price.

Do library borrows pay authors?

Yes. hoopla pays per borrow, and OverDrive buys copies at library prices. On our catalog, hoopla alone paid nearly as much as Audible and Amazon.

Does Spotify pay audiobook royalties?

Yes. Spotify pays for sales and for listening by Premium subscribers, from a pool. Per listen it's small, but on our catalog Spotify was nearly a quarter of all royalties.

Is royalty share or per finished hour better?

Per finished hour keeps 80% of net royalties with you but costs more up front. Royalty share costs $350 and splits net royalties with your narrator for 10 years. If you expect steady sales, per finished hour usually wins over time.

Store rates are from INaudio's and Author's Republic's help pages, and ACX's from its royalty pages, as of October 2026. Our figures are from our own royalty reports, October 2024 to September 2026. We'll update this post if they change.