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Originally Posted by Quoth
Honestly I'm a bit confused as to what he is referring to.
... So if I gave someone e-retailing copies of files I wholly own I'd expect to get maybe 70%. But if I only own the text then 25% is very generous.
So I don't know what the Audible 45% exclusive and 25% non-exclusive refers to.
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I'm Brandon's in-house editor, so I can talk about this.
Audible's ACX program offers 40% royalties for an audiobook if you produce it yourself and you distribute exclusively on Audible (who also sends it to iTunes). Or, if you don't have a narrator, ACX can hook you up with one, who will then get 20% (half of your 40%, leaving you with 20%). In all of those circumstances Audible keeps 60%.
Back when ACX started in 2011, the minimum royalty was 50% of net, and if you sold a bunch of copies it escalated up, to where if you sold 22,500 copies the royalties on anything sold above that were all the way at 90%.
They still have a page explaining this.
This was essentially a bait and switch—three years later they dropped it to the current 40% flat royalty with no escalators.
Back in 2013, when Brandon first made a deal with Audible to produce the Steelheart audiobook, Audible gave a good royalty. Not as good as ACX, since Audible in this case produced the audiobooks themselves. This deal lasted for the Reckoners trilogy. And after that, Audible went to industry standard for publishers on audio—25% of net.
When we were looking for distributors for the Secret Projects' audiobooks, we approached multiple companies. We weren't going to go through ACX, but Audible's offer wasn't any better than their ACX terms.
Spotify made a better offer. And Speechify made a great offer in line with the 70% royalty offered by ebook vendors, app stores, and most other types of digital storefronts.
We have produced the audiobooks with Erik Synnestvedt, the producer used by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading for their indie work. Michael read the first book (and Erik's production was great), and Michael and Kate will share the next two.
It is not at all common for audio publishers to pay a royalty to the narrator—instead it's just a flat fee. But we are paying a royalty.