Someone recently posed a question in a comment, asking about how expensive it was to get an audiobook released. I had started responding to the comment, but as my answer grew it occurred to me that it might be better expressed as a blog post. (Plus, I needed something to post about anyway.)
Anyway, the short answer is that producing audiobooks can be fairly expensive. More importantly, how profitable it is can depend on the route you go.
Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) is generally considered top dog in this arena and is owned by Amazon (as is Audible). ACX is a platform bringing together authors and narrators/producers, and there are basically two ways to go on ACX in terms of getting an audiobook made: 1) the author pays nothing upfront, but agrees to split the royalties 50/50 with the narrator for 7 years, or 2) the author pays upfront for the entire thing, but doesn’t have to split royalties.
The royalty split is obviously the least expensive for the author, but puts the burden on the narrator of taking the risk that the audiobook may not find an audience. Thus, a narrator who is asked to do a royalty split probably wants to know how the ebook is selling. (If the ebook isn’t selling, odds are the audio version won’t either.) He may also be interested in how the author plans to market the audiobook, how much will be invested in that regard, and so on.
Paying upfront means that the author typically pays a certain rate per finished hour (pfh). So, if a narrator’s rate is $100 pfh and the audiobook ends up being 10 hours long, the author pays $1000. Just to be clear, however, it usually takes 5-6 hours of work to produce each finished hour, so a 10-hour audiobook probably represents 50-60 hours of work (for which, in my example, the author will pay $1K.) That said, you can find narrators on the cheap end around $50 pfh, but in many cases it’s a situation where you get what you pay for, because many at that rate are just starting out. (That doesn’t mean they’re bad, just that they’re going to be learning the craft to an extent on your dime.) You can expect to pay more for one of the more established narrators, many of whom have their own fans/following. (For instance, someone just told me in the past week or so that they absolutely love my narrator.) So if you’re paying, say, $150 pfh, a 10-hour book will run you $1500. Long story short, getting a good narrator can pay big dividends, but will probably cost you initially.
In addition, it may take a while to break even. Part of the problem is that it’s difficult to market audiobooks; authors don’t control pricing, so you can’t have a sale or anything like that. If you’re lucky, Audible will include your book in a sale, but I have no idea how they select those. For instance, they recently had a first-in-series sale, where – as implied – the first audiobook in numerous series was on sale. With several SF/Fantasy series in audio, I was hoping at least one of my books would be included, but no such luck. I reached out to ACX to beg ask about having my books included in future sales (“Throw me a friggin’ bone, people…”), but was told that those decisions were really up to Audible, although it would help if I promoted my audiobooks “heavily.” If you’re wondering what that means, suggestions include: Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Blogging. Podcasting. Getting on Youtube. (And somewhere in there I’ll find time to write.)
Anyway, I shouldn’t complain. Even without doing all that, I was blessed to sell about 850 audiobooks in March, so I had a good month on the audio front. (For those interested, you can find my audiobooks here.) Now, of course, it’s back to working on the next ebook…
***I need to add that ACX isn’t the only game in town when it comes to getting audiobooks made, but that’s who I go through so my post focuses on their processes. Many authors use other production platforms and are happy with the final product.
I appreciate the breakdown 🙂 I haven’t looked for them on this site but I have directed several people towards your wordpress site posts on how to work audible and kindle for the best effect.
If an audiobook takes $1-1.5k to produce just how many copies must be sold to break even?
I’ve noticed most indie books audio versions are running about $8-12 these days. Hows that break down in the effort to break even and start making a profit. What’s your take home per sale? $2 per for a needed 500-750 copies? or is it less or more?
Actually, an audiobook can cost way more than $1000 – $1500. It depends on how long it is and how much you’re paying your narrator. (For example, at $250 per finished hour, you’ll pay $2500 for a 10-hour book. There was a successful romance author who said she paid about $5K per audiobook.) The number of break-even copies varies because Audible sets the price based on length. (Again, authors have no control over pricing.) Shorter books will sell for less. (Of course, they should also be cheaper to produce, so maybe it works out.) Anyway, they are generally priced as follows:
under 1 hour: under $7
1 – 3 hours: $7 – $10
3 – 5 hours: $10 – $20
5 – 10 hours: $15 – $25
10 – 20 hours: $20 – $30
over 20 hours: $25 – 35
Also, Audible complicates this even further by virtue of the fact that – believe it or not – an audiobook actually has multiple prices. There are 3 price/purchase categories, which, if I remember correctly, are Audible Listener (AL), Audible Listener Off-Plan (ALOP), and A La Carte (ALC), and they are defined as follows:
AL – An AL purchase is a person that is an Audible member purchased your book using a membership credit that they receive on a monthly basis for a fee. Since credits can purchase a book of any price, they have a different value than someone who paid cash for the book. Audible uses an allocation factor to determine the value for the credit each month.
ALOP – This type of purchase is made when an Audible member purchases the book without using a credit. Audible members receive 30% off the retail price for all books, so you can usually assume the amount paid will be 30% less than retail, so you will receive royalties based on that amount.
ALC – This indicates that someone purchased your book A La Carte, without any discounts or promotions. Most ALC purchases come from iTunes, but can also indicate that someone bought the book from Amazon or Audible that is not a member, so they paid the regular retail price for the book.
In short, there’s no straight answer for how many copies you’ll have to sell to break even, because it depends on various factors (length, price, purchase category, etc. – and I haven’t even mentioned Whispersync). But let’s just play with the numbers for a sec:
Let’s take our hypo of a 10-hr audiobook that cost $1500. You get a 40% royalty. ALC is obviously the option that pays the most, so we’ll go with that. Now, let’s assume Audible prices the book at $20. You get $8 per sale. That means you’ll have to sell 188 copies to break even. In truth, however, I don’t think you’ll get $8 per sale. In all honesty, given the way prices can vary, I would suspect you’ll probably need to sell twice as many audiobooks in our scenario in order to break even, so somewhere in the neighborhood of 350-400.