[Becca Fanning]

Hopefully someone got crazy high volume to make that rate worthwhile, because I definitely did not.

Edit: This rate is for revenue split. Double it if you paid up front for narration.

 

[AlexisR]

So... am I reading my agreement correctly that I can't un-enroll my included titles until the end of their Audible contract term (7 years)? 

 

[scarletlanternpub]

Not only is the rate absolutely terrible, but it is drastically hurting my normal sales. This is ten times worse than kindle unlimited (where a novel length read through is "roughly" equal to a sale). I didn't expect to be rolling in money, but this is far worse than even my worst expectations.

 

[S. C.]

If that rate is right (I am not in the program so can't verify), then that is equivalent to $0.57336 per finished hour.  Not very good.

 

[GeneDoucette]

the question--and I'm just posing it, I'm not saying it's so--is: are these extra listens, or are they replacement listens? Did you (the collective you) lose money this month because sales were replaced by audible romance listens? Or is this a few pennies on top of what you would have earned anyway, more or less?

 

[Rachelle Ayala]

If that rate is right (I am not in the program so can't verify), then that is equivalent to $0.57336 per finished hour. Not very good.

Actually, you missed a decimal. it is $0.056 per finished hour, or a nickel an hour and it bites.

 

[scarletlanternpub]

the question--and I'm just posing it, I'm not saying it's so--is: are these extra listens, or are they replacement listens? Did you (the collective you) lose money this month because sales were replaced by audible romance listens? Or is this a few pennies on top of what you would have earned anyway, more or less?

My sales seem significantly worse since I've enrolled. Granted I only have a handful of books out there so small sample size.

 

[Usedtoposthere]

the question--and I'm just posing it, I'm not saying it's so--is: are these extra listens, or are they replacement listens? Did you (the collective you) lose money this month because sales were replaced by audible romance listens? Or is this a few pennies on top of what you would have earned anyway, more or less?

For me, sales have plunged. From what I hear from other romance writers, it is YMMV. Many are reporting far worse sales, but some are fine. I certainly hope that as Audible keeps pushing this, the subscribers and the rate will rise, if they aren't propping it up with subsidies the way they seem to do with KU.

 

[bobfrost]

.0004778 for split royalties
.0009556 if you did everything yourself.

A 13 hour book would be worth $0.3726 per full "read" at split narration, or $0.7453 at full value if you weren’t paying a narrator a cut.

How much the finished minutes are worth depends on how many times the book is listened to. At 1 full listen, it’s obviously shockingly low. As the number of listening minutes climb, so does the value of the finished minute...

If you were listed to fully 500 times, that would be $186 on split narration, or roughly $0.2385 per finished minute.

$0.4769 per minute for non split. $372

Still total trash.

At this page rate, the subscriber paying $15 per month is getting 15,697 minutes of audio per month even if we are talking about self narrated work with no splits.

That's 523 minutes per day. 8.7 hours per day of audiobook content.

 

[S. C.]

Actually, you missed a decimal. it is $0.056 per finished hour, or a nickel an hour and it bites.

You are right, thanks. I guess if they go right to a low ball rate it's a good way to see how many more authors they can attract or repel. Rather than setting a good rate and lowering it later.

It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have that lock in for the rest of the 7-year term. That is what I call an onerous contract.

 

[S. C.]

.0004778 for split royalties
.0009556 if you did everything yourself.

A 13 hour book would be worth $0.3726 per full "read" at split narration, or $0.7453 at full value if you weren't paying a narrator a cut.

How much the finished minutes are worth depends on how many times the book is listened to. At 1 full listen, it's obviously shockingly low. As the number of listening minutes climb, so does the value of the finished minute...

If you were listed to fully 500 times, that would be $186 on split narration, or roughly $0.2385 per finished minute.

$0.4769 per minute for non split. $372

Still total trash.

At this page rate, the subscriber paying $15 per month is getting 15,697 minutes of audio per month even if we are talking about self narrated work with no splits.

That's 523 minutes per day. 8.7 hours per day of audiobook content.

This will decimate sales. I guess they want to destroy Kobo's new audio and Google Play's audio too. We are the ones that get burned in the middle.

 

[Jill James]

I had 0 minutes read so I didn't know what the rate was. I had 2 actual sales which is just sad.

 

[Avis Black]

Boy, am I glad I've never done audiobooks.  Are narrators getting the same lousy pay rate?  If they are, why would any of them ever agree to do this work anymore?  The pay rate is 2.8 cents an hour.  If you worked a job at McDonald's for an hour, you'd at least get minimum wage. 

I don't think any author can make a reasonable payout even with high volume.  The rate is just too low.

 

[scarletlanternpub]

Boy, am I glad I've never done audiobooks. Are narrators getting the same lousy pay rate? If they are, why would any of them ever agree to do this work anymore? The pay rate is 2.8 cents an hour. If you worked a job at McDonald's for an hour, you'd at least get minimum wage.

I don't think any author can make a reasonable payout even with high volume. The rate is just too low.

This rate is just for the new audible romance package. Normal audible sales are a separate thing. This is kindla like Kindle Unlimited, but for audiobooks... just WAY worse.

 

[Huldra]

.

 

[bobfrost]

A 13 hour book is probably 120,000 words in length (narrators tend to run about 9,300 words per finished hour).

That's a fairly long book. If we cut that back to a smaller novel the numbers get even worse. You'd need to have 1,000 people fully-listen to your audiobook to get the same kind of money I quoted above with a 60,000 word title.

It takes longer than an hour for a narrator to finish a complete hour of finalized ACX-quality narration.

ACX themselves say this:

We have found that it generally takes a total of around 6.2 hours for a Producer to complete one hour of an Audiobook.

6.2 hours per finished hour...

That's 80.6 hours for a 13 hour 120,000 word title, or 40.3 hours for a 6.5 hour 60,000 word book.

500 full-listens @ 50% narrator split on a 13 hour book = $186 for the narrator...

Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. 80.6 hours of that is over $584

The narrator would be earning $2.31 per hour for this effort assuming they hit the success of 500 full listens on a 13 hour book.

You'd need 1,569 full listens of a 120,000 word book before your narrator would be taking home minimum wage for their time and effort... half that if you're self-narrating.

You'd need 1.22 million minutes listened to in order for your narrator to make minimum wage for their time on a royalty split 50/50 13 hour title.

 

[GeneDoucette]

For me, sales have plunged. From what I hear from other romance writers, it is YMMV. Many are reporting far worse sales, but some are fine. I certainly hope that as Audible keeps pushing this, the subscribers and the rate will rise, if they aren't propping it up with subsidies the way they seem to do with KU.

I'm assuming your 'normal' (as much as there is such a thing) numbers are large enough to make a drop-off easy to identify and source back to the introduction of Audible Romance. The challenge with anything like this is attributing an income loss to a specific thing, especially in Audible, where the market for indies has been incredibly volatile for the past couple of years. But if you're seeing a drop, I'm inclined to believe the connection.

Also, I'm glad i don't write romance.

 

[CassieL]

Yeah, the fact that once you enroll a title in the program you're locked in for the whole seven year term, not just to this program but any program they come up with going forward sucks. And is exploitative IMO. But so is the seven year term in general. (Very anti-competitive...)

I had no listens through the program for this period. My overall listens on my romance titles were up slightly due to a few free promos. I had enrolled in the program because I figured this program was going to knock out any other romance listens on ACX so at least this way I might be getting something for those titles. I'm wide with my audio and have consistently made 2x as much on wide as I do through ACX. But just a note for those considering wide, some of my wide payouts per title are this low, too, for full-length novels. I think they're subscription or library sales although I don't have the detail information to support that. But the numbers/payouts (higher numbers, lower payouts) are what make me think that.

I hadn't realized until this thread how much this screws any audio narrator who did royalty share and whose author chose to enroll in the program.

 

[JeffreyKafer]

The narrator would be earning $2.31 per hour for this effort assuming they hit the success of 500 full listens on a 13 hour book.

You'd need 1,569 full listens of a 120,000 word book before your narrator would be taking home minimum wage for their time and effort... half that if you're self-narrating.

You'd need 1.22 million minutes listened to in order for your narrator to make minimum wage for their time on a royalty split 50/50 13 hour title.

And that's why many of us are going to stipulate that we won't narrate romance royalty share if the author is going to enroll it in the program.

Because yay. One more stupid thing to negotiate.

 

[KelliWolfe]

At that payout rate they've essentially guaranteed that no one else will ever enroll in the program. Certainly not enough people to keep it viable for the customers.