The three shapes of an audiobook deal

You pay for production and own the master. You keep the full distributor royalty forever and can move stores whenever you like.

Royalty share: the narrator takes no fee and takes half your royalties, usually for seven years. Cheap at the start, expensive on a book that sells.

A publisher licenses the audio rights, pays production, and pays you a share of net that is normally well below what you would earn holding the master.

The arithmetic that decides it

Suppose a 90,000-word novel. Production here is $6,300 at 7.000000000000001% of word count, and you own the master.

At roughly $6 to $8 net per sale on a full-price audiobook, exclusive distribution returns about $2.50 to $3.50 a copy to a master owner — and roughly half that under royalty share.

So the production cost is repaid somewhere in the low thousands of copies, and every copy after that is entirely yours. Royalty share never stops charging you.

Subscriptions, libraries and the long tail

Subscription listens pay on completion or by a per-minute pool rather than per sale, and pay less per listener than a purchase. They also reach listeners who would never have bought.

Library platforms pay per copy licensed or per circulation and are steady, unglamorous income most authors ignore entirely.

Runtime matters to the listener's sense of value: at this house's law of 155 words a finished minute, that 90,000-word novel runs about 9h 41m. Listeners judge price against hours.

What to keep in writing

Who owns the master files. If the answer is not you, everything else in the contract matters less.

The term and territory of any exclusivity, and how you exit it.

Whether the deal covers derivative editions — a film book made from the same performance is a separate right, and you should keep it.

Asked and answered

Is royalty share ever the right choice?

On a first book with no budget and modest expectations, yes. On a series with an audience, it is the most expensive money you will ever borrow.

Do I keep royalties if I own the master?

Yes — the distributor's share is the only cut, and you may change distributors when a term ends.

How many copies until production pays for itself?

Divide the production figure by your net per sale. At $6,300 and about $3 a copy, roughly two thousand copies — after which the earnings are yours, not split.