In Marketing 101 a few weeks ago, right in the middle of a class on ACX, a member asked me something I hear all the time. Do authors look at you differently if you're willing to do royalty share and not only per finished hour? And while we're at it, what rates do people actually go for?

I told him the truth. In all my years on ACX, nobody has ever said a word to me about which payment type I picked. But the question under his question is the one new narrators ask me most, which is how the money works at all. So this post covers both ways audiobook narrators get paid, and the numbers I use to decide whether a book is worth my time.

What a "finished hour" means

A finished hour is one hour of the final audiobook, the length a listener hears. It is not the hours you spend recording and editing it. ACX works it out at about 9,300 words per finished hour, and that's roughly how the rest of the industry prices it too.

So if a book is 9,300 words and the rate is $50 per finished hour, you get $50. If the book is 18,600 words at the same rate, you get $100.

On ACX you usually won't see the exact rate up front. The listing shows a range, like $50 to $100, and the author picks the real number when they offer you a contract. So I do the worst case and the best case in my head. One book we looked at in class was 4.3 hours at $50 to $100 per finished hour. That's somewhere between about $215 and $430 for the whole book.

Per finished hour is the easy one

The author pays you for the finished book, and that's the deal. Once you're paid, it makes no difference to your bank account whether the book sells ten copies or ten thousand. (You still get the credit, and you should list every single book on your profile.)

That's why I tell people to always audition for per finished hour books, and to get the audition in the moment the book pops up. Everybody and their cousin wants those books. The earlier your audition lands, the higher it sits in the queue the author listens through.

Two things to know before your first one. ACX doesn't process this payment. You and the author settle it directly. When they've paid you, you click "Confirm payment" in ACX, and only then does the book move on to ACX's quality check and out to retail. ACX explains that step in its help centre. Don't confirm anything until the money is actually in your account.

With a new author, I also try to get 25 to 50 percent upfront. I record the 15-minute sample first, which ACX has you do on every book anyway. Once the author has heard it and approved it, they pay me the first 25 percent, and then I record the rest. People I've worked with for a while don't get asked. It's for new clients, when neither of us knows the other yet.

Royalty share means you take the risk with the author

With royalty share there's no money upfront. You share in what the audiobook earns instead. On ACX, the author and the narrator split the royalties 50/50, and the narrator's share lasts seven years. Some months that's a few dollars. If the book takes off, it can be a lot more than you would have been paid upfront.

The royalty share books I narrated years ago still pay me every month. That's the upside nobody tells you about. You do the work once, and a good book can keep paying you for years. It usually slows down as a book gets older, though, so don't count on the first year's numbers lasting.

It's also worth knowing that the way those royalties are worked out is changing. In May 2026 Audible started a new royalty model on ACX. Instead of paying per sale, it takes what members pay for their Audible membership each month and divides it among the titles each member listened to, weighted by each book's price. The royalty rate for exclusive titles went from 40 to 50 percent, and every existing title has to move to the new model by the end of 2026. ACX says royalty share books keep earning their share under it. ACX lays it all out in its help centre. A lot of narrators find the change complicated, and some find it frustrating.

How I decide if a royalty share book is worth it

When I first started, I did everything. You guys, there was no limit, because I had no work. If you're brand new and have nothing under your belt, do as many as you can, because every book teaches you something.

Once you've got some work coming in, you can be pickier. I look at three things.

First is the length. If you're new, I'd stay around three to five hours or less. New narrators usually take six to eight hours of work for every finished hour, because you haven't found your groove yet. So a 10-hour book could mean 60 to 80 hours of your life.

The next thing is the Amazon sales rank of the book itself, on the book's Amazon page. Lower is better here, so a number-one best seller is literally number 1. Anything under about 100,000 is selling decently, and that's close to a no-brainer. If a book is 10 hours long, I want it at 20,000 or better before I take that risk. When the rank is in the millions, you're not going to sell much unless you sell it yourself.

And the last one is the ratings. How many does the book have, and are they verified purchases? While you're on that page, see how many other titles the author has. An author with eleven books is a chance at ten more if you do a great job on the first one.

The part most narrators skip

Here's the rub with royalty share. Your money depends on sales, and most authors on ACX are independent authors with very little money for marketing. Nearly every author I talk to tells me the same thing. They don't know how to sell their book.

You're allowed to help, and you should. It's your share of the royalties, so share the audiobook. Make a short clip with the cover and 15 to 60 seconds of your narration. Talk about your process, and ask the author if they'd like to post together. Selling your own audiobooks is the single greatest thing we have in our arsenal, and so many voice actors run away from it.

How it works at Academy Voices

Academy Voices is our own audiobook production platform, and every VO Journey Academy member gets free access to it. Most of our narrators are paid by royalty share there too.

One thing I did on purpose. I've been on ACX long enough to really dislike the seven-year limit, so Academy Voices pays royalties for 20 years instead. Our narrators have published over 750 audiobooks through it so far.

If you want to practice before you go after a real book, the audiobook section of our free scripts library has excerpts you can record and play back. When your files are ready to go, my older post on formatting audio files for ACX in Adobe Audition still holds up. For what other kinds of voice work pay, look through our voice over rate guide.

Come learn the business side with us

Every Tuesday night at 8pm ET in Marketing 101, we get into exactly this kind of thing, live. ACX and royalty share, what to charge, how to get paid.

Free Class Week is Monday 12 to Thursday 15 October, and you can sit in on all four live classes for free. There's no card to enter and no sales call. Save your free seat here.

And if you already know you want in, your first month of CORE is $39.

Have a great Friday everyone.
Anthony