Should You Do ACX Royalty Share?

About this video

Dale compares the three ways to produce an ACX audiobook, which distributes to Audible, Amazon and iTunes: narrate it yourself, pay a narrator per finished hour, or use royalty share. DIY and paid-per-finished-hour both mean the author assumes all the risk but keeps all the profits, with exclusive distribution paying 40% and non-exclusive 25%; he stresses per-finished-hour is not a simple hourly wage, since narrators research, practise dialects and often catch errors. Royalty share splits the 40% exclusive royalty 20/20 with a narrator for seven years, with no money upfront and the narrator assuming the risk — attractive for cash-strapped newcomers, and some narrators help market the book. As a best case, Dale says a coaching client showed him over $6,000 in net profits within two weeks on one non-fiction title, keeping $3,000 himself. Against that, Dale regrets his own royalty-share titles from about four years earlier, since some could have repaid a per-finished-hour fee in their first month, and the split also divides the $75 Audible bounty ($50 to the author, $25 to the narrator). His verdict: prefer DIY or per-finished-hour when you can afford it, test royalty share on one title only if you have no budget, promote it hard, and funnel its earnings into paying for the next audiobook outright.

Key takeaways

• ACX offers three production routes: DIY narration, paying per finished hour, or a 50/50 royalty share with a narrator.
• Royalty share means no upfront cost and the narrator takes the risk, but it locks in a 20% share instead of 40% for seven years and is exclusive-only.
• Dale attributes a best-case result to a coaching client: over $6,000 in net profits in two weeks, of which the client kept $3,000.
• Per-finished-hour pay covers more than reading time — research, dialect practice and error-spotting — and leaves the author all the profits.
• Dale’s verdict: prefer DIY or per-finished-hour if you can fund it; if not, test royalty share on one title and reinvest its earnings into the next production.

Episode details: published May 22, 2019 · 13:52 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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