Beast Business is available for preorder on Audible and Amazon. The publishing date is December 08, 2026. This audiobook will be exclusive to Audible and Amazon for several weeks, after which it will go into wide distribution.
Why are you doing it this way?
Audible implemented a new royalty model.
Whenever we do a post like this, people ask if they should stop Audible plans, etc. You should purchase the audiobook in whatever way you prefer to get your audiobooks. If Audible/Amazon is your preferred retailer, use it. The burden of choice here is on the author, not the reader. Meaning that if we have an issue with Audible, it is up to us to deal with that. We do not police, recommend, or worry about how you buy or rent our content. We only ask that you do not pirate.
Now then, back to the convoluted land of Audible royalties.
Old Legacy Royalty Model, straight from the horse’s mouth:
Royalty for Rights Holders under Pay-for-Production Deals (Audible Exclusive Distribution Rights)
Audible will pay the Rights Holder 40% of all A La Carte Net Sales Receipts and 40% of all Member Net Sales Receipts from sales of the Audiobook.Royalty Calculation
During the Distribution Period, Audible will pay the Rights Holder the Royalty set above. For purposes of this agreement, Audible Net Sales Receipts consist of: (i) A La Carte Net Sales Receipts (as defined below) for all a la carte sales of the Audiobook, and (ii) Membership Net Sales Receipts (as defined below) for all sales of the Audiobook to customers who are members of one of Audible’s membership programs, in each case, during the immediately preceding monthly period. No Royalty will be paid on the transmission or distribution of downloads or other copies of the Audiobook distributed for free for purposes of review, sample, advertising, publicity or promotion.
- “A La Carte Net Sales Receipts” means the monetary amount received by Audible from a la carte sales of each Unit, less any cash incentives, promotional discounts, sales or use taxes, excise taxes, value-added taxes, duties, and returns.
- “Membership Net Sales Receipts” means, for each Unit, the monetary amount obtained by multiplying the AudibleListener Allocation Factor (as defined below) by Audible’s a la carte price for the Unit at the time the AudibleListener Allocation Factor is calculated.
- The “AudibleListener Allocation Factor” means the total of all membership sales receipts derived from sales of all content sold by Audible in the applicable accounting period, less any cash incentives, promotional discounts, device subsidies or rebates, sales or use taxes, excise taxes, value-added taxes, duties and returns, divided by the total a la carte value (as determined by Audible’s applicable a la carte price for the Audiobook at the time the AudibleListener Allocation Factor is calculated) of the membership sales of all content sold by Audible in the applicable accounting period.
New Royalty Model, again from Amazon:
- How does the new royalty model calculate royalties? In the new model, royalties for Audible’s membership offerings will equal Member Value multiplied by your contractual royalty rate. Member Value for each offering will be shared with you on your earnings statement.
- What is “Member Value”? How is it determined? Member Value is what’s net new in the updated royalty model. It represents the value of a member’s listening behavior.To determine Member Value, we first look at which plan a member is subscribed to in a given marketplace (e.g. Premium, Plus, Standard or monthly AYCL plan) and capture that monthly membership revenue minus discounts, taxes and fees. This amount is Member Value at the most basic level. We then look to see if the member used an additional credit on a title above their plan allowance, in which case the amount of Member Value will be increased. The total Member Value is then divided up and divided proportionally among each title the member engaged with, based on the a la carte price of those titles. This step ensures a fair share of Member Value is divided among each title before multiplying by your contractual royalty rate to get to royalties due.Once enrolled, you can reference your monthly earnings statements to view membership plan values or any adjustments to Member Value over a monthly period.
Yeah, clear as mud. There is a video at the second link and it is even more confusing. The way we understand it is that you, the consumer, are assigned a Member Value, which is the price of your plan minus fees and taxes. This Member Value is then divided over the number of titles you listened to.
So, if you Membership Value is $10 and you listen to 5 books a month, the percentage of that $10 is being split evenly across all 5 titles. The more you listen, the less each individual author gets.
Sigh.
We need to see what this looks like in practice, so we are sacrificing Beast Business Audio to test this scheme out. Once we have our numbers, it will be released into wider distribution.
Yikes! Stupid Amazon!
First certified 🙂
Oh, wow. 🤩🥳
Oh I was so close!
I wish Amazon would use their powers for good rather than evil.
Crap, that means you get less from me cause I listen to a ton of books? At least I always buy in all formats so you at least get some $$ out of me.
So Stupid.
Argh.
Best Wishes and good luck.
This is kind of horrifying.
I appreciate that House Andrews always does their best to share the business side of publishing with us because it helps me have a clearer understanding of what my friends in the industry are dealing with.
Good luck with the test, I’m looking forward to hearing what you learn!
+1
Not that I’ve listened to any audiobooks now that they’re in the cloud or whatever, and not on CDs or, back in the Dark Ages, tapes. But this royalty models sounds needlessly…needless.
A further question, when is the member’s value calculated for a pre-order? If I pre-order the book on a month where I am listening to several audiobooks. And the month it becomes available it’s the only one I listen to, which month applies to Amazon‘s calculation? I’m not asking Alana and Gordon to answer this, but I think it is something authors might like to know.
A very good question!
that is a bunch of horse sh….
wow the rich getting more money for work they did not put much effort into. seems about right.
kinda glad I did not renew my audible membership. they had that 4 months thing but I don’t think people realized that 8.99 really doesn’t do much as to keeping any title you buy for the month. if I am paying 9 dollars without tax I want to revisit that book whenever I want. I’d rather own it not rent it for the month. I have K.U and that gives me a better discount on things I want to keep then their monthly membership offer in Audible. in most cases I can get 3 titles for the amount they charge for premium. just by downloading through Kindle first. I keep debating keeping K.U but I think it gives me more options. And books are not always in audio.
So, since I don’t have membership and buying your books outright, you getting more from those sales? Yay, if yes.
Wow. They claim they couldn’t possibly condone Pool Model because it gives them the ickies and then they give you something Frankensteined that is actually worse 😳 Because it takes PM and then filters out the sleeper accounts that actually drive up your renumeration in that system. Wow. Just wow.
But let’s await results, I might be too negative here! It’s been known to happen 😅😉
I am forced to be politic because I’m in official capacity but: https://tenor.com/view/ugh-headache-yzma-emperors-new-groove-gif-15370781
This is how I feel.
As an attorney who drafts agreements regularly, I want to go off on the poor drafting. However, I know no one wants to hear me wax poetic on the finer points of contract language.
Suffice to say, that the contract could have been much better in terms of clarity.
This may be a case of – if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.
When I tell you my eyelid was twitching reading through it 😅.
That “engage with” doing heavy lifting with no definition! The ‘assurance’ of that fair share, with no transparency.
Painful. I haven’t practiced law in a significant while and still got flashbacks.
I’m not a lawyer. However, I could see that the above contract is BS. I guess it’s the health policy reading I do that gets my BS meter going with other things. 😝
In all countries, always the same tap dancing and BS while we (the “good” lawyers) try to explain to our clients. Sigh.
Here is a question. I listened to Maggi 4 times now. If it was on Audible would you get paid every time I listen? Then the new system might have some merit, otherwise what is the point? I’m a book addict, like many here I spend my days listening or reading ALL the time. So 15 per month is my norm. Not much if it’s a portion of the £10.
Seems like it should be the other way around. If you buy a lot through Audible then your Member Value should be higher, because you’re a reliable buyer and that should be the type Amazon wants to reward. Therefore, if you as authors attract that kind of listener, then you should be rewarded with higher royalties. If you only occasionally listen to Audible, then lower Member Price, and lower rewards for reader and author. (I don’t think authors should be penalized if their readers don’t use audible. They’re already penalized if the book isn’t popular and doesn’t sell.)
It should, but this is Amazon we’re talking about.
so how does that compare to Kindle unlimited for books like Fated Blades? do you get a set amount every time some reads it? or a similar pooled amount of the KU membership amount?
I keep KU and thought the authors were getting at least some compensation but if it’s based on the number of books I read a month, now I would really feel bad…
Kindle Unlimited operates under a different royalty model, based on pages read rather than the number of books you read each month.
Fated Blades is also traditionally published by Montlake, so its royalties arrangements are not the standard self-publishing terms 🙂
I try not to do anything Amazon, which has been increasingly difficult as they gobble up sites and services I used to enjoy (Goodreads)
This is now being offset by the fact that, increasingly, if I drill down I can buy many things directly from the producer. That is now my default if I can manage it.
I’m very glad I didn’t go down the Audible bunny trail. Wow, that’s awful for authors if their readers listen to more books per month. I would rather pay for a book (whether paper or e-book) and let the authors get more money.
I agree, that contract is a bunch of BS. Good luck with the numbers for Beast Business.
Got my pre-order already; thank you! I really hope for your sake that the new royalties are profitable. You put so much of yourselves into these wonderful books and you deserve the lion’s share of the profits for them. If I could buy them from you directly, I definitely would!
This might be the dumbest thing I heard in a good while. “books the member engaged with”? Like if I listen to an audiobook several months in a row, does it count for each month? What if I listen to just a few minutes? Do you know how often I browse between different audios before settling on one? Do they all lower my member value? It almost sounds like they want to create a system so complicated noone will be able to verify how they got to the divided value of membership to pay authors when they make it up…
You can bet that fuzzy language means they are paying a lot less and there is no way to confirm you are getting the promised amount.
I and the other user of my account listen to about 10 to 12 titles a month on audible – but most of them are ones I purchased months ago if not years ago. As I purchase them with cash a while ago, I don’t see why that should impact how much royalty gets paid to the authors I need to have now and get this month….
But also, my audible plan is so old I don’t get credits and I appreciate that its been grandfathered in for the discounted pricing.
It does feel a lot like a spell of math and economics being whipped up