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ACX's Two Royalty Cards, and Spotify's Free Audiobook Tool

ACX's legacy table still shows 40% exclusive and 25% non-exclusive. As of May 26, 2026, the new model is 50% and 30%. Spotify's September 9 tool makes five English audiobooks free, non-exclusive.

The Publishing Times Editorial Desk · September 7, 2026 · 7 min read

ACX's Two Royalty Cards, and Spotify's Free Audiobook Tool

Two audiobook rate cards are live at once, and they do not match. On May 26, 2026, Audible opened enrollment in a new ACX royalty model to every ACX creator. The announcement is an ACX blog post dated April 28, 2026, and updated that May day. The older percentages are still printed on a different ACX page, the one aimed at Kindle Direct Publishing authors. Read the page that matches the contract you are actually on. Then, if you are a self-published author in the United States with an English EPUB, a third offer showed up on September 9, 2026: Spotify will generate up to five audiobooks without charging a production fee, and without taking exclusivity.

The legacy table, still on the KDP landing page

ACX's KDP landing page prints a three-row earning table. "PFH" on that page means per finished hour, which it also glosses as the finished length of the audiobook.

Distribution What you pay Royalty
Non-exclusive $100–$400 PFH 25%
Exclusive to Audible, Amazon, and iTunes $0 20%
Exclusive to Audible, Amazon, and iTunes $100–$400 PFH 40%

The prose above the table says you can earn up to a 40 royalty rate on sales, paid monthly. Forty is the top cell. The zero-dollar exclusive row, the one where you are not paying a narrator a per-hour fee, is 20 percent, not 40. The page still says "iTunes," which is the older name of Apple's audiobook storefront. This article uses the word the page uses.

That table is the legacy card. It is not the card in the May 26 post.

What changed on May 26

The new-model post says creators may choose exclusive distribution to Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books at a 50 percent royalty, or non-exclusive distribution at 30 percent. Enrollment for every ACX creator began May 26, 2026, after what the post calls more than a year of testing. The same post says the legacy model will be discontinued by the end of the year, and that by then a creator has to enroll or stop distributing the titles.

The post is also specific about which money the new math covers. Membership royalties equal Member Value times the contractual royalty rate. Member Value starts as the price of the listener's monthly plan, Standard or Premium in the example, minus taxes and fees. If the member buys extra credits that month, those credits are added. The total is then split across the titles the member engaged with, in proportion to each title's a la carte price. Your contractual rate is applied to your share of that.

Cash purchases are called out separately. The post says the calculation for non-member and member cash purchases does not change. The rates on those cash purchases do: 50 percent exclusive against 40 percent on the legacy model, and 30 percent non-exclusive against 25 percent on the legacy model.

A title enrolled in the new model can be opted into Audible's all-you-can-listen catalog on the Premium plan. Audible, not the creator, decides which opted-in titles actually go into that catalog. A title has to be on the new model before it is eligible. Suggesting a price is also limited to titles on the new model. You enter a number. Audible sets the selling price and may change it, including for a sale or to match another retailer. The suggestion is one input, not a promise.

Enrollment does not start the day you click. The post says it takes effect on the first of the following month. Do-it-yourself productions claimed after May 26, 2026, go onto the new model automatically. For marketplace titles, the post names three offer types: Pay for Production, Royalty Share, and Royalty Share Plus. The new model applies to offers sent to producers after May 26, 2026. Royalty Share Plus as a production deal, and the separate news that ACX has been winding that offer down, is covered in another article. The dates and the fee math of that wind-down are not restated here.

An earlier ACX post, first dated November 7, 2024, and also updated on May 26, 2026, described a limited early-access group and an address, earlyaccess@acx.com, for creators who wanted to be considered. That was the closed period. The May 26 update on the new-model post says the enrollment is now open to the whole creator community. Writing to the early-access address is not the current door.

Which storefront to choose in the first place, exclusive or wide, is a different decision from which percentage sits on the contract. The distribution piece is Audiobook Distribution Choices in 2026. This one is the rate card.

Spotify's offer, three months later

On September 9, 2026, Spotify for Authors published Turn Your Book Into an Audiobook in Minutes. The beta is open to self-published authors in the United States, for English-language books. You upload an EPUB. You pick a voice from ElevenLabs models. You preview. Nothing goes live until you approve it. The tools are free for up to five audiobooks. Past five, Spotify says to contact Spotify for Authors support. A validated payment profile is required, and Spotify says some limits on use and on generation apply.

The deal is non-exclusive. Spotify says you can publish or unpublish, and distribute elsewhere. Wider distribution inside the product is through an integration with Voices by INaudio. Audiobooks made with digital narration are labeled that way for listeners. You can set pronunciation for names before you publish.

Spotify's post says there are over forty million ebooks worldwide and about one million audiobooks. Those are Spotify's figures, printed as the reason the tool exists. They are not an independent census, and this article does not treat them as one.

Non-English titles are outside the beta. Spotify points those authors to ElevenLabs Studio, where a finished file can be exported and then published with Spotify for Authors. Spotify says fees and separate terms apply to ElevenLabs Studio.

The ACX percentages above are not Spotify's royalties. Spotify's September 9 post does not print a royalty percentage. Anyone who pastes the ACX 50 percent or the legacy 40 percent onto a Spotify title is mixing two contracts.

Which document to read before you enroll

If the audiobook is already on ACX, open the project and see whether it is still on the legacy card or already on the May 26 model. The legacy exclusive paid row is 40 percent. The new exclusive rate in Audible's post is 50 percent. The legacy non-exclusive paid row is 25 percent. The new non-exclusive rate is 30 percent. The zero-dollar exclusive row on the old table is 20 percent, and it is a production arrangement, not the new model's exclusive rate. Enrollment, once you choose it, waits until the first of the next month, and the post says the legacy model comes off by year's end.

If you have no audiobook yet, and you are a self-published author in the United States with an English EPUB and a validated Spotify payment profile, the September 9 tool will make up to five labeled digital audiobooks without a per-hour narrator bill and without an exclusivity clause. That file is not an ACX enrollment. It does not put you on the 50 percent card, and it does not take the Audible door away, because Spotify says the arrangement is non-exclusive. Read the payment profile and the five-title cap before you upload the EPUB.

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