Amazon, the Monopoly

Amazon's grip on Audiobooks needs a facelift.

If you’re an author, it’s no surprise to you that audiobooks, despite being the fastest growing literary format, are difficult to justify with the lowest ROI of any other format. Amazon is primarily to blame for that.

If you’re a reader, let me help you understand the author side of the Amazon/Audible market…

Context

For authors, it’s expensive to produce an audiobook. Narrator rates vary wildly. You could approach a novice and expect to pay $100-$150 per finished hour (PFH), you could go with a more experienced narrator with a rate between $200-$500 PFH, you could land a deal with a renowned Voice Actor or celebrity and pay upwards of $1,000+ PFH. And that’s a single narrator. Dual narration (Where you have at least 2 narrators trading off full chapter POVs), and Duet narration (sometimes called full-cast, where you have multiple narrators handling specific character voices almost like voice acting roles). That’s also not the same as graphic audio (where you have full-cast but with included music and sound effects, like an audio drama).

And if you have multiple narrators, the PFH usually raises for narrators and then you have to add an engineer into the mix to take all the different audio files, put them in place, mix them so they sound cohesive, and master the final product to meet industry standards.

Of course, there are always agents and production companies. An author can query them for just the audio rights to get them to foot the bill for audio production and then you enter a traditional style publication deal where they control payment and you get your royalties.

Enter ACX (Amazon’s audiobook backend for authors). You can choose to upload a completed audiobook OR you can enter their royalty share program, where you pay nothing upfront, but share your royalties with your chosen narrator. This is an INCREDIBLY beneficial tool for authors to get their books converted to audio format with no hefty upfront price. It’s excellent for newer narrators to break into the industry, but it’s a gamble as far as how they get paid. If the book does well, they get paid well. If the book doesn’t do well… well, they essentially worked for free. And for each hour of finished audiobook, imagine they worked around 8 or more hours to get that final polished take.

The Exchange

If an author produces their audiobook and chooses to distribute, Amazon will undoubtedly be in that distribution plan because Audible controls the majority of audiobook sales in the market. If the author chooses to go exclusive with Amazon (which they have to do if they opt for ACX royalty share) they are alloted 40% of the sales price. If they choose to go non-exclusive, meaning they put their audiobooks in libraries, on Spotify, Google books, Apple books, Kobo, libro.fm, etc. then they only get 25% of the final sale through Audible.

BUT… that’s before taxes and fees, which equate to ~15%. So, that 40% is more like 25%, and that 25% is more like 10%

For example, my audiobook for Armitage is 9h 57m long and sells on Amazon for $19.95 (I don’t get the opportunity to choose this price, Amazon chooses it for me). I am non-exclusive on Amazon so my books can be found elsewhere, including libraries. But most people won’t buy my audiobook for $19.95, they will use an Audible credit ($14.95). When a purchase is made with an Audible credit, I walk away with a whopping $1.49 in royalty… 10%. I earn 10% of my audiobook price that I footed the bill to produce and consumed all the risk on while Amazon consumes 90% of my profits (granted about 15% goes to the taxes and fees, but that’s still 75% profit) and what did they do?

They built a platform and allowed streaming of my audiobook. That’s it. Is that worth the majority share of my book? They didn’t write it, edit it, format it, find and audition narrators, handle the production of the audiobook, nor did they pay for any of that. The risk is 100% on me, while the reward is 90% on them. Oh, and if someone DOES buy my book for the full $19.95, I end up with $2.19.

And so we’re clear, the other options are not much better and the sales volume is far less.

What are you gonna do about it?

Well, last October, I decided to sell my audiobook directly through my website. I sell it for $8 and distribute it via an open source audiobook tool.

I started talking to other authors about this and tried to help a few set it up themselves.

As you can imagine, this was a challenge.

But in talking to other authors, looking at the market, and feeling just general frustration, it sparked an idea. I decided to create my own audiobook platform!

Why not? DevOps Engineering is my day job, I’m familiar with coding, with building various tools and applications, proper security practices, and the development lifecycle. Audiobooks are not hefty storage and audio doesn’t consume much bandwidth to stream.

So, I started testing and planning. I established modest storage for small scale operations, I already have a healthy internet connection, and the backend has already been established through my own efforts to deliver my audiobook. All I needed was to scale up.

So, since November of 2025, I’ve been building. And in January 2026, I completed the website and have been onboarding authors to build a catalog. IAX Audio (the website) is complete.

Ok, what is IAX Audio?

IAX Audio is a platform built by authors FOR authors. Its sole purpose is to provide authors with better royalties while keeping things affordable for readers. Most audiobooks will land around the $14.95 price range (the same price as an Audible credit) with any book longer than 20 hours falling in the $19.95 price range. But instead of $1.49 for a $14.95 purchase, the authors will get ~$10 per purchase (at $14.95), drastically lowering the risk of them opting to create an audiobook.

While the website is finished and onboarding authors, I will soon be opening it up to beta test for readers. This will be a chance for readers to jump in, test the system, purchase some indie author audiobooks, and let others know what they think. The website is mobile friendly and has been fully tested to support background play, lock screen controls, and Apple Car Play and Android Audio support.

But, most people don’t want to use a website, even if all that stuff is supported. They want an app.

The good news is, I am working on fully native mobile apps as we speak. If all goes well, they should be ready when the IAX Audio platform releases later this year!

I even have a few authors offering exclusive titles solely for the IAX Audio platform, which is so incredibly exciting! I’m even bundling extra short stories in with the purchase of my audiobook Armitage only on IAX Audio!

But wait! There’s more!

IAX Audio, is not just for audiobooks. We host ebooks as well! Imagine Kindle and Audible all in one app. You can listen to your audiobooks while reading along with the ebook. Or maybe you want to only read the ebook, or just listen to the audio? You can do that too!

In fact, many authors are choosing to leverage the option to bundle their ebook with the audiobook, so you get both with a single purchase, for a totally immersive experience.

What’s the Catch?

The real challenge of this is in it’s nature of being a new platform. I haven’t built up trust in the app. I am attracting authors, but the readers will be the ones that determine if this succeeds or fails. Whether you believe it or not, and no matter what any large corporation might try to convince you, customer drive the market. Amazon is a powerhouse because it has appealed to the customers.

So, as this platform gets closer to public release, I will work harder to earn public trust in this platform. I strongly believe that authors deserve better for their hard work, and the money readers spend on books should go further to support their favorite authors rather than a space vacation for a billionaire.

It will not be an easy road. I’m completely aware of that. There will be bumps along the way, and I have a long journey to earn trust in the readers AND authors who this platform is built for. I will do my best to deliver.

For now, this project is just me (and I am exhausted), but I hope that I can get to a point where I can hire others to help me. Whether that’s building the app to bring more features, having others to help me promote the platform on social media, people willing to help with customer service, those willing to help me with vetting process for authors and their books (because, and I forgot to mention this, we DO NOT support AI and will not allow AI products on the platform), or anyone willing to help out in any way. I want this to become a community.

The future…

More than this platform, I have plans to take some wind out of Amazon’s sails with my own version of ACX. I have plans, and am working with a few different narrators, to bring about my own royalty share platform with human narrators and a bigger pot of funds to split so that it’s more beneficial for both the authors and narrators than ACX (whose wages are almost criminal).

But if you’re an author looking for a narrator, we already have a decent sized pool of narrators on the main IAX website under “Service Providers > Audiobook Narrators” (and don’t forget to check out all the other resources available to you:

And if you have ebooks or audiobooks you want to add to the site, just email me at atlas@indieauthorconnect.com!

Before I go…

Don’t forget to fidn me at these events in 2026 (more may be coming, so stay up to date on my website)

Feb 27 - Mar 1, 2026 — Author Con VI — Williamsburg, VA

Apr 18-19, 2026 — BookCon — New York City, NY

May 9, 2026 — Halfway 2 Halloween — Glen Burnie, MD

May 30-31, 2026 — Big Lick Comic Con — Manassas, VA

June 6, 2026 — Once Upon Every Story — Norfolk, VA

July 25, 2026 — Romantasy in the Valley — Hunt Valley, MD

August 8, 2026 — Book Fair at Bel Air — APG FCU Arena, Bel Air, MD

September 19, 2026 — Margins & Moonlight — Richmond, VA

October 4, 2026 — Fredericksburg Independent Book Fest — Fredericksburg, VA

October 24-25, 2026 — Frightreads Bookfest — West Friendship, MD

I will also be speaking at the Bay To Ocean Writer’s Conference in Maryland:

March 14, 2026 — Bay to Ocean Writer's Conference — Wye Mills, MD

Thank you to everyone who made it this far into this long post. I hope you found the information valuable, and I hope you are as excited as I am about IAX Audio!