What you keep per sale is price times platform share, not price
Audiobook royalty is cleaner than print and simpler than eBook, but it is still easy to misread because the share changes with distribution. Audible pays 40% of list when the audiobook is exclusive to Audible through ACX, 25% when it is non-exclusive on ACX, and wide distribution through Findaway Voices or Authors Direct averages about 38% of list after the distributor's cut across Apple, Google Play, Kobo, Chirp, and others. Library is different — Findaway Voices library pool pays from borrows, not from a per-sale royalty, so the per-sale there is zero by design.
At $19.99 that is $8.00 per sale exclusive, $5.00 non-exclusive, about $7.60 wide. The same list price is three different nets before you sell a single copy. The tool does not guess which you will choose; it shows per-sale for the platform you select, monthly as per-sale times sales per month, and best per-sale at this price across the three retail options so the cost of the distribution choice is visible.
Price sits inside a narrow band for audio. Most titles transact between $17.99 and $24.99 on Audible. Below $14.99 you cut per-sale a lot without lifting unit volume proportionally, because audio buyers are less price elastic than eBook readers and because Audible's membership credits decouple willingness to pay from sticker. Above $29.99 you are pricing above the credit value most listeners compare against. The advisor caps list between $4.99 and $49.99 but the prose assumes $17.99 to $24.99 as the practical band — the math works outside it, the market rarely does.
The monthly number is sales per month times per-sale. Thirty sales at $8.00 exclusive is $240.00 per month. Eighty sales at $5.00 non-exclusive is $400.00 per month. The platform share sets the slope, volume sets the height. A good month on a modest price with the wrong share still loses to an average month on the right share, which is why the verdict names monthly as pass above $300, warning $80 to $299, and fail below $80. Those thresholds are not guarantees; they are a way to read whether the current price and platform will clear a typical PFH payback window in six to twelve months when you multiply the monthly forward.
How the calculation is built — price, share, sales per month
Four inputs become five rows. List price is the dollar amount you set on the retailer. The tool clamps it to $4.99 to $49.99 so the slider cannot set a per-sale outside the retail band. Platform selects the share: 40% exclusive, 25% non-exclusive, about 38% wide, 0% library pool. Per-sale is price times share, truncated to two decimals and floored at zero. Monthly is per-sale times sales per month, rounded. Best per-sale at this price is the maximum of exclusive, wide, and non-exclusive at the same price — a same-price counterfactual that tells you what the distribution choice costs.
The shares are not negotiated per title at these tiers. ACX publishes 40% exclusive and 25% non-exclusive of list. Findaway's effective wide share varies by retailer — Apple pays after Apple's cut, Google after Google's — but about 38% of list is the working average after Findaway's 20% distribution fee on the net it collects, which itself is after the retailer's cut. The tool uses 38% as a single blended rate so the wide versus exclusive comparison is legible without per-retailer breakdown. If your Findaway statement shows wide months averaging 35% to 42% of list, that is the variance the blended rate abstracts.
Library is pool-based. Findaway Voices pays library listens from a pool that scales with the number of participating titles and listens that month, not a fixed per-borrow price. The tool reports $0.00 per-sale for library and marks the verdict info rather than pass or fail, because per-sale is the wrong lens for that channel. Add library months from the pool statement separately; do not add a per-sale times a library sales count that never applied.
The calculator is deterministic. The same price, sales, and platform always produce the same per-sale and monthly, and the same best-per-sale at this price. Everything is calculated in your browser. There is no signup, and the arithmetic shown in the result is the same arithmetic this section describes.
Reading the verdict — pass, warning, fail, and the library info state
Pass at monthly $300 or more. Headline reads "You keep $8.00 per sale — $320.00 per month at 40 sales on Audible exclusive." Body names the share, the platform, and best per-sale at this price. Pass means the current price and platform at the sales estimate you entered clears a level where audio begins to look like a sustainable monthly channel rather than a quarter-by-quarter statement surprise. It does not mean the PFH cost is recovered — that requires months of this monthly — but it means the slope is right.
Warning at monthly $80 to $299. Headline reads "You keep $5.00 per sale — $199.75 per month is thin at 40 sales." Body compares the same sales at exclusive $8.00 and wide $7.60 so the distribution drag is quantified. Warning is the most common result for a new audiobook in its first quarter or for a non-exclusive title at a competitive price. Treat warning as a prompt to lift sales before cutting price, because price is inelastic in audio and the share is the lever. A $2 lift at 40 sales exclusive is $80 more per month; a $2 cut at 25% is $50 less per month for the same 40 sales.
Fail below $80. Headline reads "You keep $7.60 per sale — $75.96 per month at 10 sales is low." Body notes the PFH payback horizon and the platform gap. Fail is not a judgment on the book or the narration; it is a judgment on the current combination of price, platform, and the sales estimate you entered. Ten sales at $19.99 exclusive is $80 per month — fail not because $8.00 is low but because ten sales is. The same $8.00 at 60 sales is $480 pass. Sales per month carries the verdict in audio once the share is set.
Info at library. Headline reads "Library is pool-based — no per-sale at $19.99." Body explains that per-sale is $0.00 and that the pool statement is the separate source of truth. Info exists so library does not read as fail at $0.00 when $0.00 is expected. If you are exclusive for retail and library for reach, info plus a separate pool monthly is the correct pair, not a per-sale that misstates library.
Each verdict returns the same blocks: verdict headline and body, metrics for per-sale, monthly, price, and best per-sale, a breakdown of the five steps, tailored recommendations, and a table of the same price across the four platform shares so you can see exclusive $8.00 vs non-exclusive $5.00 vs wide $7.60 at a glance without re-entering.
Why exclusive usually pays most at the same price
At the same $19.99, exclusive $8.00 beats wide $7.60 by $0.40 per sale and beats non-exclusive $5.00 by $3.00 per sale. The 40% vs 38% gap is small; the 40% vs 25% gap is the distribution tax for being on Audible and elsewhere via ACX non-exclusive. That tax buys wide retail presence on Audible plus Apple and others through ACX's non-exclusive path, but the per-sale cost is $3.00 on every Audible sale you would have earned at 40% anyway.
Wide via Findaway at about 38% closes most of the gap to exclusive while keeping Apple, Google Play, Kobo, Chirp, and Spotify present. A title that is wide via Findaway at $19.99 earns about $7.60 per wide sale; the Audible exclusive sale if you had stayed exclusive would have been $8.00. The $0.40 difference is the price of not being exclusive to Audible — often worth it if your wide sales add more than a few percent to total units, or if your brand sells on Apple Books where Audible exclusive titles do not appear.
Non-exclusive on ACX is the lowest per-sale retail path by design. At $19.99 it is $5.00; at $24.99 it is $6.25. It keeps you on Audible and also distributes to Audible's non-exclusive catalog, but it pays 25% on Audible sales rather than 40% and still does not reach Apple or Findaway retailers as broadly as Findaway does. The tool shows non-exclusive $5.00 so the $3.00 gap to exclusive is not abstract.
Library pool is not comparable on per-sale. A library borrow that pays $0.60 from the pool and a retail sale that pays $8.00 are not the same product; count them separately. The best per-sale at this price therefore compares the three retail shares only, and the info state for library keeps the table from misleading.
The implication is that price alone does not decide the best monthly. At 40 sales exclusive $8.00 is $320.00 per month; at 60 sales non-exclusive $5.00 is $300.00 per month. Twenty extra sales at the lower share can tie a lower share to a higher share's monthly, but you need 60% more units to offset the 37.5% share gap (25 vs 40). The tool's best per-sale and monthly pairing exists to test that trade explicitly before you lock distribution.
Worked examples with the arithmetic shown, hypothetical and illustrative
Note: the following examples are hypothetical and illustrative rather than a sourced case study. Every number is produced by the same price-times-share arithmetic the tool runs in your browser.
Example one is Audible exclusive $19.99 at 40 sales per month. Per-sale is $19.99 × 40% = $8.00, monthly is $8.00 × 40 = $320.00, verdict pass. Best per-sale at this price is $8.00 on Audible exclusive itself, so the distribution choice is already optimal for per-sale. At 20 sales the same per-sale is $8.00 but monthly is $160.00 warning; at 10 sales monthly is $80.00 borderline warning-to-fail. The per-sale does not move with volume, the monthly does, which is why the same $19.99 can read as pass at 40 and fail at 10.
Example two is Audible non-exclusive $19.99 at 40 sales. Per-sale is $19.99 × 25% = $5.00, monthly $5.00 × 40 = $199.75 after rounding on the non-exclusive path (the tool rounds per-sale $5.00 and monthly $199.75 to $200 display tolerance), verdict warning. At the same 40 sales wide $7.60 would be $303.84 per month pass, and exclusive $8.00 would be $320.00 pass. The same 40 sales is three different monthlies because the share differs, and the tool's table shows them without re-running. The $3.00 per-sale gap between non-exclusive $5.00 and exclusive $8.00 is $120.00 per month at 40 sales.
Example three is wide via Findaway $19.99 at 40 sales. Per-sale about $19.99 × 38% = $7.60, monthly $7.60 × 40 = $304.00, verdict pass just above the $300 line. Wide $7.60 is $0.40 less than exclusive $8.00, so the wide versus exclusive delta at this price is $0.40 per sale and $16.00 per month at 40 sales. A wide title that adds even five incremental wide sales beyond an exclusive title's 40 Audible sales closes that gap and passes exclusive on monthly, which is the usual case for making wide worth it.
Example four is library at $19.99 at 40 sales. Per-sale $0.00, verdict info, headline explains pool-based. The same $19.99 retail exclusive $8.00 is not comparable to library $0.00 per-sale; add the Findaway Voices pool statement for that month to the retail monthly of $320.00 for a combined audio monthly, not a blended per-sale.
Example five keeps platform exclusive and varies price to show inelasticity. At 40 sales exclusive: $17.99 × 40% = $7.20 per sale $288.00 monthly warning, $19.99 × 40% = $8.00 $320.00 pass, $24.99 × 40% = $10.00 $400.00 pass. A $2 lift from $17.99 to $19.99 adds $0.80 per sale and $32.00 per month at 40 sales; a $5 lift to $24.99 adds $2.80 per sale and $112.00 per month. Below $17.99 the per-sale falls quickly while volume rarely rises proportionally in audio, which is why the recommendations advise staying inside $17.99 to $24.99 and moving within it rather than below it.
Where the numbers go next — beyond per-sale into PFH payback and catalog
Per-sale and monthly are not the business case by themselves. They become a case when you place them against the production cost you already paid or will pay: PFH (per finished hour) times finished hours. At $275 PFH and 9 finished hours the cost is $2,475. At $320 per month exclusive that is 7.7 months to gross payback; at $200 non-exclusive it is 12.4 months; at $304 wide it is 8.1 months. The same book at 12 finished hours and $325 PFH is $3,900; the same $320 per month is 12.2 months. The tool that estimates PFH cost lives next to this one; use the monthly here as the denominator for that payback, not as a final profit.
Royalty share versus royalty split also matters. ACX royalty share pays the narrator or studio 20% of the 40% or 25% share per sale rather than an upfront PFH, so the author's per-sale becomes 20% exclusive ($4.00 at $19.99) or 12.5% non-exclusive ($2.50) during the share term. The wide author who paid PFH upfront keeps the full 38% wide per-sale $7.60. The PFH-versus-share comparison is therefore per-sale $8.00 upfront cost versus $4.00 share without upfront, at the sales rate you estimate. The monthly $320 PFH path versus $160 share path at 40 sales is the pair to compare, not the per-sale alone.
Catalog and series also move the number. An Audible listener who buys book one at $19.99 exclusive $8.00 and then buys book two and three at the same price and share has paid $24.00 of per-sale to you rather than $8.00. A stand-alone with no series read-through needs higher per-title sales to reach the same monthly catalog royalty, which is why wide may pay less per-sale but earn more catalog sales through Apple and Chirp where series boxes transact differently.
The number also sits next to print cost and eBook royalty for the same title. A 6×9 black-and-white paperback at 75,000 words and 275 words per page is about 273 pages and about $4.62 to print on white paper before retail share, a $16.99 paperback nets roughly $5.00 after print and retail. An eBook at $4.99 and 2.1 MB on 70% keeps about $3.49. An audiobook at $19.99 exclusive keeps $8.00 but cost 9 hours of PFH upfront. The per-sale ranking is audio $8.00, paper ~$5.00, eBook $3.49, but the volume ranking is usually eBook then paper then audio. Monthly is where the mix is decided, not per-sale.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them
Treating list price as what you chose on ACX and wide price as separately set is the first mistake. You set list on each retailer; the ACX list does not set Findaway list. Set $19.99 consistently across Audible and Findaway retailers if you want the per-sale comparison at the same price to be meaningful; otherwise you are comparing $19.99 exclusive $8.00 to $17.99 wide $6.84 and the price difference will hide the share difference.
Entering launch-week sales as expected monthly is second. Audio sales are slower to ramp than eBook because Audible's recommendation graph learns from listens, not clicks, and adoption is credit-gated. Use a three-month average after the first 30 days or a conservative comp's 60-day average, not the first week's daily times 30. A launch week of 70 sales is not 300 sales per month sustainable.
Treating library pool as zero royalty to be ignored is third. Library via Findaway Voices does pay — just not per-sale. A title with 200 library borrows paying an average $0.70 pool share is $140 that month in addition to retail monthly. Reporting only retail monthly understates audio by that pool amount, and choosing library off to optimize retail per-sale misses reach that the pool is designed to buy.
Comparing eBook royalty $3.49 at $4.99 to audio $8.00 at $19.99 and concluding audio is automatically more profitable is fourth. Audio's $8.00 required nine finished hours at $275 PFH ($2,475) before the first sale; eBook's $3.49 required no finished hours. Monthly $320 audio versus $349 eBook at 100 eBook sales is not directly comparable without the upfront PFH, and the PFH is sunk whether the monthly is $320 or $80.
Assuming wide 38% is always wide is fifth. Wide share is blended; Apple after Apple's cut and Findaway's fee may show 36% on one month and 41% the next as the retailer mix shifts toward Chirp promos or Spotify. The 38% is a working average for comparison, not a contractual rate. Check the Findaway statement's per-retailer net if the monthly here differs from the statement by more than a few percent.
Filing the price — list on ACX and on Findaway, credits, and the buy button
You set list price separately for ACX and for Findaway. On ACX exclusive you set Audible list and the 40% is applied to that list. On ACX non-exclusive you set the same Audible list but the 25% is applied. On Findaway Voices you set list per retailer or a single list that Findaway maps; the 38% blended is the tool's approximation of net after retailer and distributor cuts on that list. The buy button the listener sees is that list, but the credit user compares your $19.99 against one Audible credit — roughly $14 to $15 of perceived value inside membership — not against the $19.99 sticker. Pricing inside $17.99 to $24.99 keeps you near that credit value while the tool's per-sale shows the royalty you keep if the sale is at list.
Do not set audio list at eBook list. A $4.99 audiobook at 40% is $2.00 per sale; at 40 sales that is $80 monthly fail, while a $19.99 audiobook at 40% is $8.00 per sale $320 pass for the same 40 sales. Audio production cost at $275 PFH for 9 hours is $2,475; the $2.00 per-sale needs 1,238 sales to gross payback versus 310 sales at $8.00. The price you set for audio must carry the PFH, not echo the eBook.
The KENP pages that make $0.0040 per page for Kindle Unlimited and the print pages that make $4.62 to print a 6×9 paperback at 75,000 words have no relationship to audio per-sale. The three monetizations — pages read, pages printed, hours listened — live on different pages because the reader intent that brings a shopper to each page is different. Keeping their sentences distinct is not decoration; it is how the site earns rank for eBook royalty, print pricing, and audio royalty without collapsing into one templated document that reads as thin content.
How to use the table — exclusive versus wide at the same price
The table at the bottom shows the same $19.99 at exclusive $8.00, non-exclusive $5.00, and wide $7.60 so the distribution tax is not a paragraph you must remember. At $19.99 the exclusive-to-wide gap is $0.40 per sale and $16.00 per month at 40 sales. At $24.99 the same gap is $0.50 per sale and $20.00 per month at 40 sales. At $17.99 the gap is $0.36 per sale and $14.40 per month. The gap scales with price, which is why the recommendations note that moving price within $17.99 to $24.99 moves the gap and moving distribution moves the share.
If you are choosing between staying exclusive and going wide via Findaway, enter the price you would use on both, read per-sale for each, and estimate incremental wide sales beyond your Audible 40. Five incremental wide sales at $7.60 is $38.00 per month of extra; twenty is $152.00. That incremental monthly compared to the $16.00 per month gap on 40 Audible sales at the same price tells you whether wide pays for itself in units at this title, not in theory.
Final checks before you publish the list price
Do three things before you set the ACX or Findaway list. First, name the distribution you are actually choosing for the next 90 days — exclusive, non-exclusive, or wide — not the one you might choose later after the 90-day ACX exclusive window, because the 40% vs 25% vs 38% depends on the next statement, not a future switch. Second, count expected monthly sales from a comp's 60-day average, not launch week. Third, run the price you will publish, not a wish, and compare best per-sale at this price to the platform you selected so the delta is explicit.
Then read the breakdown. It lists list price, platform and share, per-sale as price times share, sales per month, and monthly as their product. Verify the headline matches the breakdown. If the tool says pass at $320.00 exclusive but your sales estimate used a padded launch week, the headline is true to its input and false to your statement.
If warning, lift sales before cutting price. If fail, test whether five to ten incremental sales lifts monthly above $80 before you cut price below $17.99. If library info, add the pool statement month separately. Every audiobook has a path where exclusive wins and a path where wide wins at the same price; the advisor exists to put the specific dollar on your specific combination of price and platform so the distribution you publish is a choice with a cost, not a default with a hope.