On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway breaks down Audible's decision to retire its legacy royalty model by the end of 2026, explaining what the new model means for audiobook authors and the separate decision about whether to enter the All You Can Listen pool. He also reports on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' new Oscar eligibility rules requiring human actors and writers, and examines a Book Industry Study Group survey showing that concern about AI-generated books in the marketplace has now entered the top four worries for publishing industry professionals.
Listen to the Podcast: Audible Retires Legacy Royalty Model
Show Notes
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About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
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Read the Transcript
Dan Holloway: Hello and welcome to another week of Self-Publishing News. The news this week is mainly about Audible and the so-called new Audible royalty model. You'll remember this was introduced last year and caused a little controversy when it launched, because it offers very different rates from the legacy model. Much publicized was the increase in à la carte royalties from 40% to 50% for exclusive distribution, and from 25% to 30% for non-exclusive distribution. But it also includes a large element of pooled income — titles consumed through people's monthly credits, and titles entered into the All You Can Listen program, are rewarded on a percentage of an overall pool based on the number of titles and hours being listened to on those plans.
Until now, it has been optional to enter your books into the new royalty model, and there has been a lot of discussion about which model works best for different authors. From the end of this year, the legacy royalty model is going to be discontinued. If your books are currently in the old model, you will either have to withdraw them from Audible distribution or move them into the new model. If you decide you want to enter the new model, that option will be available for all titles from May 26th — this month. You can enter all your titles or none, but from the end of the year you will have to make a decision: new model or no Audible.
Within the new royalty model there is also a separate decision about whether to enter titles into the All You Can Listen pool. Jane Friedman has said in her latest newsletter that she'll be doing some number-crunching to work out what kind of authors might be better off entering the pool and which might be better off relying solely on monthly credit and à la carte purchases. The logic is similar to Kindle Unlimited: the more you think people are likely to buy your title as a one-off and listen to the whole thing, the better off you probably are outside the pool, since you'll get a larger royalty on each purchase. If you think people are more likely to want to try your book without committing a credit to it upfront, then the All You Can Listen program is probably the better fit. But I'll leave the analysis to Jane Friedman — do keep an eye on her blog and I'll bring you anything she finds.
The new model also offers suggested pricing for titles, more flexibility, and improved dashboards to help you understand your finances and how your books are performing. I'll link to the post on the ACX/Audible blog — Howard will put that in the description. There is a straightforward set of tips there on how to get your titles into the new royalty program. To repeat the key point: from the end of this year, the old Audible royalty model will no longer be available. You'll need to either move into the new model or leave Audible. If you want to make the switch, you can do so for all your titles from May 26th.
The Oscars Set Rules on AI
There is also news from the Oscars. Hollywood was at the forefront of the creative industry's pushback against AI. Back in 2023 there was the first-ever simultaneous strike by the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood writers, over the use of AI both in front of and behind the camera, which led to rules around how many human writers had to be in writers' rooms.
This past week the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which runs the Oscars, has announced new rules on the eligibility of films that use AI for Oscar nominations. The new rules state that both actors and writers need to be human. There are no rules around AI in more technical roles, and the guidance is that AI use in those areas will neither help nor hinder a film's eligibility. But critically: to be nominated for an Oscar as a screenwriter, you must be a human being and must not have used AI or a large language model to write your script.
BISG AI Survey: Signs of a Maturing Landscape
That segues neatly into a new study from the Book Industry Study Group, focused on Canada but with findings that are broadly applicable globally. The study looks at AI use in the publishing industry. What I found most interesting is not any single headline figure but how closely the findings align with other surveys we've seen over the past year — which suggests we may be approaching a point of relative stability in how the industry is responding to AI.
Some figures: 45.8% of respondents said they used AI, primarily for administrative functions — entirely in line with previous findings. Likewise, the things people are worried about and the degree of their concern track closely with earlier surveys. Around four-fifths of respondents are concerned about the misuse of copyrighted material, hallucination, and misinformation. The topic that made it into the top four for this survey — and that I found particularly interesting, as I haven't seen it highlighted so prominently before — is that 81.1% of respondents are concerned about the sheer number of AI-generated books in the marketplace.
Interestingly, this is a 2025 survey that is only now being reported because it has only recently been analyzed. That means the responses were gathered before all the headlines about the extra million AI-generated titles that entered the marketplace last year. So that concern is only likely to grow. We've been discussing how all-you-can-listen and all-you-can-read programs pay authors, and the number of AI-generated titles matters to us directly because those titles share both reader attention and royalty pools with human-authored work.
By and large, though, the responses align with what previous surveys have found — which suggests, as I say, that we are entering a more mature phase of this conversation. Not often that we end on a note of maturity, but I'll leave it there and look forward very much to speaking to you again at the same time next week.
