Direct Sales And Author Control The Future Of Audiobook Publishing

Authors face massive challenges with low royalties and zero pricing flexibility when using traditional distribution channels. Host Juliet Clark sits down with guest Becky Parker Geist, Founder and CEO of Pro Audio Voices, to discuss how authors can regain audiobook publishing control through direct sales platforms. They examine how creators lose rights and profits to retailer subscriptions that give away content for free. By taking back ownership, authors can build direct relationships with listeners and set their own promotional pricing. Discover why community building and direct author-to-listener engagement form the backbone of sustainable publishing success. Learn how human narration creates an authentic connection that artificial voices can never replicate.

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Direct Sales And Author Control The Future Of Audiobook Publishing

We have a great guest who you folks have never heard from before who has an audiobook platform. Not only is she selling books from that platform but if you’re an author who doesn’t want to read your own book and I know a lot of you guys do not want to because it’s hard. They have a whole suite of people who can read that book for you to get it up on Audible. Let’s listen to Becky Parker Geist. She is the Founder and CEO of Pro Audio Voices and AMPlify Audiobooks. She’s the President of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association and host of the podcast Audiobook Connection and Indie Tell All since 2013.

Pro Audio Voices have helped authors and publishers transform their books into impactful audio Experiences while pioneering new ways for creators and audiences to connect. In this episode, through AMPlify Audiobooks, they’re helping reshape the audiobook industry with higher royalties, greater creator control, direct audience relationships and driving community built around stories because books bring us together in ways that help us all thrive.

Becky is also the author of six independently published books three nonfiction, two children’s and one novel. She is a recipient of the Publishing Professional Networks 2025 Distinguished Service Award, the 2025 Inc Female Founders Award and the 2026 SOVAS Award, and the Gracie Award for Best Audiobook Producer.

She presents regularly at book events. I found her through my friends at the Book Fest. Stay tuned to listen to Becky because there’s a lot going on in the audiobook world and not all of his great audibles have a lot of problems, and I am glad to see some people out there creating some solutions. Stay tuned for Becky.

—

Becky, welcome. It’s great to have you.

Thank you so much. I’m so glad to be here. I’m looking forward to it.

I am too. There are so many problems in the audiobook world.

Yes.

I mentioned a little bit in the intro about Audible getting sued right and left. I have to be an Audible listener. I thought when I bought those books, I would own them. I didn’t realize that I did not. I’m wondering why I spent so much money on things I don’t know.

I’ve always thought that Audible was just ripe for lawsuits, law of class action suits. It’s interesting that now they’re happening.

It has taken. I’ve noticed that some of the books that I purchased over time have disappeared. I went back to an early one that I bought. I’ve been there since 2009. I was a pretty early adopter. I’ve got over 1,000 titles in there. I probably listen to 8 to 10 books a month. From your perspective, what is the core problem with the audiobook ecosystem? Besides what we were just talking about. What are you trying to solve?

Reclaiming Your Rights From Big Retailers

There are several issues and a lot of them come down to looking through the lens of what are the challenges for an author on the platform and also how that impacts the listeners. There are things and we’re doing things to resolve all of these. From the author’s perspective, the first is royalties. It is sad and frustrating how low the royalties are in general in the audiobook world. The reason is only because the platforms that are retailing those take such a big chunk of the royalties.

From a kindergarten perspective of what’s fair, that’s not fair because the author has shouldered the burden of all the creative work in collaboration with the narrator or narrators. The writing of the text, the payment for getting the book into the audio format, all of this is expensive stuff. They have to handle all of the marketing. What does a retail platform do? They have built a thing and in such a way that you can add it to them. They’re not doing anything else for you.

They’re collecting the money and then you’re giving you a little piece. Royalty is one. How are we solving that? We have turned that formula on its head in a way because with AMPlify Audiobooks, it’s a direct sale platform. It’s like a mall where each author owns their own store. That means in terms of pricing or royalties, the authors on AMPlify get 65% of the gross amount. I have to emphasize that because it is distinctly different from 25% or 35% or 40% or even 50% of the net amount. The gross amount is what the customer pays, and the net amount is that amount minus whatever the platform considers their expenses.

It dramatically drops it down. The other big category is control. When an author creates an audiobook, they submit it for distribution. Now, they’ve provided data like the book description, cover image, and the audio files. They may suggest an MSRP or suggested retail price, but do they have any control over what it’s sold for? They do not. This is one of the big abuses by Audible, frankly, because they may sell us a subscription to their platform and they take that profit. Since they gave away your audiobook as a teaser, then they don’t pay you anything. That is just flat out wrong.

I buy a seven-package subscription every single month, so none of those people get paid?

The Hidden Cost Of Free Listener Promotions

They will get paid. A lot of times, authors will say, “How come my audiobook is showing for $0 on Amazon?” The reason is because they will say, “You get two books free when you subscribe.” They’re taking in that money for the subscription and they’re giving away your content. Since they didn’t sell your content, they gave it away for free. They give you a percentage of zero.

I want to clarify. I have a two-book subscription, but I usually buy an extra $7 every month because I go through that many books a month, but that is wild. My authors call me all the time and they’ll say, “My book is half the price of what it should be.” Now, they get their normal royalties from that, but the fact that the distributors take 55% is insane for regular books, too.

That’s right. I do want to point out because not all platforms do that in terms of the teaser for a subscription Audiobooks.com will do the same type of promotion, like two books free for when you subscribe, but they will pay those authors when those two books are given away. They will give them their proper royalty. There are differences between each of the platforms. Those are two that I specifically know about that particular piece. On the other platforms, I’m not sure whether they’re paying or not.

Setting Your Own Prices And Discount Codes

Still, they’re taking such a big chunk of whatever they pay out and you don’t have control. Coming back to that control piece. You can suggest a price, but you have no control. As your authors are saying, “It’s selling for a price that it shouldn’t. It’s the wrong price.” They have no control over that. On AMPlify, the authors have complete control. It’s their store. They can decide at any point to change the price. They can raise it or lower. It doesn’t matter. It’s up to them. They can all run a promotion. Let’s say I’ve got a thing going. I’m going to do a whole marketing campaign.

I want my audiobook on sale for the week of whatever. If you want to do that on any other platform, there’s just no path to do it. They’re not interested, or somebody would create a path, but I have had authors. I remember early on. I was only a few years into audiobook production with my own business. We’ve been doing this for about many years. I had an author who called me who was like, “I want to put it on promotion.” I was like, “I want to help you,” and there was no path.

When we created AMPlify Audiobooks, it was partly because we wanted to be able to give authors that control too. Not only do you have control over your regular pricing. You have control over sale pricing, and you can do any discount codes you want. Usually, on some platforms, they’ll give you a limited number of free codes. What if you don’t want to give it away? What if you want to do 50% off or 20% off or $2 off? Again, there was no path. That is one of the things that authors can do, create any discount codes.

Connecting Directly With Your Target Readers

There’s the community aspect. One of the things that happens in the standard retail platforms and audiobooks. It’s probably in other industries as well, but it’s definitely true in audiobooks. The retailers benefit by keeping authors and listeners like a wall between them. As an author, you’re not going to get the customer email address or have any way to communicate directly with them. Why is that? That’s because the retailers know how incredibly valuable that information is.

They don’t want you to have it. They want to keep it all to themselves. We come from the perspective of, it will help our authors thrive. They will be able to serve their audiences better if they can be connected with them. This is something that is also very true from the listener’s side. As a listener, I love listening to audiobooks. One of the things that I frequently feel is, at the end of an audiobook, I want to follow that author. I want to find out what else they’ve done. I have been astounded at how challenging that can be at times.

The other thing, if you think about it for a moment. I’ll use nonfiction as an example. Let’s say somebody is offering. We have this book, Take Back Your Life. It’s by Janja Lalich. It’s an important, powerful book about cults and recovering from cults. It’s for people who have families who have gotten ensnared in cults. If somebody comes and gets that audiobook, and if they do have a way to connect with the author. You can pretty easily see their own ability to get additional benefit. Whether it’s from reading some of her other books or listening to some of her other books or learning about programs that she has.

These are all going to enhance the experience, deep in the experience for the listener. It’s also going to help the author. Why is everyone working so hard to keep those people apart? Let’s come together. This is something we need more than ever in our world. It’s a way that we can gather together around common interests or whatever, but to become together. Audiobooks are such a great way to build community. It’s around community, connection, ability for customers and authors to be able to directly connect.

I love that because we build platforms. We teach people how to build their list. We have all these things we do. List building is incredibly hard, but if you have people buying your books. That’s one of the things I love about Book Funnel. It’s those swaps and being able to exchange lists and things like that and help each other list build. It’s authors work cooperatively together to help each other. For those that are looking for an agent, that’s the first thing they look at. How big is your list? How big is your social media? The other side of that industry is preventing us from doing it because they want to stay relevant.

Exactly. Also, the idea of things like reviews getting pulled down because they figured out that somebody might be a friend of the author. God forbid. Their review is no longer valid. That is the exact opposite of community building. I do understand the abuse of the system with bots and what all. That’s a different issue to be dealt with. It’s not helped by rejecting community support for an author.

I was going to say, especially now. I don’t know if this is hitting the audiobook community the same way it is with the published authors I have. There are so many book club scams out there now. You get caught up in one of those and you have unverified reviews. I don’t even know how they get on there because I thought there was criteria to even write a review on Amazon.

There is so much of that going on that it does behoove us to stay together and be cohesive. We want our friends and family to do this, because they’re going to give honest reviews. I feel like Amazon should be going after every single one of those people and Goodreads out there. Any unverified reviews are not allowed, period. Are you guys getting hit hard by the scams as well?

Not on our platform as yet. Hopefully, we won’t. We’re trying to build in the security things that are going to make it one thing. For example, if you don’t like posting a reflection or a comment, and I don’t think I talked about that, but I will, unless you’re logged in. Part of being logged in means we know who you are. We can remove your permission if you’re going to be abusive or rude. We expect good behavior. If you’re going to be a bad actor, you will not be able to stay. There are some built-in tools, we’re not getting hit with that as yet. Our book clubs and events that we are holding are all hosted by one of our teams. We’re holding some control around that as well to make sure that everybody stays safe and people are playing by the rules.

I love that. This game is not so much on the platforms. It’s people getting emails. Since I have published five books in the last months, every single day, I get these emails. I’ve even followed some of them right up to bank accounts and then called their banks and said, “These guys are a scam. You should know that as the bank because they can go after you.” Talk more about the book clubs and stuff because this is a cool feature it sounds like you guys have.

This is a part of that community aspect. How can we find ways to gather? There’s two different primary things. They’re similar, and they’re both events. They’re both live at the same time but online events. The book clubs obviously are focused around a particular topic and are recurring events. The other events, we’re doing all the facilitation at this point. An author, let’s say we want to do an audiobook launch. They can be hosting that event as the author and run it however they want. Again, we’re facilitating. We’re making sure everybody is safe and taken care of.

Fostering Community Through Interactive Book Events

One of the cool things about that is, on the platform, each of those events is posted. You’re talking about the building of your email list. You’re able to access the full platform because people are coming in, they’re seeing, “There’s this event coming up,” and they can register for that event. They might not know anything about the author. They may have never heard of them, but they’re in this context of this audiobook community place where they can buy audiobooks, and they can meet with other audiobook lovers. They can attend these events or book clubs. It allows for that building of community in yet another way, basically.

That is so cool. If someone has already recorded an audiobook, can they bring it to your platform, or did they have to record with you?

They can bring it to us. They just have to be up to standard industry specifications. The other thing that we offered, and you touched a little bit on this. You were talking about, like that building of the email list and how hard it is. They make it hard to grow your following. This is also related to control, what I was talking about earlier. I have found and largely, both as being CEO and founder of Pro Audio Voices, but also through my work as President of the Bay Area Independent Book Publishers Association.

I get that one of the big challenges that authors face is, how do you move forward with your marketing once you’ve got your audiobook live? It’s like, “Now, what?” That often is that big question. It’s not always because they don’t see any path forward. Largely often because they see so many paths forward, where do I spend my time and energy? On the platform, we have a whole marketing workshop area. What that is, it includes several different elements to it. One is this idea of being able to run a promotional price or do discount codes.

Those are within that marketing workshop, but also you can feature your title. Where are you going to do that on any other platform? Would you feature my title? You’re not going to get anyone’s attention. Here, you can do that. You cannot do it for a week. Let’s say you’re building a marketing campaign and you’re going to try to drive your traffic to buy the audiobook on AMPlify, because that’s where you’re going to earn the most. That’s where your listeners are going to have the best experience. You could feature your title during that time or whatever.

Also, separately, you could feature yourself as an author because we’re a platform about people. Not just audiobooks. There are other things. To make marketing a little more fun, we have these quests. A quest to increase in engagement and it’s like a tutorial. It’s a step by step. You just work your way through the steps and you can take as long as you want. It’s your own pacing. The cool thing is, every time you come back to the platform, you know where to pick up. You either are continuing a quest or go pick another one. This is a more fun or a little more gamified way to keep our marketing moving forward in approaching it from different angles and all depending on what our goals are.

I have to throw a question at you. I see people out there using ElevenLabs to record. What are your thoughts on that? I did like one chapter of a book trying it out, and I was like, “That is the most boring thing I’ve ever heard,” because this is a mystery. It’s supposed to be suspenseful, and it doesn’t sound that way at all. I want January LaVoy, but I can’t afford her.

There are a lot of great narrators who are not celebrity names but will deliver a fantastic audiobook as human narration. We have over 700 narrators pre-vetted in our talent bank. The thing about AI voices or AI narration is, first of all, I am 100% opposed to it. I will say that it is not allowed on the AMPlify audiobooks platform. It’s human only. One of the reasons I am so opposed to it is that it’s not just the human element of you taking jobs away from real humans who are talented and have worked hard to develop their skills.

Preserving Authentic Human Narration Over Machine Voices

There’s more to it that is like the mystery of consciousness. We don’t fully understand how all of that works, but there’s something that is truly communicated human to human, heart to heart, mind to mind, and voice to ear that is uniquely human. We can get machines to mimic us. It’s going to get better and sound more human over time, but I still think that there’s something. There will always be something missing in the translation.

One of the ways about this is like, would I want a robot to read the bedtime story to my child? Absolutely not. This pulls it into a little bit more of an extreme, but if we are listening to something and it is AI narration. It is my belief that something inside us, whether it’s conscious or not, will not respond or will recognize that there is a disconnect. There is something plastic in the air. I don’t know.

That’s the thing when I have done stuff with AI. The emotion isn’t there. What drives me crazy is my books take place in Paso Robles, California. It says it wrong, and it drives me crazy because I grew up there. You can train. If you were narrating my book, I could say, “Becky, this is pronounced this way,” and we might have to do a little editing. You can’t do that with AI because it’s not going to respond with the voice and the pronunciation the way we wanted.

I suspect that some who are running those programs would say that you can, but to be fully transparent, I have not explored using AI narration because I’m philosophically opposed to it. Maybe that makes me blind in some ways, but I’m okay with that. There’s something so much more to the story. We are a story. That’s how we live our lives. That’s how we experience life. Am I going to turn that over to a mechanical version of ourselves?

You’ve written books. You’ve six books, and I’ve written a ton, too. Those come from the heart, and you can feel it. You can feel the storytelling. I killed my ex-husband and my first book. I’m sure you could feel the emotion of that. It would be almost the same as writing the book with AI, which I’m so happy to report that authors hate. They don’t want to let that happen, which is a good thing about our industry. People who are understanding the creative outlet. If you were going to let a robot write it, why would you let a robot read that as well? I want to get your thoughts on it because I’m seeing it pop up more and more, like a narrated by AI because you do have to say when it is narrated. I avoided a lot of that stuff there.

I’m grateful that they do have to say it and I’m sure that there are also those who think that they’re not going to get caught by announcing it. I also know from the studies that most audiobook listeners won’t listen to AI-narrated. It’s interesting. Sometimes, people think that for some reason, if it’s nonfiction, that’s fine. I don’t agree with that. Explaining a concept to me, I don’t think it gets a pass in that regard. I understand the argument, “I want to hear the information.” We can GPS our way around town with the information from an app like that. Still, there is some disconnect that will just naturally happen on some level of us as to how we take in the story of the non-fiction. As well as this story of fiction.

A lot of nonfiction authors want to read the books themselves, too. If you’re a coach or an author or speaker, you should because people are looking for your voice. The trend that I love in the last couple of years, and you guys do this as well when we talked, is the theatrical. There are different voices for different characters. I love those books because I feel like I’m pitched. It’s not like watching Netflix, where I’m watching it. I’m watching a series that’s finished and I can tell that AI is moving their lips.

It’s driving me crazy. You have these different characters, and you’re forming them in your head, and you’re imagining everything in it. It’s not one voice telling the story. It’s many people coming in and playing the characters. I do like that. It’s a little bit more theatrical. I still love it that you have to visually put that in, like you have to see.

Utilizing Immersive Audio To Elevate Impact

You get to imagine it but you hear it with all the different voices and the immersive soundtrack. This is one of my favorite versions of audiobooks, this immersive soundtrack with the full cast. We’ve been grateful to win several awards over the last several months for our audiobook work. It was like even the SOVAS Awards. We’ve got two awards, one for best audiobook producer and one for best sound audiobook sound design. Gracie Award for best audiobook producer, and again it’s for this full cast immersive movie in the mind, version of audiobooks. They’re super fun.

Maybe someday with mine. I’m still waiting for January LaVoy to just go, “I wanted to do yours for free.” Never happened. Becky, where can we find you if we want to explore this more? Folks, remember she said, if you already have an audiobook, you can bring it to her platform, too. I do have several authors that already have books. This sounds like a great place for them to be with it. How do we get a hold of you? What do we do?

Thank you. If you’re looking for production and getting to that point where you have the audiobook, the best place is ProAudioVoices.com. It’s really easy. Book a call. That’s the way we like to get started so we can learn more about your project, your goals, and we’ll start from there. It’s all free. If you already have an audiobook, then the place to go is AmplifyAudiobooks.com. You can just join and take it from there and figure out which membership levels are going to serve you the best and all that.

That’s fantastic. I’m just going to tell you. I looked at their price list, it’s very reasonable. I’m waiting for my budget to come to support doing the audiobooks because I did too many books in a row and now I’m book cash poor. They’re selling but I’ve got to sell a lot of books.

A quick thing because you had mentioned about the pricing, and you had also mentioned a book funnel. One of the things that is so distinct about AMPlify audiobooks is it in relation to the book funnel. Instead of being siloed off on your own site, you are in the context of a store and a community, so you have more available to you in terms of your audience. Looking forward to seeing you and everybody there. Thank you so much for having me on.

Thank you for being here.

Important Links

• Becky Parker Geist
• Becky Parker Geist on LinkedIn
• AMPlify Audiobooks
• Take Back Your Life
• Pro Audio Voices
• Independent Book Publishers Association
• ElevenLabs
• Bay Area Independent Publishers Association
• Audiobook Connection
• Indie Tell All

About Becky Parker Geist

Becky Parker Geist is Founder & CEO of Pro Audio Voices & AMPlify Audiobooks™, President of Bay Area Independent Publishers Assn, and host of the podcasts “Audiobook Connection” and “Indie Authors Tell All.” Since 2013, Pro Audio Voices has helped authors and publishers transform books into impactful audio experiences while pioneering new ways for creators and audiences to connect. Today, through AMPlify Audiobooks, they’re helping reshape the audiobook industry with higher royalties, greater creator control, direct audience relationships, and a thriving community built around stories. Because books should bring us together in ways that help us all thrive.

Becky is also the author of six independently published books: 3 nonfiction, 2 children’s, 1 novel. She is the recipient of the Publishing Professional Network’s 2025 Distinguished Service Award, the 2025 Inc Female Founders Award, and the 2026 SOVAS Award and the Gracie Award for Best Audiobook Producer. She presents regularly at book industry events.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

Join the Promote, Profit, Publish Community today:

• superbrandpublishing.com
• Promote, Profit, Publish on YouTube
• Follow Juliet on LinkedIn
• Take the Quiz!