ACX Audio Submission Requirements: A Complete Checklist

If you have a finished audiobook file sitting on your hard drive and no idea what to do next, I want to sit with you for a minute, because this is the part where a lot of authors freeze. Making the audio turned out to be the easy bit. Getting it listed, priced, and earning money is where the questions pile up. So let me give you the short version first, then walk you through all of it properly. To publish an audiobook on Audible you go through ACX, Audible's self-service platform: you create a free ACX account, claim or add your book, upload chaptered audio files that meet ACX's technical spec, submit for review, and once approved your audiobook goes live on Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books, paying you a royalty on each sale. That is the whole shape of it. Now the details, because the details are exactly where people get stuck.

I have shepherded a good number of books through this, and the plain truth is that the publishing step is more paperwork than craft. It is checkboxes and file specs and a royalty decision or two. None of it is hard once someone shows you the map, which is what I am here to do. And if you have not actually produced your audio yet, start with the full guide to turning your book into an audiobook with AI, then come back here for the publishing side.

Publishing on Audible through ACX, step by step

ACX stands for Audiobook Creation Exchange, and it is Amazon's front door for getting an audiobook onto Audible. You can reach it at https://www.acx.com. It is free to create an account, and you sign in with the same Amazon credentials you probably already use. Here is the path from empty account to a live listing.

Claim your book. ACX pulls from your existing Amazon and Kindle catalog. If your ebook or paperback is already on Amazon, you search for the title inside ACX and claim it, which links the audiobook to the same product page. This is a small thing that matters a lot: readers browsing your paperback will see the audiobook edition right there, and Audible tends to reward titles that live in a complete family of formats.

Choose your production path. ACX asks whether you are producing the audio yourself, hiring a narrator through their marketplace, or working a royalty-share deal with a narrator. Since you are bringing your own finished files, you select the "I already have audio" style path, sometimes shown as working with your own producer. You are your own producer here, which keeps one hundred percent of the royalty on your side of the table.

Upload files that meet the spec. This is the one step that bounces authors, so give it real attention. ACX wants one audio file per chapter, plus separate opening and closing credits files. Each file must be a constant-bitrate MP3 at 192 kbps or higher, at a 44.1 kHz sample rate, with room tone at the head and tail and peaks that sit within their loudness window. If that sounds fiddly, it is, and I have written out the whole thing in a dedicated ACX audio submission requirements checklist so you can tick it off line by line before you ever hit upload. The good news: when you generate with Audie, you get chaptered MP3s out the other side, which lines up neatly with the one-file-per-chapter rule.

Submit and wait for review. Once your files are up and your metadata is filled in, you submit and ACX runs a technical and content review. This usually takes a couple of weeks, sometimes faster. They are checking that your audio matches the manuscript, that the credits are present, and that the files pass their loudness and format gates. When it clears, your audiobook goes live across Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books, and you get an email letting you know.

One thing worth naming before you get too far in: ACX has a specific and evolving stance on AI-narrated audio, and it is the single most important policy to understand before you commit to this route. I keep a current read on it in the current 2026 breakdown of whether ACX allows AI-narrated audiobooks, and I would genuinely read that before you upload, not after.

Findaway Voices and going wide: your other distribution options

Audible is the biggest single storefront, but it is not the only one, and it is not always the smartest exclusive home. The main alternative is Findaway Voices, now part of Spotify, which you can reach at https://findawayvoices.com. Where ACX pushes into the Audible and Amazon and Apple ecosystem, Findaway is an aggregator: you upload once and they distribute to a wide net of retailers and library services, including Spotify, Apple, Google Play, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Chirp, and the library platforms OverDrive and hoopla.

Libraries are the quiet reason a lot of authors love Findaway. Library lends do not make you rich per unit, but they are steady, they reach listeners who would never pay retail, and they build an audience that comes back for your next book. Audible does not put you into libraries the same way, so if catalog reach and discovery matter to you, going wide through Findaway is a serious option.

The real strategic question is exclusivity. ACX offers a higher royalty rate if you grant Audible exclusive rights, and a lower rate if you stay non-exclusive and distribute everywhere. That tradeoff deserves its own careful look, which is why I wrote a full comparison of Findaway Voices versus ACX and where you should distribute. The short of it: exclusive Audible pays more per sale but locks you out of every other store and every library, while going wide spreads you thinner per sale but reaches far more listeners over time. There is no universally right answer, only the one that fits your catalog and your patience.

How royalties actually work, and what lands in your account

Let me talk plainly about money, because the marketing pages never quite do. When your audiobook sells, you earn a royalty, which is a percentage of the sale, not the full sticker price. On ACX, the headline number authors quote is the exclusive royalty rate, which sits around forty percent for titles distributed exclusively through Audible. Choose non-exclusive distribution and that rate drops to roughly twenty-five percent, the tradeoff for keeping the right to sell everywhere else.

A few realities that surprise first-timers. Audible sells most of its audiobooks through a credit-based membership, so the price a listener "pays" with a monthly credit is not a clean retail dollar figure, and your royalty is calculated against Audible's own accounting of that sale. This means your per-sale earnings vary more than you might expect. On Findaway and the wide retailers, the math differs store by store, and library lends pay on their own models entirely.

The number that actually matters is not the royalty percentage in isolation, it is how many sales it takes to cover what you spent producing the book. When production runs into the thousands of dollars with a hired studio and narrator, that break-even point is genuinely far away. When you produce with AI narration for a fraction of that, you can cross into profit on a modest number of sales. I ran the full arithmetic in a piece on how audiobook royalties work for indie authors, and if you want the cost side of the ledger, what it actually costs to produce an audiobook pairs with it directly. The two together give you a real profit picture instead of a hopeful one.

Here is my honest take on the money question. The old model, where an audiobook cost three or four thousand dollars to make, meant the royalty math only worked for authors who were already selling well. Bring the production cost down to the price of a nice dinner or two, and suddenly the calculus flips for everyone. A backlist title that would never have justified a studio narrator can now earn out and then keep paying, quietly, for years.

Setting your price and preparing the extras

On ACX you do not set an exact price yourself. Audible assigns a price band based on the finished running time of your audiobook, and longer books land in higher bands. This is worth knowing early because it means padding or trimming your book does not translate cleanly into pricing control, so do not try to game it. Focus on making the listen good and let the length fall where it honestly falls.

Beyond the audio files themselves, ACX asks for a handful of supporting pieces. You will need cover art that meets their square dimensions and resolution, opening credits that announce the title and author and narrator, and closing credits. If you are your own producer with AI narration, you are also the narrator of record for credit purposes, and there are specific ways to phrase that which the checklist article covers. Get these small pieces ready before you start the upload flow so you are not scrambling mid-submission.

If the ACX route feels heavy and you would rather see the whole publishing arc laid out as one continuous process, I also wrote a plainer step-by-step guide to self-publishing an audiobook that stitches production and distribution together into a single flow. Some authors think in checklists, some think in stories, and that piece tells the story version.

A last word on the piece that comes before all of this: your audio has to be good, or none of the publishing mechanics matter. Audie turns your manuscript into a multi-voice audiobook using Azure HD neural voices and ElevenLabs voices, with automatic speaker detection so your narrator and each character get their own voice, chapter detection that splits your manuscript into the per-chapter files ACX wants, and roughly five-minute generation. You download chaptered MP3s that slot straight into the upload flow described above. If you want to know exactly how the characters get their distinct voices, the guide on giving every character a different voice is the place to start.

When you are ready to produce, take a look at Audie's pricing and pick the token package that fits your book. Then bring the finished files back to this page and follow the ACX steps above. Publishing is the boring part. Let us get you to the part where your book is on Audible.

Frequently asked questions

How do I publish an audiobook on Audible?

You publish on Audible through ACX, Amazon's free self-service platform at https://www.acx.com. Create an ACX account with your Amazon login, claim or add your book so it links to your existing product page, choose the self-produced path since you are bringing your own audio, upload one chaptered MP3 per chapter plus opening and closing credits that meet ACX's technical spec, and submit for review. After a couple of weeks of review, an approved audiobook goes live across Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books, paying you a royalty on each sale.

Should I distribute exclusively on Audible or go wide?

Exclusive distribution through ACX pays a higher royalty per sale, around forty percent, but locks you out of every other store and out of libraries. Going non-exclusive, or distributing wide through an aggregator like Findaway Voices, drops your per-sale rate to roughly twenty-five percent but reaches Spotify, Apple, Google Play, Kobo, and the library systems that drive steady long-term discovery. There is no universal right answer: exclusive suits authors optimizing per-sale income, wide suits authors building reach and a library presence.

What royalty do audiobooks pay?

On ACX, exclusive titles earn roughly forty percent of each sale and non-exclusive titles about twenty-five percent, calculated against Audible's own accounting of the sale rather than a flat sticker price. Wide retailers through Findaway pay on their own per-store models, and library lends pay differently again. The figure that actually matters is how many sales it takes to recover your production cost, which is why producing affordably with AI narration changes the whole profit picture.

Can I set my own audiobook price on Audible?

Not directly. Audible assigns a price band based on your audiobook's finished running time, with longer books landing in higher bands. You cannot type in an arbitrary price, so do not pad or trim your book to chase a band. Focus on making the listen genuinely good and let the length, and therefore the price, fall where it honestly does.