This post, from Jessica John, originally appeared on the Antbear blog on 8/25/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.
Pricing among audiobooks varies as much as print books, but here are some averages and rules of thumb that might be useful.
For a 6-hour audiobook on CD, prices are around $25-30, or about $4-5 dollars per hour of audio. For a 6-hour digital audiobook, expect to fetch about half of that, or about $15-17 dollars (~ $2.50-2.60 / hour of audio) . Per-hour prices generally follow an inverse bell curve which dips into the production “sweet spot” where the product-to-package ratio is ideal. This is a greater consideration for physical products like CDs, for obvious reasons.
The good news is that audiobooks hold their value pretty well over time, and older audio titles aren’t discounted as heavily as print versions on sites such as Amazon. Another difference that we’ve noted is that there is a much smaller discrepancy between Amazon and publishers when listing audiobooks (in all formats, but especially digital audio books) than there is with print books.
As with any product, you should research your competition and then price your book accordingly. We are happy to assist you in deciding between various production, duplication, and distribution methods. For your convenience, click here to see a spreadsheet with some of our author-read audiobooks and their various large-publisher prices.