People who started buying ebooks are used to prices that are lower – sometimes considerably lower – than print editions.
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What’s more, there are several deals on ebooks, which enable users to get favorite titles at prices cut to a range between $0.99 and $2.99.
Users expect audiobooks to work the same way. Audiobooks are also books in a digital format, so there is no cost of printing, right?
Yes, but there is another cost-generating factor. It’s narration. You have to pay the narrator, plus cover the cost of sound recording and editing.
An average novel contains 80,000 words. It translates to about 9-10 hours of narration. The cost per finished hour ranges between $100 and $500. So, the cost of producing an audiobook of a 100,000-word novel narrated by a recognizable voice can easily exceed $5,000.
It’s no surprise that an audiobook version of a book title costs much more than its ebook edition. In most cases, it’s also more expensive than a paperback or even hardcover.
The usual price of an audiobook edition is between $20 and $30. It’s twice as much as the cost of a Kindle or paperback edition. Both formats are usually priced below $20.
In the table below, we’ve compared prices of a few popular books from the list of Amazon’s top 100 book bestsellers.
Price comparison: audiobook vs. Kindle vs. paperback
| Title and author | Kindle | Paperback | Audiobook |
|---|---|---|---|
| Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng | $4.99 | $19.72 | $20.65 |
| The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood | $9.99 | $10.50 | $23.44 |
| The Outsider by Stephen King | $14.99 | $18.00 | $26.64 |
| The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey | $4.99 | $21.31 | $28.30 |
| The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson | $14.99 | $12.99 | $23.95 |
| Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling | $9.99 | $8.49 | $29.99 |
| A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) by George R. R. Martin | $5.99 | $10.48 | $28.77 |
| The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho | $9.99 | $9.33 | $23.95 |
| Artemis by Andy Weir | $15.99 | $16.00 | $29.95 |
| Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders | $10.99 | $10.20 | $24.50 |
| How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie | $0.99 | $9.60 | $29.46 |
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