ElevenLabs has launched sales through its ElevenReader platform, offering authors and publishers a 60% royalty rate on net sales for AI-generated audiobooks, without exclusivity requirements.
The London-based voice-AI company's consumer-facing distribution platform allows users to create audiobooks using AI and sell them directly to consumers. ElevenReader Publishing launched in January as a free platform where authors could publish AI-generated audiobooks, but without monetization options, as the books were offered for free. The ElevenReader platform, which is available as an app for Apple and Android, currently offers several thousand titles from independent authors and small publishers.
"Our goal is to create a product that enables anyone, whether you're an indie author or a publisher, to create an audiobook in minutes, and be able to monetize it," Madeline Shue, who leads growth and strategy at ElevenLabs, told PW. Shue joined the company in May after working in venture capital.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs now employs more than 300 people with offices in New York, San Francisco, Warsaw, Tokyo, and São Paulo.
"ElevenLabs is a voice AI tech company," Shue said. "The core of ElevenLabs is our voice AI research models that we built, and so the rest of the company is looking to products built on top of that, bringing that technology to consumers, to creators, to enterprises, you name it." One of the earliest applications of the company's technology was audiobook creation by authors, which has remained a focus area for product development over the past two to three years.
ElevenReader operates as two distinct pathways for content creation. Authors can use the free ElevenReader platform by uploading manuscripts with limited customization options, or they can access fuller features through paid ElevenLabs subscriptions that allow multicast narration, music integration, and MP3 downloads.
The company positions its 60% net sales royalty rate as the most competitive in the industry, comparing favorably over platforms that offer 40% royalty for exclusive distribution and 20% for wide distribution. "We did a bunch of research, chatted with tons of people across the industry and came to this rate," Shue said. "It’s even more attractive when you considered you’re not locked into a single platform." Shue noted widespread industry frustration with existing distribution models. "Traditional platforms tend to be quite restrictive in terms of rights and exclusivity," she said. "We've seen these challenges sort of exist across the spectrum, from indie authors to smaller publishers to the Big Five."
ElevenLabs targets the audiobook market's rapid growth across multiple user segments, from independent authors—it plans to participate in Author Nation in Las Vegas this November—to major publishers seeking to convert backlist titles into audio format efficiently. "Our goal is just to make it as simple as transparent as possible and enable everyone to earn," Shue said.
The platform's combination of free AI-generated production tools and competitive revenue sharing may particularly impact the economics of backlist monetization, where traditional production costs have historically limited audiobook creation to proven bestsellers. If successful, the model could accelerate the democratization of audiobook publishing while potentially fragmenting distribution across multiple platforms as authors seek more favorable terms.
