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The ACX legacy royalty model ends this year: how to decide before the deadline

James Heppe-Smith

Studio microphone and headphones on a desk at dusk, with a December calendar on the wall and the 31st circled in red

In the spring Audible announced that the ACX legacy royalty model would be switched off. The deadline looked comfortably distant then. It is now inside a single quarter, and anyone with an ACX audiobook set up before 26 May has a decision to make before the end of 2026.

We covered what the new model is and who it favours in June. This piece is about the deadline itself: what ACX has said, what it has not, and how to decide.

When the ACX legacy royalty model ends

ACX’s blog post, first published on 28 April and updated on 26 May, reads:

By end of year, the legacy royalty model will be discontinued. By that time, you must either choose to enroll your titles in the new model or discontinue distribution if you prefer.

Its help centre says the same, and adds what happens in the meantime:

If your title is not enrolled in the new royalty model, it will continue to earn a 40% royalty rate for exclusive distribution and a 25% royalty rate for non-exclusive distribution until year-end.

Two details matter.

ACX has now named the date: 31 December 2026. Its help page still says only “By end of year”, but ACX’s email to rights holders refers to “the December 31 enrollment deadline”. Enrolment takes effect on the first of the following month, so a title enrolled now moves to the new model in November, and you can see a month of new-model earnings in December, before the deadline.

Enrolment is not instant. An existing title you enrol moves to the new model on the first of the following month. Enrol on 15 December and the change lands on 1 January.

Which titles this affects

Only older ones. Any DIY title claimed after 26 May 2026 is already on the new model, and so is any Marketplace deal (Pay for Production, Royalty Share or Royalty Share Plus) where the offer went to a producer after that date. Anything earlier is not grandfathered.

Enrolling does not change whether a title is exclusive or non-exclusive. ACX’s FAQ is clear on that:

No, your title’s distribution status (i.e., exclusive or non-exclusive) will remain unchanged when you enroll in the new royalty model.

Those are two separate decisions, and switching between exclusive and non-exclusive still runs under ACX’s older rules.

How to enrol

From the ACX dashboard:

  1. Open the My Projects tab.
  2. To enrol everything, select Enroll titles on the blue banner at the top of the page.
  3. To enrol some titles only, select Clear selection on the banner, tick the titles you want, then Enroll titles.
  4. Select Confirm.

A message in your ACX message centre then confirms which titles were enrolled and the date the change takes effect.

The two questions ACX has not answered

This is the part that matters most, and the FAQ does not cover it.

What happens to a title you do nothing about? ACX frames the choice as enrol or discontinue. It does not say what happens to a title that is neither enrolled nor withdrawn when the year ends. Some coverage says such titles will come down. That may well be right, but we could not find ACX saying it.

Can you undo enrolment? The help centre explains how to enrol and says nothing about reversing it. We found no article on opting back out, and with the legacy model closing anyway, do not assume you can.

If either answer affects your decision, email ACX support before you act and keep the reply. A written answer from ACX is worth more than any blog post on the subject, this one included.

How to decide

The difficulty is that you cannot model it in advance. ACX has no calculator that shows what a title would earn under the new model. The new earnings detail (Member Value by marketplace, Qualified Listens and so on) only appears on your statements after a title is enrolled.

So the decision rests on what you already know about each title.

Look at where the title’s income comes from. Your legacy statements show whether a book earns mostly from credit purchases, from à la carte sales, or from very little at all. The new model changes how membership income is shared out, so a title whose money comes mainly from members is the one whose outcome is least predictable.

Be careful with your best sellers and All You Can Listen. ACX’s own guidance on its All You Can Listen programme is unusually direct:

We would not recommend titles that are performing well in a credit or monthly unit selection membership model, especially those ranked as bestselling titles on Audible.

That is Audible telling you not to put a strong-selling credit title into the listen-based pool.

Treat the headline figures with care. Audible reports that early adopters saw earnings rise by an average of 45 per cent. That comes from a self-selected early group, and Audible has not had it independently checked. It shows the model can work for some catalogues, which is not the same as showing it will work for yours.

If you have a Royalty Share title, tell your narrator. The rights holder makes the enrolment decision, but the narrator’s income changes too. ACX itself advises narrators to contact rights holders who have not yet enrolled.

If you decide to leave

Leaving ACX means finding another route to listeners. The main direct options for authors are Spotify for Authors, Voices by INaudio, Kobo Writing Life and Google Play Books. They pay on different bases from Audible and reach different audiences, so their headline percentages are not directly comparable with ACX’s. Read each one’s terms before you move a title.

KDP Virtual Voice is not a replacement here. It produces AI-narrated editions of Kindle ebooks for sale within Amazon, and it is not a route for an existing human-narrated ACX audiobook.

To take a title out of ACX distribution, contact ACX support. We could not find a current help page setting out the removal process, and older instructions circulating online come from ACX’s retired help site.

The short version

By the end of 2026 every ACX title from before 26 May has to be enrolled in the new model or taken out of distribution. Enrolment takes effect on the first of the following month, so do it in good time. ACX has not said what happens to titles left alone, or whether enrolment can be reversed, so ask support in writing if either matters to you. And be wary of putting a strong credit seller into All You Can Listen, because Audible itself advises against it.

Keep reading: Thomson Reuters v. ROSS: what the first appeal ruling on AI training means for authors, Your First 100 Readers: What Actually Works for Indie Authors.

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