For your assistant

1. About this document

You are reading this because an author asked you to help them sell an audiobook on Illuminory. It says what Illuminory is, what the author agrees to, how to check the book can be sold here, exactly what to prepare, and how to get in touch. Work through it in order, with the author, and ask them whenever a step needs a fact only they know.

• Address: https://illuminory.com/authors/agents.md. The same text, for a person to read: https://illuminory.com/authors/agents.
• Last changed: 2026-11-07. Section 13 lists what changed.
• It changes as Illuminory changes. Fetch it fresh from that address at the start of every session; never work from a copy saved earlier, or from memory.
• Where this document and the terms for authors (https://illuminory.com/authors/terms) disagree, the terms win.

How it works today: Illuminory has no upload page and no author API. Your job is to check that the author can sell the book here, prepare a complete and correct package on their computer, and draft an enquiry for the author to send. A person at Illuminory reads it, replies, and arranges how the files reach us. Nothing is sent or uploaded before then.

Where this document does not answer a question, say so to the author and put the question in the enquiry. Never guess.

2. What Illuminory is

Illuminory is a direct audiobook store. Listeners buy on the website, https://illuminory.com, and listen in the free Illuminory apps for iPhone and Android, which download books for offline listening, keep the listener's place across devices and play in the car. There is no subscription and there are no credits: a listener pays once and keeps the book.

The apps sell nothing and show no prices; buying happens on the website alone. Stripe is the merchant of record: it takes the payment and handles VAT and sales tax, so the author never deals with tax forms for other countries.

3. The deal

The terms for authors at https://illuminory.com/authors/terms are the whole agreement. Nothing is signed: asking Illuminory to put a book on sale is agreeing to them, and Illuminory confirms by email when the book goes on sale. The first enquiry is not that asking: it is a question and agrees to nothing. The asking comes later, after a person has replied, when the author sends the book and tells Illuminory to put it on sale. Before anything is sent, ask the author to read the terms in full and to tell you they have. What follows is a summary, not the terms.

• The author's share is 70 percent of the book's price before VAT, on every sale: a book priced at £10.00 pays £7.00. The terms promise the split will not change later.
• No contract, no fee and no exclusivity. The author licenses Illuminory to sell the audiobook and keeps the copyright and every other right, including selling the same audiobook anywhere else.
• The author sets the price, in pounds before VAT, and can change it later by email.
• Sale prices, bundles and discount codes happen only when the author agrees to them.
• The author can take a book off sale at any time with an email. Listeners who bought it keep it.
• Refunds: a listener who changes their mind within 14 days of buying, and is less than 15 minutes into the book, is refunded in full; after that only a faulty file is fixed or refunded. A refunded sale comes off the author's statement.
• Payment is in pounds, with a statement listing every sale: the day, the book, the amount and any refund. The author sees sales, never a listener's name or email.
• How often Illuminory pays, and the smallest amount it pays out, are not set yet: the terms leave both open. Do not promise a payment date or a threshold.
• The author promises that they hold the rights, that the narration is described truthfully, and that the cover, the blurb and everything else they give are theirs to use.

4. Check the author can sell the audiobook here

Walk the author through these questions in order. Ask; do not assume. If an answer rules the book out, stop and tell the author why.

1. Who holds the audio rights? The author does if they recorded the audiobook themselves, had it recorded outside ACX, or paid a narrator or studio a fee for it. If a publisher holds the audio rights, stop here: the choice is the publisher's, and the publisher writes to Illuminory itself. If someone else holds the rights for the author (an estate, or the author's own company), carry on with that rights holder: they make the statements below, and the form's name and email and statement_email (section 8) are theirs, while author and the author's page stay in the author's name.
2. Is the audiobook on Audible through ACX? Ask the author to sign in to ACX, open the title and read two lines of its contract: Distribution (Exclusive or Non-exclusive) and Payment terms (which deal it is).
   • Distribution says Non-exclusive: go on to question 3.
   • Exclusive, and Pay for Production or the author's own production: ACX lets the author switch it to non-exclusive once it has been on sale for at least 90 days, with one email to ACX support. Audible handles the request within 30 days, and there is one change per title. The steps, and a letter to copy, are at https://illuminory.com/authors/from-audible.
   • Exclusive, and Royalty Share or Royalty Share Plus: it cannot be switched while the deal with the narrator stands, so Illuminory cannot sell it. Stop here.
   • Once the author has emailed ACX support asking for the switch, the enquiry may go: give the day of the request under Open questions (section 11). Nothing goes on sale on Illuminory until ACX has confirmed the change; until then the book is still exclusive.
3. Is it exclusive anywhere else, in any shop or subscription service? If it is, then not until that ends. If it is sold wide through a distributor (such as Voices by INaudio or Author's Republic) and is exclusive nowhere, check that the distributor's agreement lets the author sell direct as well; most do.
4. Did anyone else make the recording? If the author did not buy the recording outright (a narrator on a royalty deal, a producer, a composer), the author needs their agreement to sell it here. Any music in the recording must be licensed for an audiobook sold in more than one shop. If the voices came from a digital voice service, its terms must allow selling the audiobook in other shops. The cover's artwork and fonts must be licensed for the audiobook too.
5. Then ask the author (or the rights holder) to confirm each of these five statements, in their own words. Every one must be a yes; the one exception is statement 2 for an ACX title whose switch has been requested, as question 2 says. If any is a no or a not sure, say what is missing and stop until it is sorted. Never say the author holds a right they have not confirmed.
   • I hold the audio rights to this audiobook for the whole world. The licence in the terms is worldwide and Illuminory cannot limit a book's sales by country, so rights in only some countries are a no: stop here.
   • The audiobook is exclusive to no shop, distributor or subscription service, and no agreement stops me selling it direct (or: its switch on ACX was requested on [day]).
   • Everyone else who made the recording (narrator, producer, composer, digital voice service) has agreed to it being sold here, or their terms already allow it.
   • The cover's artwork and fonts, and any music in the recording, are licensed for an audiobook sold in more than one shop.
   • What I say about the narration is true.

For a music item (an album, not an audiobook), question 2 does not apply; a record label that holds the rights counts as the publisher in question 1; if the work is registered with a collecting society (such as PRS for Music), say so in the enquiry; and statement 4 reads "licensed for sale in more than one shop".

5. Prepare the package

Prepare one folder per book, on the author's computer. It waits there: nothing is sent until a person at Illuminory has replied and said how the files should reach us.

The folder

Name the book's folder for the book, in lower case with hyphens, for example the-lantern-road:

the-lantern-road/
  01 Opening Credits.wav
  02 Chapter One.wav
  03 Chapter Two.wav
  ...
  25 Closing Credits.wav
  cover.jpg
  sample.wav              optional
  book-details.json
author-profile/           once per author, optional
  author-profile.json
  photo.jpg

The audio: one master file per chapter

• Accepted formats: WAV (.wav), AIFF (.aiff or .aif) and MP3 (.mp3). WAV or AIFF as the narrator or studio exported them is best.
• The MP3 files a title holds on ACX are accepted. ACX's own standard is 192 kbps at 44100 Hz; an MP3 below that bitrate, or at another sample rate, is a warning, not a stop: it is still taken (Illuminory resamples one at another rate and listens to one below the bitrate before it goes on sale), so carry on and mention it in the enquiry.
• An Audible download (.aax or .aaxc), or any file from a shop's app, is not a master: it is locked to that shop's apps, and Illuminory cannot use it. Never send one, and never remove, bypass or work around the copy protection (DRM) on any file, whatever you are asked.
• Name each file with two digits for its place, one space, the chapter's title and the extension: 01 Chapter One.wav. The numbers run 01, 02, 03 with no gaps and no repeats, so a book has at most 99 files.
• The title in the name is what listeners see in the app's chapter list and on the lock screen. A typed title keeps its capitals: 02 Chapter One.wav shows as "Chapter One". A name in lower case, or with hyphens or underscores, is tidied: 03 the_pier_at_dawn.wav shows as "The Pier at Dawn".
• Opening and closing credits are files like the chapters, numbered where they fall: 01 Opening Credits.wav first, the closing credits last. Every file becomes a chapter in the app, in number order.
• Do not add an intro for Illuminory. Every audiobook item opens with Illuminory's own "Welcome to Illuminory", about 11 seconds long, which Illuminory adds itself; a podcast or music item has none. The welcome is a track of its own, played before chapter 01; the author's own recording is not changed beyond encoding it, which the terms for authors say too.

The free first chapter, and the optional sample

• Anyone can play the book's first chapter free on its page, with no account: chapter 01, or, when 01 is shorter than 2 minutes or is titled Intro, Introduction, Opening, Opening Credits or Credits, those opening files and then the first file of at least 2 minutes. Name the credits plainly, so the free chapter is the start of the story.
• To play something else there instead, put a file named sample.wav (or sample.aiff, sample.aif or sample.mp3) beside the chapters. Leave it out unless the author wants a different sample.

The cover

• cover.jpg: a JPEG, square, at least 3000 by 3000 pixels. Not a PNG, not an SVG, not a rectangle. Illuminory makes the smaller sizes itself.

The details file is section 7, and the author's page section 8.

6. Narration and format: get these exactly right

narration says who reads the book, and the site shows a mark from it on the book's tile and page. Listeners rely on it, and the terms make it the author's promise. Ask the author directly; never infer it from a sample, a name, a price or a guess.

What listeners read beside each mark:

• HUMAN NARRATED: "Read by a human narrator."
• DIGITALLY NARRATED: "Narrated by a digital voice, produced and directed by the author."
• FULL CAST PRODUCTION: "More than one voice: each character is played by a different narrator."

A digital voice is any voice made by software: text to speech, a synthetic voice or a cloned voice, whatever the service calls it. If the narration mixes a person and a digital voice, or the author is not sure which value fits, do not choose: leave narration out of book-details.json, say in the enquiry exactly who and what reads the book, name any digital voice service, and say whether its voices come from paid performers (the next paragraph). The person who replies decides the value. The package counts as complete with that one field open, and the enquiry can be sent.

A digitally narrated audiobook (digital or digital_full_cast) opens with Illuminory's intro and then this spoken note: "This audiobook is digitally narrated using voices derived from real human performers, who are compensated for the use of their voices." Every digitally narrated audiobook opens with that note, so its voices must be derived from real human performers who are paid for their use. Plain text to speech (a stock synthetic voice not taken from a paid performer), or any other voice not made that way, is not accepted, however it is described. Tell the author. If the voices do not qualify, the book cannot be sold here as it is: Illuminory can remake it with suitable voices as a paid production, and the author may ask about that in the enquiry. If the author does not know, read the voice service's own description of its voices with them; if it is still unclear, write digital or digital_full_cast (never human, to avoid the note), name the service in the enquiry, and the person who replies decides whether the book can be sold here.

format says what the item is, and the site and the apps show it as a small pill: audiobook (Audiobook), podcast (Podcast) and music (Music). Nearly every author's book is audiobook; write another only when the author says so.

A music item is not narrated: the site shows no narration mark and no narrator credit for it. Write narrator as null and leave narration out; Illuminory fills in the value its records need, and the site never shows it.

7. The details file: book-details.json

Write the book's details as one JSON file, book-details.json, in the book's folder. Its keys are the ones Illuminory's own book file uses, so write them exactly as below, and no others.

Categories

Use the ids, not the names: cosy-mystery (Cosy Mystery), crime-thriller (Crime and Thriller), technothriller (Technothriller), science-fiction (Science Fiction), time-travel (Time Travel), fantasy (Fantasy), romance (Romance), romantic-comedy (Romantic Comedy), humour (Humour), horror-supernatural (Horror and Supernatural), historical-fiction (Historical Fiction), literary-contemporary (Literary and Contemporary) and podcasts (Podcasts).

The blurb

• Plain text in paragraphs, with a blank line between them (written \n\n inside the JSON string).
• These marks, and nothing else: **bold**, *italic* or _italic_, and a line starting ## , ### or #### for a heading.
• No links and no HTML: a link or a web address shows as typed text, so leave them out.

An example

{
  "title": "The Lantern Road",
  "author": "J. Example",
  "narrator": "Narrated by Sam Reader",
  "narration": "human",
  "format": "audiobook",
  "series_name": "The Lantern Books",
  "series_position": 1,
  "description": "Mara has walked the lantern road every night for ten years, and every lantern has always been lit.\n\n**Tonight, one is out.**",
  "tagline": "One lantern goes out, and a whole village holds its breath.",
  "base_price_minor": 799,
  "categories": [
    "cosy-mystery"
  ],
  "keywords": [
    "lanterns",
    "village life"
  ],
  "isbn": "978-1-23456-789-0",
  "released_at": null,
  "only_here": false
}

What Illuminory fills in

Never write these; Illuminory sets them: id, slug, site, is_free and theme, narration for a music item, and everything worked out when the book is published (the running time, the chapter list, the cover sizes, the sample, the version). A sale price (sale_price_minor and sale_until) is set only when the author agrees to a sale, never in this file.

8. The author's page

Every author with a book on sale here has a page of their own, named by their name in lower case with hyphens: for "J. Example" it is https://illuminory.com/author/j-example. It shows a photo, the name, a short bio, one button to the author's own website, a Share button and their books on sale here. It never shows the author's email.

The page is there either way; these fill it in. Prepare them once per author, in the author-profile folder beside the book folders, as author-profile.json:

{
  "name": "J. Example",
  "bio": "J. Example lives by the sea and writes about small places with long memories.",
  "homepage_url": "https://www.example.com",
  "statement_email": "j.example@example.com",
  "currency": "GBP"
}

photo.jpg: a JPEG or PNG of the author. Illuminory cuts it to a 600 by 600 pixel square from the centre and shows it as a circle, so a square photo of at least 600 pixels each side, with the face in the middle, works best.

9. The price

• The author sets the price in pounds sterling, before VAT. Write it in pence in base_price_minor: 799 is £7.99. It must be a whole number from 1 to 50000 (£0.01 to £500.00), or null for a free book.
• Listeners see an estimate of the price in their own currency, with their country's tax added. The checkout charges in pounds sterling, euros or US dollars, adds the tax Stripe works out for the listener's country, and shows the exact amount before they pay. The author's share is always worked out from the price in pounds, whatever the listener paid in.
• The price can be changed later by email; the change is made within a few days.
• This document gives no advice on what to charge. If the author asks, point them to the numbers at https://illuminory.com/authors#rates and leave the choice to them.
• To compare with Audible, the calculator at https://illuminory.com/authors#calculator takes the author's price, the copies a month they sell on Audible and their Audible contract, and shows what the same sales would pay here. It is an estimate: it assumes as many buyers here as on Audible, and Illuminory does not bring readers yet.

10. Check everything before anything is sent

Run every check with the author before anything is sent. The tools named here are free; if one is missing, check another way and say which. Never ask the author to buy or install paid software.

1. The author has answered each question in section 4 and confirmed all five statements (statement 2 may be a requested ACX switch, named under Open questions), and has read the terms for authors.
2. Every chapter file is named by the rule, in order, with no gaps. In the book's folder, ls -1 | grep -Eiv '^[0-9]{2} .+\.(wav|aiff|aif|mp3)$' lists every file that is not a chapter: it should show only cover.jpg, book-details.json and any sample file. Read the numbers down the list for gaps.
3. Each file's format and length: ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration,bit_rate:stream=codec_name,sample_rate -of default=noprint_wrappers=1 "02 Chapter One.wav". A WAV or AIFF shows a codec starting pcm_; an MP3 shows codec_name=mp3, and meets ACX's standard with a bit_rate of at least 192000 and sample_rate=44100. An MP3 below that bitrate or at another rate is a warning, not a failure: note which files in the enquiry and carry on. The durations, in seconds, add up to the running time. ffprobe comes free with ffmpeg.
4. No .aax or .aaxc file anywhere in the package.
5. The cover: on a Mac, sips -g pixelWidth -g pixelHeight -g format cover.jpg shows format: jpeg and two equal sizes of 3000 or more; elsewhere, ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=codec_name,width,height -of csv=p=0 cover.jpg shows mjpeg and two equal sizes.
6. book-details.json is valid JSON (python3 -m json.tool book-details.json prints it back without an error), holds only the keys in section 7 and every required one (a music item, or a book whose narration Illuminory must decide, leaves out narration, and the enquiry says why), and keeps their rules: the narration confirmed by the author, a tagline of at most 90 characters, at most 3 categories from the list, at most 6 keywords of at most 40 characters, a price from 1 to 50000.
7. If the author wants their page filled in: author-profile.json keeps the limits in section 8, and the photo is a JPEG or PNG.
8. The enquiry is drafted (section 11), at most 2000 characters, and the author has read it.

11. Sending the enquiry

The first step is always a message through the enquiry form at https://illuminory.com/authors#contact. If the author prefers email, the same message goes to help@illuminory.com with the book's title in the subject.

Fill in these fields and nothing else. The form also holds a field a person never sees, labelled "Website" (named website): leave it empty, and leave any other field as the form sets it. A form sent with "Website" filled in is taken for an automated one: it shows the same thanks, and nothing is kept or sent.

A message to adapt; put the author's own facts in place of the example's, and fill the square brackets:

Hello,

I would like to sell my audiobook on Illuminory, and I am writing to ask how to go ahead.

Book: The Lantern Road, book 1 of The Lantern Books
Author: J. Example
Narration: human, narrated by Sam Reader
Format: audiobook
Length: 25 files, [hours and minutes] in all
Audio: WAV files from the studio, named 01 to 25
Cover: square JPEG, 3000 by 3000 pixels
Rights: I produced it myself. It was exclusive on ACX as Pay for Production; ACX confirmed the change to non-exclusive on [date].
Price: £7.99 before VAT
I have read the terms for authors.

The files, the cover and the details are ready. How should I send them?

[Only if something is open: Open questions: the switch to non-exclusive was requested from ACX on [day]; the narration mixes a human narrator and a digital voice from [service], whose voices are (or are not known to be) from paid performers; the MP3 files for chapters [n] are [rate] kbps.]

J. Example

• The author sends it. You may press Send yourself only when the author has read the final text and has told you, in this conversation, to send it.
• Send it once through the form. If the form shows an error, show it to the author and fix what it names; if it says to try again tomorrow, wait.
• Do not attach or link the audio, the cover or the details file. They wait until a person replies.

What happens next

1. The form answers "Thanks. We have it, and a person will reply.", and an automatic email from help@illuminory.com, "We have your enquiry", goes to the address given. That email, not the form's thanks, confirms the enquiry arrived. If it has not come within an hour, and is not in the spam folder, send the same text by email to help@illuminory.com, with the author's go-ahead as before.
2. A person replies, usually within a few days, by email to the address given, and arranges how the files reach Illuminory.
3. Illuminory sets the book up: the audio is encoded for the apps, the book gets its page, and the price is shown in every listener's currency. Illuminory emails the author when it goes on sale; that email, the terms and the price are the whole agreement.
4. Then the author signs in at https://illuminory.com/account with their statement address. The account page shows Your sales statements and Help for authors (https://illuminory.com/account/authors/help), and help@illuminory.com answers anything else.

12. Never do these

• Invent, guess or assume the narration, or any other fact in book-details.json.
• Say the author holds a right they have not confirmed, or call a book eligible when a step in section 4 says it is not.
• Send, convert or ask for an Audible download (.aax, .aaxc), or remove, bypass or work around copy protection (DRM) on any file.
• Put a password, bank details, card details or any other account number in a message or a form.
• Send files, or a link to them, before a person at Illuminory has replied and said how.
• Submit the enquiry form, or send an email, without the author's clear go-ahead for that exact text.
• Write id, slug, site, is_free or theme, or promise a payment date, a minimum payout, a sale, a feature or a day on sale.

13. What changed

• 2026-11-07: The price section points to the income calculator on the authors' page, which compares what the author's Audible sales pay now with the same sales here, as an estimate.
• 2026-11-07: After two reads by assistants: the rights are five confirmations, and rights in only some countries are a stop; a requested ACX switch, a publisher, a rights holder who is not the author and a music album each have a route; a book whose narration Illuminory must decide is enquired about with that field open; digital narration must use voices from paid performers; an MP3 off ACX's standard is a warning, not a stop; what Illuminory adds to the audio; the first enquiry agrees to nothing; a book already out elsewhere, and which sample links are fine.
• 2026-11-07: First version.