Pull up a chair. Read the first chapter of any book, free.
A bookshop that works the way the good ones always have: take the book down from the shelf, sit with it a while, then decide. No signup to read, ever.
| Book Factory | Amazon KDP | Audible/ACX | Curios | Books.by | Narratory | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Makes your audiobook for you (AI, 50+ voices, casting) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Ebook + audiobook from one upload | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| 80%+ royalty to the author | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Paid weekly | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ◐ | ◐ | ✗ |
| Author gets reader names & emails | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ◐ | ✗ |
| Promo kit, referral rewards, cross-promo | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
The same login opens the shelf and the desk.
Plenty of us do both — read on the couch, write at the desk. So there aren't two kinds of accounts here. Sign in once; whenever you're ready to publish, the Author's Desk is already yours. Nothing to upgrade, no second signup.
If you read
- The first chapter of every book, free — no signup to read.
- Buy DRM-free files you keep forever, on any device.
- Listen to any book — a narrated edition for the car or the dark.
- Follow the authors you love and get their next one.
If you write
- Upload a manuscript; get a clean ebook and a narrated audiobook in minutes.
- Keep 80%, paid weekly. Pay once per book — never again.
- No exclusivity, no app store, no middleman. Your readers stay yours.
- We never touch your words — we help you send a clean file, then do the rest.
No app store. No exclusivity. No middleman.
Book Factory Café is not an Amazon storefront, not an app in Apple's store, and not distributed through ACX. That is a decision, not a limitation — and it is the reason everything below is possible.
Nothing to install
It runs in your browser, on any phone. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app — without an app store taking a cut of every book, or deciding what is allowed on the shelf.
No signup to read
The whole first chapter of every book is free, and we do not ask who you are first. No ads. No trackers following you around the web. No reader data sold to anyone, because that is not how we make money.
Books you actually own
DRM-free, always. What you buy is a file you keep, readable anywhere, on any device, for as long as you like. Nothing here stops working because a company changed its mind.
Writers keep the relationship
No exclusivity, ever. Your readers are yours and export with you. Publish here and anywhere else on the same day — we will never ask you to delist.
Audiobooks nobody else will carry
ACX will not distribute AI-narrated audiobooks. We will. Every book here can have a narrated edition, labelled honestly so listeners know exactly what they are getting.
Rules you can read
Public, versioned terms with a changelog. Thirty days notice before anything changes, and changes apply only to new signups. A person reviews before anything is ever taken down.
Every platform between a writer and a reader takes a cut, sets the rules, and keeps the customer. We built the one that does none of those things.
Keep 80%. Pay once. Leave whenever.
No annual fee. No exclusivity. $99 once per book for a finished ebook and a fully narrated audiobook — then never again for that book.
Books.by charges $299 a year, forever — and sells no audiobooks at all. Hiring a narrator yourself? Upwork and ACX rates run $200–$400 per finished hour — $1,000–$4,000 for one book, after weeks of auditions, contracts, and retake emails. Three complete books with us — audiobooks included — costs $297, once.
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