# Finished hour (audiobook)

> Source: https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/finished-hour

Last updated: 2026-09-06
Category: Audio, ebook & formats
Also called: Per finished hour (PFH) · Audiobook run time

A finished hour is one hour of final, edited audiobook audio — the unit narrators charge by and stores list; about 9,300 words of text make one.

## Definition

A **finished hour** is sixty minutes of completed audiobook: recorded, edited, with mistakes cut, breaths tamed and silences trimmed, and mastered to the retailer's loudness spec. It is the industry's unit of length and of cost. Narrators quote their rates **per finished hour (PFH)** — from roughly $200 to $400 and up for experienced professionals — and production studios add editing and mastering on the same basis.

The conversion from text is stable enough to plan with: about **9,300 words per finished hour** at a normal narration pace, so a 90,000-word novel runs close to ten hours and a 30,000-word novella just over three. Each finished hour costs several hours of work: two to three hours of studio time for the narrator plus editing, proofing against the text, and mastering.

Retailers list run time in hours and minutes, and both royalty tiers and listener expectations scale with it, which is why length is a commercial decision as well as an artistic one.

## In Bindery

Bindery narrates a book with three house narrators or the author’s own cloned voice, in 74 languages; the first chapter plays free on the book’s page and authors keep 80% of audiobook sales.

## Related

- [Narrator (audiobook)](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/narrator)
- [Storefront (author storefront)](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/storefront)
- [Royalty](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/royalty)
- [AI credits](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/ai-credits)
- [Word count](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary/word-count)
- [Turn Your Book Into an Audiobook](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/tools/book-to-audiobook)
- [Book Publishing Glossary — 59 Terms Defined](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/glossary)
- [Bindery — the Claude-powered book studio](https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/bindery)

---

More from Infinite Library, as one map for AI agents: https://www.infinitelibrary.ai/llms.txt