[drakonka]

For most self-published authors, a few thousand dollars is a lot to drop into a project that may never pay out. And in many cases if they do have the money, it makes more business sense to spend that budget on editors and cover designers across multiple books.

But there are definitely people who fund their own audiobook production. And narrator royalty share options exist too, which some use (I would personally not). It's just not the default option or choice for many.