Abstract: Total organic carbon (TOC) prediction with elastic parameter inversions has been widely used in the identification and evaluation of source rocks. However, the elastic parameters used to predict TOC are not only determined by TOC but also depend on the other physical properties of source rocks. Besides, the TOC prediction with the elastic parameters inversion is an indirect method based on the statistical relationship obtained from well logs and experiment data. Therefore, we propose a rock physics model and define a TOC indicator mainly affected by TOC to predict TOC directly. The proposed rock physics model makes the equivalent elastic moduli of source rocks parameterized by the TOC indicator. Combining the equivalent elastic moduli of source rocks and Gray’s approximation leads to a novel linearized approximation of the P-wave reflection coefficient incorporating the TOC indicator. Model examples illustrate that the novel reflectivity approximation well agrees with the exact Zoeppritz equation until incident angles reach 40°. Convoluting the novel P-wave reflection approximation with seismic wavelets as the forward solver, an AVO inversion method based on the Bayesian theory is proposed to invert the TOC indicator with seismic data. The synthetic examples and field tests validate the feasibility and stability of the proposed AVO inversion approach. Using the inversion results of the TOC indicator, TOC is directly and accurately estimated in the target area.