Royalty season, twice a year
The period closes at the end of June. By August the distributor's sales report is in, as a spreadsheet with ISBNs, units, discounts and net receipts. The ebook aggregator sends its own report, in a different layout and a different currency for some channels. Audiobook income comes from another source. Direct sales from your website are in Shopify.
Someone, often the publisher, copies each of these into a royalty workbook with a tab per author. Rates differ by format and sometimes by discount band. Some authors have two contracts on the list, one agented and one not. The workbook has grown for years and one cell reference broke last season, which nobody spotted until an author asked why their paperback royalties had halved.
The real reason the workbook struggles
The calculation is not the hard part. The hard part is that every sales source identifies things differently and every contract is slightly different, and the workbook holds both the data and the rules in the same cells.
- Sales reports use ISBNs, but some channels report by internal code or title only.
- Rates depend on format, and sometimes on whether a sale was at a high discount or an export sale.
- Co-authors and illustrators share a title at agreed splits.
- Reserves against returns and unearned advances carry forward from the last statement.
- Formulas are copied tab to tab, so a fix in one place is not a fix everywhere.
Sales sources also arrive on different timetables. Ebook platforms may report monthly, audio quarterly, the distributor after the period closes. The workbook assumes everything is in when the run starts, and it rarely is, so late files are pasted in afterwards and totals are adjusted by hand in the last days before statements go out.
When statements are late or wrong
| Problem | Effect on the business |
|---|---|
| Statements go out late | Authors and agents chase, and trust erodes |
| A rate is applied wrongly | Over or underpayment that has to be corrected next period |
| A sales channel is missed | An author's statement is short, and they notice |
| Only one person can run it | Royalties stop when that person is unavailable |
| No audit trail | Answering an agent's query means rebuilding the sum |
Royalties are one of the few places where a small publisher's authors see its internal workings directly. A tidy, correct statement matters more than its size suggests.
A royalty run you can repeat
- Importers for each sales source you receive: your distributor's sales file, ebook and audio platform reports, and direct sales from Shopify or WooCommerce.
- A title map that links every ISBN and channel code to a title and format, with anything unrecognised held in a queue for a person to map once.
- Contract records holding each author's rates by format and any conditions you use, entered by you from the contracts.
- A calculation that applies the rates, splits between co-authors, and carries forward balances and reserves from the previous period.
- Draft statements as PDFs in your house layout, with a summary per title and channel.
- A review screen where you check totals against the sales reports before anything is issued, and a record of what was sent.
If you already use a royalty module in a title management system, we can build only the importers that feed it. There is no point replacing something that works.
Royalty day after the change
Sales files are dropped in as they arrive. Anything unmapped shows up at once instead of at the end. When the last file is in, the run takes place, the totals are checked against the source reports, and statements are ready for approval. When an agent asks how a figure was reached, you can show the lines behind it.
The rules sit in one place, so a change in one contract is made once and applies correctly from then on.
Checklist: is your royalty process at risk?
- Your royalty workbook has a tab per author and nobody wants to touch it.
- Statements regularly go out weeks after your contractual date.
- Only one person understands how a statement is calculated.
- Ebook and audio income is added by hand from separate reports.
- You have had to issue a corrected statement in the last two periods.