Agents
How to set up literary agents in Royalties HQ so that agents receive royalty statements on behalf of their authors.
Literary agents often act on behalf of one or more authors, receiving royalty statements and payments from the publisher on their behalf. Royalties HQ supports this by sending PDF statements to additional email addresses — even when the rights holder has no primary email address saved.
This means you can add each author as a rights holder against their products (ISBNs), and use the agent’s email address in the additional email addresses field. The agent will then receive the royalty statement PDF by email for each of their authors.
How to set up agents
1. Note the contract codes currently in use
Before making changes, go to the agent’s existing products and note which contract types (contract codes) are assigned. You’ll need these when re-assigning the products to the individual author rights holders.
2. Add the authors as rights holders
Create a new rights holder for each author the agent represents. See Adding new rights holders for details.
3. Add the agent’s email address
On each author rights holder, add the agent’s email address to the Additional email addresses field. This ensures the agent receives the royalty statement PDF by email — even if the author rights holder has no primary email address saved.
4. Assign products and contracts
Go to the agent’s titles and click on each product in turn:
- Add the new author rights holder to the product.
- Select the relevant contract types — use the same contract codes you noted in step 1.
For help creating or assigning contracts, see Creating contracts or Importing contract usage.
5. Remove the agent rights holder
Once all products have been reassigned, remove the agent rights holder from each product. This prevents duplicate royalty allocations.
Authors with mixed representation
If a single author has some titles via an agent and some titles direct with the publisher, you will need to create a separate rights holder for each arrangement. This is because the additional email addresses field applies to the rights holder as a whole — if you use a single rights holder, the agent would see sales and royalty data for all of the author’s titles, including those not managed by the agent.
For example:
- Jane Smith (Agent) — titles managed by the agent, with the agent’s email in additional email addresses
- Jane Smith (Direct) — titles where the author deals directly with the publisher, with the author’s own email address