Getting started
An overview of Royalties HQ: what it does, how onboarding works, and key concepts for managing book royalties.
Royalties HQ is a cloud-based royalty management platform built for book publishers. It reconciles sales data with publisher income to calculate what every rights holder is owed, accurately, automatically, and on your schedule.
The core workflow
Most publishers struggle to connect sales figures from dozens of channels with the income that actually hits their bank account. Royalties HQ bridges that gap in four steps:
- Import sales and income. Upload sales data from your distributors and sales channels, then record the publisher income those sales generated.
- Set up contracts. Define the royalty terms for each rights holder on each product, including rates, thresholds, and advance recoupment rules.
- Run royalties. Let the system calculate what each rights holder is owed based on real sales matched to real income.
- Generate statements. Produce statements of account ready to send to your authors and agents.
Onboarding
Getting started is straightforward. Import your catalogue of titles and products, add your rights holders, and configure your contracts. Royalties HQ supports CSV imports for all three, so you can migrate from spreadsheets or another system without re-keying everything.
The dashboard
Once you’re up and running, the dashboard acts as your command centre. It gives you an at-a-glance view of recent royalty runs, outstanding balances, and key metrics across your catalogue.
Key terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Title | A work in your catalogue: a book, regardless of format. |
| Product | A specific edition of a title (hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook) identified by its ISBN. |
| Rights holder | Anyone entitled to royalties, including authors, illustrators, narrators, estates, or companies. |
| Royalty run | A calculation cycle that processes sales and income to determine what each rights holder is owed. |
| Sales batch | A grouped import of sales data from a particular channel and time period. |
| Publisher income | The revenue a publisher receives from a sales channel — the figure royalties are calculated against. |
Step-by-step guides are available inside Royalties HQ. Look for the ? icon top-right.