Unsure of what the jargon means? This page should help.
We’ve tried to make the Royalties HQ app – and this user guide – as easy as possible to use. Nevertheless, there are some terms and concepts that you may have questions about. The purpose of this page is to give you a quick glossary so you know precisely what we mean by the terms used in Royalties HQ.
Advances – An amount that your publishing company has paid in advance to a rights holder. Advances are debts owed by rights holders to your publishing company. Royalties generated for title formats related to advances are used to pay (settle) the advance.
Allocation – The process of assigning sales line royalties to rights holders based on contract rules. Learn about allocation.
Bills – Bills are effectively accounting records representing invoices that your rights holders would send to (RHQ creates these for you). Learn more about bills.
Conditions and Actions – The specific terms of a contract rule, dictating when it applies and what the results will be (the action). All conditions in one rule must be met for the rule to match
Condition types – The types of conditions you can add to a contract rule, based on data in each sales line. For example, units sold, discount rate. Learn more about condition types.
Contract – A contract in Royalties HQ represents the link between a rights holder and a title format (ISBN). A Royalties HQ contract contains rules that represent the terms in your written agreement with authors and other rights holders.
Conversion – All sales lines are converted to your publisher’s currency. This is done when you link a publisher income (the amount you received) with one or more sales batches.
Converted Amount – A sales line’s royalty amount in your publisher currency. For instance, if your publisher’s currency is USD and sales were made in GBP, the converted amount will be in USD. This is calculated automatically during conversion (when you relate a publisher income payment with one or more sales batches).
Generate statements – During a royalty run, you click one button to generate all royalty statements. One PDF statement is created for each rights holder in the run. You can also regenerate statements, for example if some rights holder details have changed.
List Price – The retail (or “list”) price of the title format. It is used in royalty allocation when a contract rule has its royalty model set to List price or List price minus discount. Where possible, this is derived from each sales line and converted to publisher currency automatically during conversion. Where a sales line has no list price set, the list price saved on the title format is used as a fallback.
Net Receipts – The amount in publisher currency that the publisher received for a sale. An option in contract rules, action’s royalty model.
Publisher Currency – The currency of your publisher company. This is the currency in which you receive payments from your distributors.
Publisher Income – The payment you receive is usually from a distributor for sales that were made. For example, Ingram’s payment to you for a given month and territory. It should always be in your publisher’s currency. Learn more about publisher income.
Publisher Rights Holder – This is the rights holder in Royalties HQ that represents your publishing company. This is configured on your Settings page via the main menu. Learn more.
Returns – Sales lines can include returns: copies of a title that were previously sold and are now being returned. For instance, due to a printing issue.
Rights Holder – A person or entity entitled to receive royalty payments (such as authors, illustrators, or translators). Learn more.
Rights Holder Code – An optional, unique identifier for a rights holder. Rights holder codes are particularly useful for importing and exporting data.
Royalty Model – The basis for calculating royalties, such as Net Receipts, List Price, or List Price minus discount. Royalty model is set in each contract rule. Learn more about royalty models.
Royalty Run – When it’s time to process all sales for titles of the same royalty period length, e.g. annual. The outcome of the royalty run is royalty statements and payment amounts for your rights holders. Learn more about royalty runs.
Royalty Period – How often royalties are paid out for a title. Also, each royalty run is for one royalty period (e.g. all annual titles)
Rules – Rules are the building blocks of contracts. They represent the terms in your agreements with authors and other rights holders. Each rule can have multiple conditions and an action. All conditions in one rule must be met for the rule to be used during royalty allocation. Only the first matching rule is used, based on priority order.
Rule Priority – The order in which contract rules are evaluated. Rules with lower priority numbers are checked first. The first matching rule is used. You can drag and drop rules in the contract detail view to reorder the rule priorities.
Sales Batch – A group of sales lines.
Sales File – A file containing sales report data from one of your sales channels, e.g., Ingram.
Sales Line – An individual sales transaction record containing details like quantity, price, discount, and location.
Statement of Account – Royalties HQ manages a financial journal for each relationship between a rights holder and a title format. This is accessible on each rights holder via the Finance tab. Learn more.
Statements – In a royalty run, Royalties HQ generates one PDF statement for each rights holder. Statements are configured on the Settings page via the main menu.
Tiered royalties – Royalty rates (percentage owed to rights holder) that change depending on a metric, typically units sold. Royalties HQ supports complex author contracts with multiple rules and conditions.
Title – In Royalties HQ, the title is the ‘parent’ and all its formats sit ‘below’ it. For example, the title ‘My book’ may have three fomats (or versions): ebook, softback, audiobook. Learn more abbout titles and title formats.
Title Code – This is a unique identifier for a title. A title code will be generated automatically when you create a new title – whether via the user interface or via import. This is important for grouping title formats under one title.
Title Format – The specific format of a title, typically identified by its ISBN. This could be a hardcover, paperback, e-book, or audiobook version of a book. Learn more.
Unallocate – If you need to make changes to a royalty run, and it is not yet billed, you can unallocate (‘undo’) the allocation.
Uploaded Sales File – When you upload a sales file (for instance, from a distributor such as Ingram), it is first represented in Royalties HQ as an Uploaded Sales File. You can then import a sales file to create one or more sales batches, each containing one or more sales lines.
Withheld Royalties – When a rights holder is owed an amount under your minimum payout amount, their royalties are held. When the rights holder’s total royalties exceed the minimum payout amount (in a future royalty run), all their royalties are included in a bill.