Generally, there are three types of activity to include in your custom sales reports: Regular sales (a positive royalty), sales where the resulting royalty is negative, and returns (also a negative royalty).
Let’s look at each scenario.
Sales which result in a positive royalty #
- Sales which result in a positive royalty. A regular sale where monies are owed to rights holders in the form of royalties.
- The quantity sold should be entered as a positive number in the ‘units_sold’ column. For example, “3”.
- The ‘royalty_on_sales’ column should contain a positive amount for the royalty compensation payable to the publisher for this sales line. For example, “9.50”.
Sales where the resulting royalty is negative #
- Sales where the resulting royalty is negative. A sale where the costs of production, e.g. via print-on-demand, are greater than the net receipts for the sale line. The result is a loss as the distributor is effectively charging you.
- The quantity sold should be entered as a positive number in the ‘units_sold’ column. For example, “1”.
- The ‘royalty_on_sales’ column should contain a negative amount for the loss associated with this sales line. For example, “-9.50”.
Returns #
- The opposite of a sale, units/copies have been returned and previously generated royalties are being deducted from rights holders.
- The quantity returned should be entered as a positive number in the ‘units_refunded’ column. For example, if two books were returned, you would enter the number “2” in this column.
- The ‘royalty_on_refunds’ column should contain a negative amount for the loss associated with the return. For example, “-12.18”.
It is possible to mix returns (negative royalties) and regular sales (positive royalties) in one row in the Royalties HQ Sales File template. Amazon and Lightning Source reports do this as well. However, when using the Royalties HQ Sales File template, the ‘royalty’ column should always total the sum of the ‘royalty on sales’ and ‘royalty on refunds’ amounts.
If you do enter units sold and units returned in one line, be aware that Royalties HQ will split sales and returns into two separate sales lines during import. For this reason, we recommend that you add returns on a separate row in the import. It simply makes the data easier for you to manage in your spreadsheet editor.