Royalties HQ is a web application so there’s no software to install. You access the system using your web browser and your login details.

You can have as many users as you need at no extra cost so all your team can have access, no matter where they are located.

Yes. Although Royalties HQ is designed to work primarily with book products (printed books, e-books, audiobooks), it works with any product where royalties need to be split and allocated to rights holders.

For example, Royalties HQ can manage royalties for music sales, digital asset sales (e.g. photography or other digital creative work), and intellectual property such as characters in film and TV productions. If you’d like to know more, please contact us.

When manually calculating royalties in spreadsheets, it’s common for an independent publisher to spend many days on a royalty run from start to finish. Royalties HQ is designed to radically streamline this process – let our software do the number crunching!

Using Royalties HQ, a book publisher with approximately 500 titles and 200 rights holders, and with sales across multiple marketplaces, can expect to complete a royalty run in 1–3 hours. This includes adding any new titles, new rights holders, importing sales data, and sending royalty PDF statements to all rights holders. Once you become familiar with the system, it should be even quicker, especially if your publisher compensation files and payments received data are easily accessible.

Note also that royalty statements generated from Royalties HQ tend to be richer in data than those created manually, and with fewer mistakes due to our automatic error checking. You can email all rights holders their royalty statements in just one click. And in one more click you can download all bills for importing into your accounting software.

Royalty runs can be edited or cancelled up until the point that a bill is marked as paid or a statement has been sent to at least one rights holder. When data or payments have been sent to rights holders, the royalty run is locked.

If sales/royalties were missed in a royalty run, then a separate ‘catch-up’ royalty run can be created for the same period.

Before you can create a royalty run, you import your sales data:

1. You import all sales data from your marketplaces (e.g. Amazon KDP, Lightning Source sales reports, Findaway audiobooks royalty reports, customs sales on other sites, etc)
2. Royalties HQ creates sales lines for the imported data. Each sales line represents one title format (e.g. ‘My Lovely Book‘ – ebook format), in one marketplace (e.g. Amazon UK), in one month (e.g. Jan 2024).
3. Royalties HQ automatically groups the sales lines into sales line batches, for later reconciliation with publisher compensation payments. More on that in a moment.

You create a royalty run:

1. A Royalty Run is for all titles of a single royalty period type (e.g. annual, or quarterly) in a specified time period (e.g. “2023”, or” Jan–Mar 2023″).
2. Royalties HQ will highlight any missing titles and missing rights holders that you need to add.
3. Once the data is imported, Royalties HQ will prompt you to add the Publisher compensation/income payments you received, e.g. from Amazon KDP and Lightning Source. These payments were in your currency, which may or may not match the currency of the individual marketplaces.
4. We call this next step ‘Conversion‘ – converting the sales from the various marketplace currencies to the single publisher currency. You link each publisher compensation payment to the relevant batch(es) of sales lines. For each sales line, Royalties HQ automatically calculates the converted amount – the value of the sales line in the publisher’s currency. For instance, if the publisher is a US company, and the sale was in the UK, the sales line amount is converted from GBP to USD. This is done without referencing exchange rates. Instead, the ratio of the sales line amount (GBP in this example) to the total sales batch amount (also GBP) is used to calculate the sales line amount in your publisher currency (USD in this example), based on the total USD amount received for that sales batch. This ensures that the amounts publishers receive are split and allocated correctly.
5. The next step is ‘Allocation‘ – allocating the converted sales lines amounts to rights holders, i.e. ‘who gets this money?’ For example, if three rights holders each own a percentage royalty share of a title, then the sales line’s converted amount is divided into three Royalty Lines. Each royalty line is for one rights holder. And each rights holder gets their share of the sales line converted amount based on their percentage share of the title format. For each rights holder in a royalty run, the total of all royalty lines is the total of their royalty statement – unless unpaid advances or unpaid royalties exist.
6. Any rights holders that have active (unpaid) advances will see the relevant royalty lines effectively paying off their advances. This is detailed on the rights holder’s royalty report.
7. You generate Bills – one per rights holder. This is done for all rights holders in the royalty in one click. Each bill is effectively the invoice from your rights holder – invoicing you for their royalties. If you use Amazon KDP, this is the equivalent of the invoices that Amazon generates on your behalf. The bills are designed to track payments to rights holders, and to simplify your bookkeeping.
8. You generate Royalty statement PDFs – again in one click for all rights holders in the royalty run. The statement PDFs are designed to make it easy for each rights holder to understand how their royalties were calculated and what amounts they are owed for these titles in this royalty run.
9. You email all rights holders their PDF royalty statements, from within Royalties HQ. Email them all in one click. Or, you can email each individually. You can also download PDFs for manual checking, prior to sending.
10. Optionally, you can use Royalties HQ to track who has been paid their royalties. This payment status can be saved on each bill.

If, for some reason, you forget to include sales data in a royalty run, Royalties HQ allows you to create a special ‘catch-up’ royalty run to cover the same period.

Questions? Please contact us.

Yes. You can have multiple authors (rights holders) per title. You can also have different rights holders for different formats of the same title. For example, softback and e-book formats of the same title can have different rights holders, and/or different percentage share ownership per format.

Note: we use the term ‘rights holder’ as not all people who own rights to a title are authors (e.g. illustrators or audiobook narrators).

Titles owned 100% by the publisher are no different in Royalties HQ. Simply create a right holder for the publisher and set its ownership of a title format to 100%. The publisher rights holder can also own a part percentage of a title or title format, alongside any other rights holder.

You can indicate that the rights holder is the publisher (your business) and it will be processed as normal during a royalty run, including receiving a royalty statement PDF. The only difference is that no bill will be created for the publisher.

To learn more, contact us.

Yes, you can trial Royalties HQ for one month. We will even import your title and rights holder (author) data and walk you through the first royalty run to get you started.

Start your free trial here.

Yes, as long as each edition of a title has its own ISBN.

Royalties HQ does not include payment functionality directly, however we do enable you to speed up your bookkeeping and payment processes.

Royalties HQ achieves this during a royalty run by creating one bill per rights holder (e.g. author). Each bill is effectively the invoice from your authors and right holders. All bills in a royalty run are downloadable in a single CSV file. This file is in the correct format ready to upload into Xero online accountancy software and, with minimal changes, you could also upload this to QuickBooks, Sage, or any other accountancy software which supports the uploading of bills.

Most online accountancy software integrates with third-party bulk payments providers. For instance, Xero integrates with Crezco and Wise. Using this workflow you can typically pay all rights holders within 30 to 60 minutes of completing a royalty run.

Royalties HQ is designed primarily to work with book royalties: printed books, e-books, and audiobooks. But Royalties HQ can also be used for royalties of almost any intellectual property sales.

Other intellectual property that may generate royalties include: “literary, artistic or scientific work including cinematograph films, any patent, trade mark, design or model, plan, secret formula or process, or for information concerning industrial, commercial or scientific experience” (The OECD’s Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital, 2014).

Tell us about your royalties requirements and we will see how we can help.

Tiered royalties (also known as ‘graduated royalties’) are supported in Royalties HQ, giving you fine control of the author percentage ownership based on sales of each title format (edition).

Each format of a title (ISBN) has ownership tiers, where royalty rate percentages are set per rights holder. Tier breakpoints can be set by the ISBN’s units sold, or its total net receipts.

Royalties HQ keeps track of the total earned royalties and units sold for each format of each title. So a title format’s current ‘active’ tier is always known.

During a royalty run, the title format’s active tier ownership percentage per rights holder is used to allocate earned royalties.

Below is an example scenario, intended to illustrate the types of arrangements that are supported in Royalties HQ, using tiers.

Consider a scenario where a title is published in two formats: softback and audiobook:

• The softback format of the title has two rights holders, each with differing royalty share percentage ownerships. The publisher has agreed with the rights holders that the softback royalty tiers will be calculated based on units sold. The publisher wishes to recoup some of the upfront costs, so has agreed that the rights holders will receive a lower share ownership for the softback’s first 500 units sold. That is the first tier. The second tier kicks in once the softback format has sold over 500 units and, from that point on, the rights holders receive a higher percentage as configured in ‘Tier 2’.
• The audiobook format of the same title has a third rights holder: the narrator. The ownership percentages of the audiobook format of this title are therefore different. The publisher has agreed with the rights holders that the softback royalty tiers will be calculated based on net receipts (not units sold). Tiers are created in Royalties HQ for the audiobook format only to prioritise payments to the narrator, up to the first USD* 1000 of net receipts, at which point the next tier becomes active with new ownership percentage rules.

* Your publisher currency may be different

If you’d like to know more, please contact us for demo.

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Easily bulk import your authors and titles using our CSV upload. Simply download our CSV templates and add your right holders (authors) and title data. There is a separate import for ownership where you can indicate the rights holder’s percentage ownership of each title format. If you’re unsure about how to do this, don’t worry, we are here to help.

You can add and edit individual rights holders and titles at any point via the Royalties HQ user interface. You can also use CSV upload to update details in bulk.

Yes! Royalties HQ makes it incredibly easy to create clear, easy-to-read royalty statements for each rights holder in a royalty run.

When you create a royalty run in Royalties HQ, PDF royalty statements are created automatically. You can email the statements to all rights holders in a royalty run in just one click. You can also send royalty statements individually to rights holders, and download them.

Sales data must be imported as a CSV or XLSX (Microsoft Excel) file. Amazon KDP, Lightning Source, and Findaway file formats are recognised automatically. However, you can import any sales data from any source using our sales import template CSV.

Imported sales data results in sales lines in royalties HQ. Typically, a single sales line in Royalties HQ represents all sales for one title format, in one marketplace, in one month. For example, all ebook sales of “My Sample Book” in Amazon US, in January 2024. The sales line records the royalties received in the currency of the marketplace.

Our pricing is designed to work out less than the employee/accountant time cost of manual royalty run calculation, whilst providing a higher quality output – more reliable results and better royalty statements for your rights holders.

Please contact us for more details.

A rights holder is a person or company who owns rights to a work. Typically, for books, many rights holders will be authors – the creator of the work. But not always. For example, an individual can own the rights to a work without having been the author. ‘Rights holder’ is therefore the generic term for a person who owns rights to work.

Companies can also be rights holders, for instance, a publishing company may own rights to some, or all, of its published titles.

‘Title’ is the book publishing terminology for a published work.

A ‘Title format’ is our term for a specific version or format of a published work, for instance, the e-book format version. Typically, a title format is an ISBN.

Royalties HQ allows for each title to have multiple formats. Each format can have its own ownership details, tiered royalties, and advances – giving you great flexibility in how ownership rules may be configured.

Yes! Each rights holder can be given advances. Each advance can relate to one or more title formats, providing you with maximum flexibility in how advances may be configured.

You can give an author (rights holder) multiple advances, even for the same titles or title formats.

Royalties earned for each title format pay off any outstanding balances on related advances first. Only when all advances are fully repaid will royalties for the related title formats result in payments to the rights holder.

Advance balances (amounts still owing), and earned royalties paying off advance balances, are visible clearly on each rights holder’s royalty statement.

Royalties to rights holders are calculated according to royalty share of each ISBN (which we call a title format). The royalty rate rules can be set per format/edition of a title. For example, the ebook format can have different rights holders, and different percentage royalty rates, from the softcover version of the same title.

Each title format (edition) then has one of these three royalty calculation models, to which the rights holder’s percentage royalty share applies:

1. Retail list price (gross).  The retail list price of the title. Only applicable to print formats.
2. Retail Minus Discount. The retail list price of the title, minus the discount for the retailer/distributor. Only applicable to print formats.
3. Net Receipts (also known as “Publisher Receipts”). This shares the royalty amounts received by the publisher with rights holders. Applicable to both print and digital formats.

Using the model above, the royalties are calculated for each rights holder according to the ownership rules configured on a title format.

Behind the scenes, Royalties HQ manages a journal per title format for all royalties earned, advance payouts, and royalty payouts. Similar to accounting software – it ensures reliability and provides an audit trail. This also allows for advances and any remaining balance ‘carry over’ to be included in royalty run calculations.

Royalty calculation is at the heart of Royalties HQ, and we’ve designed it to be flexible enough to support most contracts you may have with authors and other rights holders. We’d love to give you a friendly, no-pressure demo. Contact us today.

Yes, we would love to show you how Royalties HQ works and learn more about your requirements.

Contact us to arrange a demo.

We want you to love Royalties HQ. And we will work to make it the best royalty management solution for you. However, if it’s not right for you, you can cancel at any time – no hassle and no tie-ins. We even make it easy to take your data with you; export all your titles, rights holders, percentage ownership, bills, and PDF royalty statements.