Royalties

A Revenue Watch Index released on Wednesday, which measures disclosure about oil industry payments in 41 countries, may soon have access to a vast amount of data about what publicly traded companies are paying for production rights. According to a provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, the Securities and Exchange Commission will issue...
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At the Publishing Business Conference’s “Rethinking Author Contracts for the Digital World” panel last month, a major dilemma regarding e-book rights management and author contracts was revisited: Despite the prevalence of non-compete clauses in author contracts, many authors are venturing into e-book or multimedia agreements, risking lawsuits from their print publishers. The benchmark 2001...
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Last week Publisher’s Weekly kicked off it’s Fall discussion series with a panel called “Know Your E-book Rights.” The panel featured four panelists: Neil de Young, Executive Director, Hachette Digital; Paul Aiken, Executive Director, Authors Guild; Lloyd Jassin, attorney; and Scott Waxman, Waxman Literary Agency.  Discussion focused mainly on the financial issues related to...
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Barnes and Noble launched an independent e-book publishing platform of it’s own today. Pubit! is aimed at attracting independent and do-it-yourself publishers to the Nook e-reader, much as Amazon is using the DTP platform to push publishers to the Kindle. The similarities between the two publishing platforms extends to a royalty “sweet spot.” Amazon...
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The Summer’s biggest news story in e-book rights, and probably in book rights in general, was the feud and subsequent settlement between Random House and powerful agent Andrew Wylie.  Robert Scott Lawrence revisited the case in a blog entry over the weekend, with the added context of a 2001 case in which Random House...
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As I mentioned in Part 1, publishing is a deceptively complex business.  I touched on a few of the general considerations in choosing a royalty software solution for your company in Part 1, from general function areas to investigate, to how to vet a royalty software manufacturer. This article will focus specifically on the...
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This is a brief primer on how royalty tracking software can facilitate compliance with The Sarbanes Oxley Act.  Please note that your firm’s compliance may involve additional considerations; this article is intended to be a starting point for understanding how you can make Sarbanes Oxley compliance easier within your royalty management operations. For publishers...
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Technology hasn’t “killed the book,” but it has made the business of books far more complex.  The publishing industry is operating in an economy that may or may not be recovering, and simultaneously in a Brave New Technological World; there is both less economic wiggle-room, and an explosion in the number of ways a...
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Not surprisingly, e-book publishers have been in the vanguard of offering new terms to authors, often as a way of competing against established print houses. In a manifesto on his blog, Richard Nash, the former publisher of print indie Soft Skull, laid out his own version of the change principle: “The publishing industry is...
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Peter Brantley wrote last week about Amazon’s “gift” to authors — the promise of a 70% royalty — and how it comes with unacceptable strings attached.  This week, Brantley has been backed up by the Society for Scholarly Publishing.  Joseph Esposito,  writing on The Scholarly Kitchen, says: “Under the Amazon plan, the publisher or...
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