Maximize Your Rights & Royalty Revenue with MetaComet® Rights

Frequently Asked Questions About Rights and Royalties

What’s the difference between publishing rights and royalties?

Rights refer to the legal permissions to publish, distribute, or adapt a work in various formats, languages, and regions. Some rights can be resold or sublicensed to third parties.

Royalties are the payments made to authors, creators, and sometimes agents or licensors, based on sales or licensing of that work.

For example, a publisher might hold the English-language print rights to a book for North America, while licensing out the audiobook rights to a third party. The publisher will receive royalty payments for the audiobook. They will then pay out royalties based on that sublicense and on the sales of the printed books.

What’s the difference between “rights in” and “rights out?”

“Rights in” refers to the rights that a publisher has acquired, and “rights out” are the rights they have licensed out to third parties.

The publisher pays out royalties on the rights they have licensed in, and receives royalties based on the rights they have licensed out.

What types of rights and royalties does MetaComet work with?

MetaComet Rights manages all kinds of rights that have been licensed out. That might include:

• Translation rights in various languages
• Territorial rights in different regions
• Multiple formats of print, audio, and ebooks
• Subsidiary rights beyond publishing, such as film, television, streaming video, and merchandise

The system also keeps track of the royalty payments that have been received in exchange for the rights licensed out.

Royalty Tracker® is a complementary tool for managing the royalty payments that must be paid out in return for rights that have been licensed in.

How do you maximize rights and royalties revenue?

The key to maximizing rights revenue is starting with a clear picture of exactly what rights you own for a given book title or project. If you can easily see which languages, territories, formats, and so on, are available to you, and which have been licensed out, then you know what rights you still have left to sell.

It’s also important to have a transparent view into your incoming royalty payments. You want to see at a glance whether your licensees are paying royalties to you on the contracted schedule.

What rights are hardest to track for publishers?

Territorial rights can be difficult to track because territories may be defined differently by different publishers. MetaComet Rights allows publishers to define territories as needed.

Territorial and translation options may also overlap with each other, creating multiple permutations of available rights.

Digital rights may be poorly defined in older contracts. 

Publishers might not have processes in place for managing film/TV/media adaptation or merchandising rights, since those are less frequently sold. If demand for subsidiary licensing does suddenly arise for a certain title, it’s best to be prepared. 

How do you streamline the management of tracking rights and royalties?

You need a centralized, structured system that can:

• Track every rights agreement: rights in and rights out
• Flag licenses that are due to expire
• Aggregate and standardize sales reports
• Generate accurate, timely royalty statements and reports
• Store key documents and support audits
• Match sales receipts and sublicenses to the correct agreement
• Integrate with other systems, such as automated payment systems, accounting software, and ERPs

Spreadsheets can only go so far. As your publishing program grows, investing in dedicated systems like MetaComet Rights and Royalty Tracker® is the most effective way to stay on top of your data.

Book a free, no-pressure demo today and see how much time and stress you can save with best-in-class rights and royalty management tools.