David Marlin is the President and Co-Founder of MetaComet® Systems, a prominent provider of royalty automation tools. Since founding the company in 2000, David has spearheaded the development of a suite of best-in-class systems that effectively facilitate royalty processes for nearly 200 publishers. David has also served as the chair for The Book Industry Study Group’s Rights Committee and Digital Sales Committee.
Before establishing MetaComet Systems, David served as a technology consultant for renowned publishers, collaborating with notable companies such as Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck, Macmillan, Scholastic, Time Warner, and many others. David holds both an MBA and a BA from Columbia University in New York.
Christopher Robbins, Founder and CEO of Familius, has been in the publishing industry since 1992. When he launched Familius in 2012, he needed a royalty management system that was efficient, affordable, and scalable. “I wanted a system,” he says, “That with a push of a button would give me my royalty statements and not take a lot of time.”
Megan Trank is the client manager for financial statements for IPG, the leading book distribution and sales company. She previously oversaw accounting and royalties, among other responsibilities, for a small independent book publisher. In both roles, she used MetaComet’s Royalty Tracker® to drastically reduce the time she spent calculating royalties, distributing statements, and providing guidance to royalty recipients.
Here we’ll explore the different types of royalties, from creative industries like book publishing and video games to the worlds of science, technology, and natural resources. We’ll cover the key mechanisms of how they work and provide simple examples for each type to give you a comprehensive understanding of royalties in various sectors.
A royalty advance, sometimes known as an advance against royalties, is a standard feature of author payments in book publishing. It may also be used in other media, entertainment, and licensing industries, when creators are paid for a work that is acquired and sold by a publisher, studio, distributor, or other business entity. In this Q&A, we will define the term “royalty advance” and answer other related questions.
Royalties are a crucial aspect of financial management in various industries, particularly in publishing, biotechnology, franchising, and natural resources. Here’s a detailed overview of how royalties are calculated, when they are paid, typical percentages, and related concepts.
The largest private audiobook production company in the US radically upgraded its royalty management process using MetaComet® software. By adopting Royalty Tracker® and Sales Aggregator, John Marshall Media and Lantern Audio Distribution saved multiple days of work per quarter, eliminated errors in calculations, and streamlined the payment process.
Royalty payments are a key instrument in book publishing, biotechnology, and other industries that rely on the licensing and transfer of intellectual property. If your business is paying royalties to more than a handful of recipients in each royalty period, you may benefit from a software system that automates that process for you.
A November 21 article from The Bookseller reports on the publishing industry’s “hidden epidemic” of chaotic royalty management, payments, and communication. (Heloise Wood, “Royalties survey sparks calls for change as Society of Authors reveals ‘increased reliance on hardship grants.’”)
In this video we look at exactly how automated royalty management systems work, walking through real-world royalty processing scenarios. We demonstrate how to use an automated system to record contract terms, process disparate sales files, perform calculations, and generate and transmit royalty statements, reports, and payment files. We also review the implementation process and discuss best practices for a smooth and painless transition to automation.
