What is Rights Management Software? A Publisher’s Guide

Rights management software is an essential tool for book publishers, literary agents, and any content rights holders who want to maximize the income they generate from their intellectual property.

Retail book sales are the most familiar source of publishing revenue, but book production is labor-intensive and engenders a high cost of goods. In comparison, the cost of licensing out the rights to a book title or product will be negligible, and the profit margin will be much higher. That’s why it makes good business sense for any publisher to supplement their retail program with a robust rights program, and to manage their rights with professional, purpose-built software that makes it easy and efficient to track and manage their rights availability, sales records, and income.

What is rights management software?

Rights management software is a tool that helps book publishers, literary agents, and other content rights holders or rights managers keep track of the rights they control, have sold, and have available to sell. The best rights management software will also help them track rights-related payments (both received and overdue). 

It’s important to note that rights management software is distinct from digital rights management (DRM) software, which is a technology that uses encryption to protect digital files from unauthorized use. 

Rights and royalty management software are often bundled together in an integrated system.

Who needs rights management software?

Anyone who owns or controls the rights to a copyrighted work, or who represents the rightsholder, and wishes to leverage that work to generate revenue, will benefit from using rights management software. That could include rights executives, rights managers, or other book publishing rights professionals, as well as literary agents.

How does rights management software work?

Rights management software provides access to all the information needed to:

• Track what rights are available, and when they will expire or be renewed
• Market and sell rights to licensees in various markets
• Manage licensing offers, agreements, and payments

It acts as a custom-tailored data repository that supports rights professionals throughout the entire rights management process.

Common challenges in content rights management (and how software addresses them)

Rights management is not a job for the faint of heart. Rights professionals frequently wrestle with challenges, including:

• Poor visibility into information such as rights ownership, contract terms, licensee status and preferences, market data, and historical rights sales information
• A crowded and dynamic marketplace, which makes it challenging to promote title availability and connect with new licensees and markets
• Limited resources for monitoring licensing trends, producing marketing materials, following up on submissions, and chasing down late royalty statements and payments
• Disconnected internal systems

These environmental challenges can lead to:

• Confusion
• Errors
• Wasted time
• Missed sales opportunities
• Uncollected payments

Fortunately, well-designed software can solve these problems and ease frustration by integrating with other publishing systems, providing clear and accurate information, saving time, and surfacing revenue opportunities.

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with MetaComet® Rights

Our software helps you quickly surface sales opportunities, collect payments, and strategize for the future of your rights business. Contact us for more info or a no-pressure demo today.

What are the key features and functions of rights management software?

Rights management software must provide transparency into all of a company’s available content rights and restrictions, and serve as a reliable repository for all information about:

• Content assets, projects, properties, or works
• Agreements and contracts
• Licensee details

Some of the key contract terms that must be included are:

• Territory (or territories)
• Duration
• Language(s)
• Compensation (including advances, fees, and/or royalties)
• Formats
• Any subrights granted

Various content types, media, and forms of derivative works may be covered, such as:

• Large print
• Book club
• Co-editions or co-publications
• Digital adaptations
• Dramatic TV or film adaptations
• Commercial, merchandising, or brand licenses
• Adaptations for comic books or graphic novels
• E-book (static or enhanced)
• School or classroom use (including coursepacks)
• Paperback and hardcover reprints
• Translation rights
• Electronic database rights

The software should be flexible and customizable regarding how the users want to define the above content types and terms (especially territories), particularly since we’re living and working in a rapidly changing world. It should allow the bundling of any combination of regions, languages, formats, etc. in a single agreement.

The right software needs to include robust reporting and analytics tools and the ability to surface or flag available sales opportunities, contracts that are due to expire or renew, and any compliance issues.

Another key feature is the ability to highlight late statements and advance or royalty payments and generate and send dunning letters automatically.

Finally, the ideal rights management system will offer tools for importing and exporting data, or APIs or other integrations, allowing interoperability with other publishing software such as title management, sales, accounting, and royalty management systems.

What are the main benefits of rights management software?

The primary benefit of using rights management software is that it enables rights professionals to sell more rights and generate more income. It gives them the information they need to leverage existing deals, discover new opportunities, and achieve new insights that can inform and improve sales strategy.

Another benefit that can be measured in increased revenue is the ability to see and collect on late payments.

Rights software also enables a smarter valuation of assets (in order to optimize pricing) as well as company valuation (in the event of a merger or acquisition).

When rights managers have their licensing information at their fingertips, they’re equipped to provide better service to their customers and business partners, build trust and relationships, and be better positioned for future sales.

Using a good rights management system means never facing a copyright infringement claim or accidentally duplicating a license. Not only is this good for a company’s reputation, but it also reduces liability risk and therefore, insurance costs.

By supporting a more efficient rights workflow, rights software enables licensing at scale, speeds up communications and deal-closing, and frees up hours in the day so rights pros can spend more time selling.

Examples of rights management software in action

Here are a few scenarios showing how rights management software can change the licensing game for different types of publishers.

• A rights manager at a trade publisher receives an email from a Chinese publisher who is interested in the rights to translate all of one author’s books into Chinese. Using rights software, the manager can instantly look up whether those rights are available, and reply in the same day. The Chinese publisher is impressed with this responsive customer service, and the rights manager is able to close the sale within a few weeks.
• A university press rights director is preparing for a pitch meeting with a preeminent audio publisher. Using rights software, the director can easily compile a portfolio of titles with available audio rights, including information about which genres and authors have performed best in this space. The audio publisher is relieved to have access to such an extensive, well-researched catalog, and ends up purchasing more titles than originally planned.
• Six months ago, a literary agent sold the motion picture rights to one of her authors’ books. But she doesn’t recall ever receiving the advance payment. She quickly looks this up in her rights software, sees that it hasn’t been paid, and with one click, sends an automated dunning letter to the studio that purchased the rights. A payment that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks is quickly collected for the agent’s client author.
• The sales VP for an STM publisher is negotiating with a digital subscription platform for the rights to a bundle of journal content to be made available in South America. The VP uses rights software not just to confirm that the rights are available to be sold, but also to see how comparable content has been valued in other markets, and to determine the best pricing for the IP.

What is the best publishing software for rights and royalty management?

MetaCometⓇ Systems provides the best rights and royalty management software in the publishing business. MetaCometⓇ Rights delivers all of the functionality that publishers and literary agents need, and the complementary Royalty TrackerⓇ program completely automates the royalty management process.

MetaCometⓇ Rights was designed specifically for rightsholders to maximize the revenue they can earn from licensing out rights. It’s quick and simple to implement and use, and flexible enough to adapt to whatever terms your contracts contain, no matter how complex. It organizes extremely granular agreement information and displays it in screens, maps, and reports that are user-friendly and easy to read.

Royalty TrackerⓇ is an indispensable tool for calculating and paying royalties, useful to book publishers, distributors, agents, and other IP licensees. 

MetaCometⓇ Rights and Royalty TrackerⓇ are designed to be modular, so you can invest in only one component if you don’t need both, or combine the two for a single, optimized rights and royalty management system. Sales Aggregator and Royalty Portal are two optional add-ons that can extend your royalty processing capabilities.

MetaCometⓇ Systems is known for its outstanding customer support and user-friendly software products. The company has been dedicated to rights and royalty solutions since 1999. MetaCometⓇ software is designed to easily integrate with other platforms, including finance, title management, DAM, and ERP systems. The cloud-based software is certified SOC 2 Type 2 secure and subject to rigorous third-party testing.

No other software company is better suited to help you manage your publishing rights and royalties in today’s complex global environment and media ecosystem. Contact us to see MetaCometⓇ Rights and Royalty TrackerⓇ in action, and learn how you can increase your rights revenue while decreasing your workload, errors, and stress.