The Challenge:

Soho Press is a boutique publisher, dedicated to publishing as an art. Since 1987, Soho’s mission has been to “publish good books well….whatever is interesting, moving and well written,” earning both mainstream success and a cult following, for its stylish satire, literary fiction, and noir-ish thrillers and mysteries.

Dedication to artistic and literary pedigree was (and remains) the primary focus of Soho’s executives, while attention to rights and royalties management took a back seat. For years, Soho’s royalty accounting had been managed by one bookkeeper, and the only paperwork executives ever saw were statements and checks. The result was that the successful and growing publisher – whose executives had no time to act as accountants – was being hamstrung by an outmoded royalty accounting system.

The Solution:

Soho needed an efficient, automated, and flexible system to manage rights and royalty accounting, since the publisher was planning on automating accounting and production, and needed to be ready to grow.

RT Online – the web-hosted version of Royalty Tracker – appealed to Soho’s publisher, Bronwen Hruska, because of its proven track record as a rights and royalties solution for the world’s largest publishers, and its flexibility to accommodate Soho’s individual needs and workflow.

While Soho expected that implementing a Best-in-Class solution would be “prohibitively expensive,” the reasonable pricing for MetaComet’s RT Online solution, “made it possible for us to do this.”
MetaComet’s goal was to provide Soho with exactly what they needed, not to try to sell extraneous add-ons. “Metacomet didn’t try to convince us of things we didn’t need. In fact, they gave us free trials of enhancements that we were unsure about. MetaComet provided an honest assessment of what we needed and – more importantly – what we didn’t,” said Hruska.

Plus, MetaComet offered the hands-on support that Soho desired, so that implementing Royalty Tracker was on-time, on budget, and painless.

Results:

• Soho is now able to track and calculate all royalties and foreign subrights.
• Statements and processes are clear and easy to follow, both for the authors and the publisher.
• Soho did not need to hire an accountant.
• Prior royalty accounting inaccuracies due to human error were brought to light, after Royalty Tracker was implemented.

Throughout the implementation of Royalty Tracker, MetaComet proved “incredibly nice and helpful” in walking Soho through the royalty payment process, to make sure that the publisher understood how to do everything, Hruska said. “I feel like (MetaComet) has really gone the extra mile to make sure that this was a good experience.”

Finally – and most importantly – Soho’s editors are now free to focus all of their energy on publishing for literary merit, rather than worrying about rights management and royalty accounting. Using Metacomet’s solution for rights and royalties management, the publisher continues to thrive – with Soho’s editors doing what they do best, and Royalty Tracker working behind the scenes to prevent rights and royalty headaches.