Complex royalties like physical vs. digital with stages

In our ongoing quest to make DashBook the best that it can be, we have released DashBook v4.1 that continues to extend the ease at which one can manage complex royalty contracts.

Version 4 added Generic Royalties, so that one can create only a single or handful of royalty calculation styles and apply them across many products (books, tracks, CDs, films, apps, etc.) and the entities needing to be paid (artists, authors, publishers, etc.).  With a few more extensions, v4.1 is even more powerful!

v4.1 now has the ability to use Generic Royalties to describe sales channels (different percents based on how a product was sold) and breakpoints (different percents based on the staging or thresholds of sales).

As an example, it is very popular in the music business to pay different royalties on the same work based on what happened, such as the physical sale of a CD, the purchase and digital download of a single track or song, the streaming of a song, or a performance.  DashBook has been able to handle this since its inception, but now it is even easier.

In prior versions, if you had certain sale thresholds (breakpoints) to meet, like a different percent for the first thousand units, that style was incompatible with a different royalty based on sales channels.  Now you can easily have both at the same time.

From the product screen, you can simply reference that a particular royalty holder (author) uses a particular royalty agreement.  Now you can restrict that royalty agreement to a particular sales channel, and that royalty agreement can already be making breakpoint decisions based upon sales levels.  So you'll be able to reference a royalty agreement paying on mechanicals for only physical sales, and another agreement staging the percentage paid but only on digital -- well, whatever your contract requires.

I know that what I am talking about will not be easily absorbed by most readers, but believe me, this is huge.  Contact us at DashBook, and we will help you setup your royalty system so that it handles everything you need, while making it very easy to maintain and extend.

It looks like we need more instructional videos!

Royalty calculator for iPhone

Given how robust our DashBook desktop royalty solution is, perhaps the iPhone program is more aptly called a Royalty Estimator.

In any event, a few weeks ago we released our first iPhone app, entitled Royalty Calculator.  This app runs natively on the iPhone and gives quick answers to the simple questions of, "How much royalty would a sale of so much be?"  If you are in the music industry, you would be pleased to see that this app will calculate your U.S. mechanical rights for you based on your song or track length.

For all industries, the percentage calculator will instantly show you the royalty either before or after discounts.

This app can be good for publishers of books, music, etc. in estimating the royalties they might owe.  It is also an excellent tool for the author, musician, etc. in determining how much they might make.

Right now and for the foreseeable future, this iPhone app is FREE!  This link will show you screen examples, as well as provide a link to download Royalty Calculator to your iPhone/iPod or iTunes account:
http://dashbook.com/CalculatorIPhone.aspx

If you prefer a program that remembers special royalty deals for each author or artist, of course DashBook will do that job handily.

Royalties for iPhone Developers

I have just learned that Michel Kripalani of Oceanhouse Media will be giving a talk this Friday at MacWorld 2010 on the subject of "Building an iPhone Publishing House."  What makes this session particularly interesting to me is that he will be discussing the securing of intellectual property such as content to quickly bring value to one's App, and after his exhaustive research of software to handle tracking such license payment requirements, Oceanhouse Media chose DashBook!

When Michel first approached us about using DashBook, we had only recently introduced our version 3 that supported importing sales reports to use as the data for royalty calculations.  However, we did not yet have an import for Apple's iTunes sales reports.  With Michel's input and the use of DashBook's extensible import mapping architecture, we were able to quickly send him an import map that allowed his trial version to import his sales from each of the seven regional reports that Apple generated.  Needless to say, he was impressed with our rapid response.  Of course, already having an import that could convert currencies, along with the existing royalty calculation abilities that supported multiple payees per product helped, too!

After Oceanhouse Media purchased a license to DashBook and began using it, they continued to offer great suggestions to refine DashBook for the market of iPhone and iPod (and now iPad) developers.  One of his requests was the ability to easily specify the deposit fees that were charged, and automatically spread those costs across the apps sold in that period and region.  Fortunately, DashBook already had an option to reduce the amount received by various costs, so he was able to bend it to his will.  However, DashBook v4 will soon be released which will provide a simple entry during import to a cost item whose name will makes sense - "Payment Fees."

We are very happy to work with companies such as Oceanhouse Media who seek perfection in their operations.  DashBook is a powerful system built on a flexible architecture, and our team is committed to providing the best system there is.

Thanks to everyone!

Your new royalty accounting system

We are excited about our upcoming version 4 release of DashBook!  As publishers stop paying high monthly fees for their old royalty accounting systems and switch to the powerful and more affordable DashBook, we have been getting an increasing interest in moving all of their pre-existing information to DashBook.

Way back in DashBook version 1, we included the ability to import contacts from your Outlook database, and we also imported complete information from older systems that small publishers used, like AnyBook.  We continued enhancements to include the ability to import contact information from csv files and the old PUB123/JAYA123 systems with our version 2 update, I believe.

In version 3, we broke into whole new territory with our creation of Sales Report Import.  By including a user-extensible system that came preloaded with the ability to easily import sales reports from Lightning Source, Fictionwise, Apple iTunes, MidPoint Trade, and many other book sellers and distributors, DashBook opened up to a new level of customer who loved this automation.  Gone were the days of typing in orders!

Well, version 4 will be extending that slightly by adding import for Ingram reports (and yes, we handle just about all book distributors and a growing list of music sellers and distributors), but the big extension is the ability to import nearly anything.  This was a requirement to migrate historic data from large older systems like Bookworks, Acumen, and Cat's Pajamas.

If you can get your data into text reports, DashBook will be able to move this information into a new DashBook database so that you can efficiently transition from your prior system, even if it is just spreadsheets, to DashBook.  And of course, DashBook still uses an open database system that does not lock up your data from your own reporting tools or desire to move away from DashBook at your whim.  (of course, we'd rather keep growing and improving DashBook to better serve you!)

If you have existing inventory, sales, royalty, or other information for your books, music, etc., let us help you get started in using DashBook today.

Music royalties for publishers and artists (percentage of sale price)

Two blog entries ago, I wrote an article about using DashBook for U.S. mechanical rights interest calculations. With a little setup, DashBook makes this calculation automatic as you continue to sell, even if the rates change.

This time, I'll briefly discuss a very similar feature now -- the ability to specify a royalty on a track as a percentage of the sale amount. By setting up the royalty agreement as a percentage of the sale price, typically of net sales, DashBook will calculate the royalties using this percentage each time that this track is directly sold.

But what if the album is sold?

Well, DashBook now has the ability to use the price of the album (gross or net) divided by the number of tracks on that album -- automatically!

To see how to enter album products that contain tracks, I recommend that previous post.

There is one more thing about handling music or other royalties that I don't recall writing about:  advances and recoupments.  That'll be the subject of a future article, but feel free to email us if you'd like to know more about it now.

And don't forget that you can download a free trial of DashBook here.

Amazon Kindle vs Apple for eBooks. Is an Apple eReader app coming?

The big news today is that Amazon will be offering 70% net royalties for Kindle sales soon. (press release) This announcement is just one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is working with HarperCollins to bring their eBooks to the iTunes store (WSJ article)

Since Amazon is currently only paying 30%, it looks like they are concerned about Apple. Amazon has other competition paying up to 80%, but that didn't cause them to blink. I suspect that they've known for a while that they would have to raise the rate, and had this plan in the drawer awaiting the need.

But what is Apple going to do? Obviously they will be selling eBooks through their iTunes store for buying and reading on iPod and iPhone devices. Most people expect Apple to introduce a tablet device on the 27th, with assumptions that this device will be running the same operating system as the iPod/iPhone. However, there is a strong possibility that they will be upgrading this from the current version 3.1.2.

Would Apple include an eReader from Apple or HarperCollins? Since the introduction of OS version 3 last year, users could purchase content while within the application. Amazon's Kindle app has yet to take advantage of this feature. But if Apple preloads an eReader onto every new device plus all current devices via an update, they could easily overtake Amazon's sales for books read on the Apple handheld platform.

Apple enjoys selling music, apps (some of which are eBooks), and videos on their iTunes network, but they get no rewards from current book sales from Amazon, even though these books may be read using the iPhone Kindle reader. When Apple provides books on iTunes, they'll take a cut from those sales. Surely they'll want to funnel as much buying to their own iTunes eBooks as possible, and having their own eReader would do just that.

Music mechanical royalties for publishers and artists

Calculating music royalties can get to be a very large task, as there are many little things that need to be handled. If an album is sold, a royalty for not just the album but for each track needs to be calculated. Many people think that a song pays 9.1 cents in mechanical royalties, but that is an over-simplification. If the song is longer than 5 minutes, the rate is higher. If it is sold in a different year, the rate may be different, because this rate goes up over time.

DashBook makes it easy to calculate the statutory U.S. mechanical royalties on music, and to handle sales of both individual tracks and entire albums, whether they be physical sales or electronic downloads.

Here is one common scenario. I'll explain how to use DashBook to calculate mechanical fees owed to artists or publishers.

First, I recommend adding or changing the Product Types to include "tracks" and "albums" so that you can easily distinguish them later. (Setup->Products->Types) When you are on the product screen, you can set the product type to tracks or albums.

If an album has 13 tracks, create each track as a product in DashBook, specify the track or song length on the Measurements tab, and add anyone needing to be paid as authors for this track. A common retail price for a track is $0.99, so go ahead and use that. Now hit the Apply to save these changes, then click the Royalties tab on the first page of the product. If you press the "New" hyperlink, a new royalty will be created with this track and the next author not having an existing royalty agreement. Choose Mechanical Royalties, and type in 100% in the percentage field. Of course, you can choose 50% or any other ratio. Press OK to save these changes, and Apply on the product, and repeat for each track. DashBook has a royalty agreement copy feature, but this method is very easy. Oh, it might be a good idea to choose the non-stocking warehouse for the default for tracks, since you won't be interested in maintaining inventory.

After you have all 13 tracks defined as products, create one more product for the album itself. On the Components tab, simply select the tracks belonging to this album. If we are only concerned about mechanical rights, then this product does not need a royalty and the author/contributor column isn't necessary as well.

Now when you create an order that indicates the number of each track and album sold or downloaded, the royalties will calculate automatically. If the mechanical rate changes in the future, a simple update to DashBook (automatic internet download) will have the future rates updated with no changes required by the user. In fact, if you wish to input CD sale dates from 5 years ago, you'll notice that DashBook will use an older and smaller mechanical fee. Automatically.

Speaking of automatic, you don't actually have to enter the sales manually. For instance, you can create a customer called Apple, and ask DashBook to import your iTunes csv reports that you download from your iTunes account. (File->Import Sales Reports->iTunes) When importing reports for sales occurring in other countries, simply enter the currency conversion rate. DashBook will create the order/invoice for you, and leave it in an open state for you to review before closing it.

Even though you already own a spreadsheet program, you just can't afford to keep messing with it when DashBook is so easy and so cheap.