Setting up Royalty Rules

Royalties is the main area where you will create royalty rules for your titles, set up the payees that will receive payments and establish which period your titles' royalties will be paid in (for instance: yearly, biyearly, etc).

Prior to setting up your royalties rules (or what we also refer to as royalty contracts or royalty schedules), you should have configured the royalty system. If you haven't yet done that yet, it is recommended that you look at the articles in the following section first: Setting Up Royalties.

For the purposes of this article, we will assume that your royalties module is configured and you are now ready to begin adding the rules against the contracts.

When selecting Royalties from the main Sales/Royalties menu, you will be taken to the screen with the list of all of your titles:

Here you can search your list using the search box, or you can apply filters by clicking on Advanced Filters. You can also Download your royalty rules, using the download button in the top right hand corner.

Once you have found the title you wish to work on, click on it and you will be taken to a screen where you can create a Royalty rule that will be connected to Sales Type, Contributor and the Product form. So for each product form of an existing title or work, you can create or share a royalty schedule for each Sales type.

By clicking on a title, you will be taken to a screen with six tabs; the first tab is also referred to as Royalties. This is the area where you can create the royalty rule(s) and set up breaks for your contributors and payees for the selected title, as shown in the screenshot below:

TO CREATE A ROYALTY RULE:

• You can select an existing contract by clicking on the looking glass symbol; you can also click on the notes/edit symbol beside the looking glass symbol and you will be taken to the currently selected contract page to check/edit the details.
• If there is no existing contract that you wish to connect to the title, the system will create a new contract, calling it the book title when you click create new. 

When you click on the Create New button, you will be taken to the rules screen (also called General):   

Select a Contributor* from the drop-down menu. If the name you want is not there, then select "other" to choose an alternate name from the full list of contributors on your system.

Select Sales Type* from the drop-down menu and choose the relevant item. You will have already configured your sales types, for instance: Special Sales, Exports, Book Clubs, Trade, etc. You can select more than on sales type at this point, if your rule applies to multiple. If you do so, on your statements, the units sold will not be broken down by each sales type, but rather they will be combined and labelled under the first sales type selected. You can change the name given on the statements in the 'name' field:

Check the Influence All box if this is relevant. Influence all makes the rule escalate to all other rules. For instance, where royalties are calculated on units sold, and the units sold value is based on all sales types. Please note that checking this box will not result in rights sales affecting escalation, where rights sales royalties are based on percentage values.

Select Applied to Forms from the drop-down menu. This will enable you to apply the rule to specific forms. Please bear in mind that the drop down menu is set to show the most used formats (PB, HB, Epubs); in order to show more options, click on the Show All button. You can also put the cursor into the field and manually type the format you want. The system should intuit the form as you're typing.

(NB even though there is no * beside this item, the system will still not let you finalise the data until you choose the relevant forms.) 

Enter the Withholding Rate and Withholding Period if relevant. This information works as follows:

• Withholding Rate is the percentage of royalties earned that you wish to hold back from a payment/ royalty run. This is particularly relevant to keep money back to offset against any returns.
• If you add a Withholding Rate, a new item will appear on the screen called Rolling Withholding. If you tick this item, then the withholding rate entered in the field above will be held till next run, then released. This is telling the system to hold x% of this run, etc over & over.
• In the screenshot below, you can see that there is also the option to determine the number of months to withhold the % held under the field Withholding Period. This period is from the publication date of the title and work as follows. If royalty run end date is:

Please note that Withholding Period is mutually exclusive from the Rolling Withholding item. You need one or the other, not both. This is why, in the example below, the Rolling Withholding item has been left blank.

Then check the correct Payment Type, either by break or lump sum.

By clicking on By Break, the screen layout will change to below:

Now you can configure your break. Check the correct box depending on your Break Type: by Units, Percentage, Net Value or Gross Value.

The first value of the Break (regardless of what type of break it is) will automatically be set at 0 because it marks where you are starting your break. You cannot change this information.

Check the correct box for Payment Type: gross, net, fixed rate or complex split (see further down for more information about complex split). Enter the Payment percentage.

Now you have your first part of your break. If the entered payment rate (in the example above: 5) is not valid for the all of your sales types, you will need to add more breaks.

Enter the value of your break. In the example above the break value is 200 Units. That means that from 0 to 200 units, royalty is 5% Net, and from 201 that percentage increases to is 10% Net.

You can add as many breaks as you wish by clicking Add another break. There is also an option for a Complex split, which allows you to set more breaks within each break. Checking the Complex split box opens a whole new set of fields where you can set your sub split:

In the complex example above, for orders with discounts between 0% to 40%, if the unit sales are between 0 to 2500 copies, then the royalty payment will be 12.5% of net sales. Within the same discount percentages, if the unit sales are over 2500 sold, then the payment will be 15% of the net sale. For orders with discounts above 40%, if the unit sales are between 0 to 2500 copies, then the royalty payment is 7.5% of the net sales. For orders above 2500 at a 40% discount or higher, the payment will be 10% of the net sales.

When you are finished, click the Update button. Now your royalty schedule is connected to the selected contributor, title, product form and sales type, and it will be visible on the Royalties tab list, as shown below:

Alternatively to the steps above, you may use a lump sum for a payment on every sale. For instance a sale may trigger a payment of £100 per sale.

By clicking on Lump Sum, the screen layout will change to below:

Enter the correct info and click Update when you finished.

To remove a rule, check the box in front of the rule you wish to remove and click on Remove Selected.

Please note that when you have done so, the information will automatically be stored within the section of the system called Royalties Contracts. Whilst it is possible to add contracts directly through this portion of the system as well, it is not recommended because it will not be attached to a title this way. If you want to delete items from a schedule, then you would do so by going back into the contract from within Royalties Contracts.

Please note that Stison is also happy to upload your royalty rules for a fee. If this is something you are interested in, please access this article.

Once you have completed adding your royalty rules, you are ready to move to the next tab: Options.