When David Hetherington, (CMO at knk Software LP) asked attendees at a recent BISG rights webinar, to estimate how much money they were leaving behind in untapped rights transactions, the audience consensus was between 10%-20% of annual rights revenues ! 

This is one reason why Rights, Royalties and Permissions management has become an increasingly important contributor to the success of today’s publishing enterprise.  It has been driven by the globalization of publishing, the variety of options offered by digital delivery formats, allowing them to be parsed in more complex ways, not to mention the on-line retailers who own much of the delivery and customer data, so that publishers don’t know where, what and why their customers buy (especially tough in verticals such as higher-ed for example). 

In addition, the terms and conditions around acquired rights and permissions have become more complex.  Rights owners have become much more aggressive in enforcing those conditions and launching litigation in the event they are breached.  So, technology has become essential to manage the new and steadily growing complexity, of both selling and acquiring rights.  You can’t do it on index cards anymore !   

It’s clear that publisher’s profits can no longer depend on the old faithful hard-cover editions. If publishers are to be successful in developing and sustaining a profitable mix of delivery formats and channels that also meet the market’s needs, then they must add data analytics to their list of core competencies. 

Rights and Royalties management has been an integral part of knkPublishing software for some time, and the latest release (R2 2019) offers additional functionality and benefits to publishers. 

First and foremost, the software has always provided a content-based data structure.  This means that the contract can be defined at the lowest fractional level of saleable content, and this data passes all the way through the system, from contract management, editorial and production, through inventory management (when necessary), to billing and sales and royalty accounting.  One of the benefits to users here is that sales and royalties may be easily and flexibly analyzed at both the ISBN, and the “work” or IP level, showing all the different formats that are derivatives of the original IP.  The product is simple to use for both entry level and large publishers and meets the needs of publishing verticals including, trade, higher-ed, professional, and scholarly publishers. What’s more, the newest release has more sophisticated support for subscription-based B2C and B2B publishers, including streaming or access to on-line databases. 

The Rights and Royalties module can be run stand–alone or as part of the integrated suite of knkPublishing software that covers the whole range of publishers’ supply chain operations.  It may be operated in-house or in the cloud or switched from one to the other depending on our customer’s needs.  If, like those aforementioned attendees at the BISG webinar, you are leaving money on the table with your rights and royalties data management system, consider reviewing what the newest release of knkPublishing software can do for you.  For more details on the software capabilities, please go to https://www.knkpublishingsoftware.com/royalty-software/.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash