Team Royalties: PublishDrive’s Royalty Splitting Feature for Co-Authors

Team Royalties is a feature that facilitates co-author royalty splitting between multiple authors and contributors.

PublishDrive users can take advantage of the following with Team Royalties:

• Secure Opt-In Process: Only the book owner (the person who uploads the book to the platform) can add a co-author, and royalty sharing is enabled only when both sides confirm.
• Convenient Royalty Splitting: At the end of each pay period, royalties will be automatically distributed to the confirmed authors based on the fixed percentage set by the book owner.
• Account Access Restrictions: The co-author(s) assigned by the book owner can access the book’s metadata and sales data, but cannot edit the book.
• Unlimited Number of Co-Authors: One book can be shared with any number of co-authors.

What’s the Difference Between Team Royalties and PD Abacus?

While Team Royalties and PD Abacus both streamline the financial side of co-authoring, there are some key differences:

• Team Royalties: This feature requires distribution through PublishDrive and sends out separate royalty payments (for ebooks) to your entire team of co-authors or contributors every month. It also allows your team to view royalty reports. Team Royalties is a premium feature and it is priced per author per month.

• PD Abacus: This feature does not require distribution through PublishDrive. It calculates co-author royalties for books (ebooks, POD, and audiobooks) published directly at Amazon and other retailers, generates royalty reports for your team, and more. Royalty calculations and reports are based on sales data imported by the user, and additional data can be manually added as well. This service is priced per title, and you also can buy it as an extension to your distribution services with PublishDrive.

Pricing and Features

Any teams created before May 15, 2019 will be FREE for the rest of 2019. (This represents a savings of $159.92 for a two-person team.)

Starting on May 15, 2019, Team Royalties will be a paid service for the team’s book owner.

After May 15, 2019, Team Royalties pricing will be: $19.99 USD per month (paid by the book owner) for each co-author or contributor on a team. For example, a book owner with one co-author will pay $19.99 USD per month (paid by the book owner) for each co-author or contributor.

This monthly fee provides access to all of Team Royalties’ great features:

• Convenient royalty splitting for co-authors
• Shared book distribution and sales analytics
• Secure opt-in process
• Use of marketing features, like Amazon advertising, by any contributor
• More collaborative marketing features coming soon!

Note: See your balance and payment details under Team Royalties > My Teams > Balance and payment. It’s only available after your first payment.

How it Works

You can check a tutorial video about Team Royalties here.

For Book Owners

Upload a Book

A book is eligible for Team Royalties when it has been uploaded to PublishDrive (both live books and books uploaded as drafts are eligible). To upload a book click “Add book” in the header.

Add Seats and Send the Invite(s)

If you’re the book owner, navigate to My Account > Team Royalties > My Teams. This is where you can send invites to any number of co-authors or other contributors to split royalties for the selected books.

On the invitation, you can also specify the terms of the royalty splitting, including the start date and percentage that each contributor will receive.

Once you’re ready to send the invite to your co-author(s) click “Create team”. After adding the appropriate amount of seats you’re ready to initiate royalty splitting.

What is a seat?

The number of seats determines how many different co-authors you can have invited at the same time. One seat means a spot for one co-author who can be invited to unlimited teams. You can change who the co-author is without adding extra seats. Each seat costs $19.99/month.

Example: Your co-author is James. To invite him, you need to pay for 1 seat. When James is invited, you can add him to as many teams as you wish. Tip: if your co-authoring partnership with James expires, his seat will be available to invite someone else or it can be removed.

Co-authors and contributors must be PublishDrive users to participate, so be sure to send the invite to the email address associated with their account.

If the co-author is already a PublishDrive user, the invite will be visible in their account under My Account > Team Royalties > Teams I’m invited to. If they are not yet a PublishDrive user, they will receive an email about the invite and will need to use that same email address to sign up for PublishDrive.

Note: All proposed co-authors must be invited at the same time. The only way to add additional co-authors at a later date for a book is to terminate the existing partnership and create a new one.

Once the invited co-author(s) agree to the terms by accepting the invitation, then you’re all set! At the end of each pay period, the royalties will automatically be distributed to each confirmed author or contributor.

How to Add Co-Authors With Different End Dates for the Same Shared Book

Shared books can have co-authors with different end dates; you just need to create additional partnerships to cover the entire time frame (without overlapping). For example, consider this scenario:

Maria - book owner

Jessica - co-author (30% for 1 year)

John - co-author (20% for 2 years)

For this situation, Maria would need 2 partnerships:

1. From May 2019 - May 2020: partnership with Jessica (30%) and John (20%).
2. From June 2020 - May 2021: partnership with John (20%) only.

Note: partnerships for the same shared book cannot overlap. For example, this scenario would not be possible:

1. From May 2019 - May 2020: partnership with Jessica (30%) and John (20%).
2. From April 2020 - May 2021: partnership with John (20%) only.
   
   

For Co-Authors and Contributors

Accept Invite(s)

Navigate to My Account > Team Royalties > Teams I’m invited to. This is where you can manage co-author invitations and requests to update the terms of the royalty splitting partnership.

To participate in Team Royalties, simply click “Accept invitation” on your pending invitation(s). You can also reject invitations if you are not satisfied with the terms of the partnership.

How Do I Cancel Team Royalties or Change the Terms?

Changing the terms of your Team Royalties agreement is simple:

For Book Owners

If you’re the book owner, simply navigate to My Account > Team Royalties > My Teams. Then, select Terminate or Edit for the specific book. Once the co-author(s) accept the updated terms, they will go into effect immediately.

Note: When changing the terms of the partnership, currently you can only change the partnership end date.

For Co-Authors and Contributors

As a co-author or contributor, you cannot propose changes to your Team Royalties partnership and you cannot initiate termination, but you can accept or reject these requests.

To accept or reject any proposed changes, navigate to My Account > Team Royalties > Teams I’m invited to.

Remember: any requests to terminate Team Royalties partnerships or change the terms only go into effect when all parties agree.

Canceling the Service and Ending your Team Royalties Subscription

Book owners can cancel the Team Royalties service, as long as: 1) the co-author partnership(s) have expired, or 2) the co-author partnership(s) have been terminated.

Then navigate to My Account > Team Royalties > My Teams, and click on “Remove Seats.” Remove all of the available seats to completely cancel the Team Royalties service. When you cancel Team Royalties and end your subscription, the cancellation will go into effect in the following calendar month.  

You can resume Team Royalties anytime by paying for more seats again.

Royalty report

See and analyze your royalty payments per book, series, co-authors and preferred time frame. Simply navigate to My Account > Team Royalties > Royalty report, select the relevant filters and see your report.

Note: You can create a report if you have at least one active team. Before that only a sample report is available.