1 | YOUR ACCOUNT

1.0 Onboarding / Quick Start Guide

We recommend setting up your account in this sequence (more detail about each step is spelled out later):

1. Settings (you’ll find them in the dropdown in the left sidebar where it says “Hi [your name]”; see instructions in section 1.1 below)
2. Add Authors/Creators
3. Add Products
4. Add key Customers (individual accounts and/or major revenue sources, eg a distributor, your ecommerce portal, or “events”)
5. Set up Royalties
6. Add Orders (either individual orders or monthly/quarterly sales reporting - be sure to include payment/shipping status with date).
7. Add any previous royalty payments (including advance payments to authors) in Payments
8. Add Expenses
9. Create, check, and send royalty Statements
10. Pay your authors and record the payments.

1.1 Settings

Under Settings (which can be found in the drop down under your name in the left sidebar), you’ll have two key decisions to make before you can start using your account:

• Currency: Select a currency to use system-wide. You can only select one; this means when importing sales or orders in a different currency you will need to convert any amounts to the currency you’ve selected here.
• Royalty accounting: This requires you to define what constitutes a sale at your company. You have two choices:
• Date items are paid: Royalties will only be calculated for items on orders where the sale is final and the “paid” box has been checked. Some of your customers will have terms to pay 30, 60, 90, or even 120 days after an order is shipped, and may also not pay on time which means you can sometimes be paying royalties on sales that happened months previously. If you are unsure, or just starting out, choose this option.
• Date items are shipped: Some companies count any units shipped out the door as a sale, and pay royalties on that expected income, with the knowledge that some (or even all) of those units may be returned (with return fees charged) and other companies may be delinquent on paying, meaning that you may at times end up paying out royalties for which you have no income or even negative income. In this case, royalties would go into the red until what has been paid out has been earned back with more sales out the door.

1.2 Payment Structure

• Find our pricing structure here.

1.3 Collaborators

1.4 Permissions

All users of a publisher’s account have full permissions for any functionality on the account.

1.5 Security / Privacy

Please see our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

2 | PRODUCTS

2.1 What is a product?

Your next step is to start adding your products. You can do this in one of two ways: Manual entry or CSV upload. We recommend you start by manually entering one product to get a feel for the interface, and then downloading our CSV upload template to populate with your existing list.

A product is a book, ebook, zine, deck, record, download or any other item that is uniquely distinguishable from other items in your catalog, including other formats of that same product. Each product should be clearly identifiable without further clarification needed to determine which one needs to be shipped, or which one an expense or royalty should be attached to. For example, a paperback, hardcover, and ebook of the same title should each have their own product page along with their own ISBN.

2.2 Product Overview

Clicking on the “Products” button on the navigation bar brings the user to the Products overview page (see Fig X.x). This page has five main components: a search bar, buttons to add new products manually or via CSV, a button to download a CSV with existing product data, and a table that displays up to 20(?) products at a time, sorted alphabetically.

The search feature allows you to search for multiple products by a variety of criteria - title, subtitle, ISBN, creator, imprint, type, and status.

Figure X.x Product overview page

2.3 Add a new product

There are two ways to add new products to your Working Lit Database - individually via the “New Product” button on the overview page, and by importing a properly formatted CSV into the app (see Section X.x).

Products cannot be deleted after being added, except by an administrator. In general, we advise against deleting products if you have used it in any way (any orders, expenses, etc.), as doing so has the potential to create unforeseen downstream effects (i.e. accidentally reusing an ISBN) . If a product is no longer active, you should indicate this by changing the status to “Out of print”.

Clicking the “New Product” button pulls up a page with a variety of fields for you to fill out, described below. After filling out the required fields (noted in the field description table below), click the “Save” button (which remains grayed out until all required fields are filled in) to save the product to the database. Any product details can be edited later.

Table 2.1 Required Product Fields

Table 2.2 Optional Product Fields

2.5 Importing products via CSV

• Workflow + screenshot

2.4 Edit an existing product

Workflow + screenshot

To edit an existing product:

• Navigate to the “Products” area of your Workinglit account
• Use “Search Products” to narrow down your selection
• Select a product to edit, either by clicking on the title or the ID number
• Click the “edit” button at the top of the page
• Make your desired edits
• Select “Save” to save your work and continue editing
• Select “Save and Close” to save your work and exit the product edit page
• Select “Cancel” to exit the product edit page without saving your work (some uploaded items, such as images, may be saved)

3 | ORDERS

3.1 What is an order?

An order is an entry in the system representing the sale of a product or products to a customer. An order may represent a sale that has already been made, a sale that is in-process, or an expected future sale.

Entering an order into WorkingLit has several effects:

• When the order is entered, product inventory is committed
• The order shows you how much the customer owes you, or how much they paid and on what date
• The amount of any payments received, as well as the date on which the order is marked “paid,” determines (or “shipped” if you are set up to pay royalties on shipped items)

3.2 Orders overview

Clicking on the “Orders” button on the navigation bar brings you to the Orders overview page (see Fig X.x). This page has five main components: a search bar, buttons to add new orders manually or via CSV, a button to download a CSV with existing product data, and a table that displays up to 20(?) orders at a time, sorted alphabetically.

The search feature allows you to search for multiple products by a variety of criteria - title, subtitle, ISBN, creator, imprint, type, and status.

Backorders are unshipped orders that contain any product which does not list sufficient quantity of inventory on its product page to fulfill all unshipped orders.

3.3 Create a new order

3.3.1 Adding a customer

3.3.2 Adding products

Table 3.1 Required Order Fields

Table 3.2 Optional Order Fields

3.4 Edit an existing order

• Workflow + screenshot

3.5 Importing orders via CSV

• Workflow + screenshot

4 | EXPENSES

4.1 What is an expense?

Expenses are entered into the system to reflect any money that your business spends. This could include the cost of printing a book, payroll, taking an author out for coffee, postage, fees paid for tabling at a trade show, office rent, etc.

Royalty payments (including advances) are not treated as regular expenses and should be entered on the Royalty Payments page.

4.2 Expenses overview

An expense can be associated with a product, an expense category, or both.

You can enter any date associated with an expense. Date your expenses in accordance with how you do your accounting. For example, a for-profit publisher will likely want to date expenses in the system to coincide when you pay that expense; a non-profit publisher may need to date expenses when that expense is committed to. Consult with your bookkeeper to figure out what is right for you, but above all, use whatever method you choose consistently.

The date of an expense, as well as whether or not it is associated with a particular product or category, will affect your royalty calculations.

If you use true profits / profit-sharing royalties, your bottom line will only take non-product-associated expenses into account.

4.3 Create a new expense

Table 4.1 Required Expense Fields

Table 4.2 Optional Expense Fields

4.4 Edit an existing expense

5 | CUSTOMERS

6 | CREATORS

Introduction:

• What is a creator? What are the necessary components?

Add a new creator

• Workflow + screenshot
• Required info

Edit an existing creator

• Workflow + screenshot

Importing creators via CSV

• Workflow + screenshot

7 | ROYALTIES

Setting up royalties

Set up your royalties: Go to Settings > Royalty Accounting and select “date items are shipped” or “date items are paid”

Explanation: At what point do you owe royalties on a sale to an author? You can select to pay authors only for sales that you have been paid for. Or you can pay authors when an order with their titles is shipped (note that these items could potentially be returned after you have paid royalties on them).

Depending on your selection, WorkingLit counts royalties based on the date that an Order is marked as “paid” or “shipped”.

7.1 Royalties Overview

Royalties are mechanical payments by publishers to authors and artists for licensing their content for publication. Single, one-time payments for contract work or work-for-hire would be entered under Expenses instead.

To add an advance on royalties, see part 8, Royalty Payments

A note on process: We have not provided a way to send many royalty statements at once with the press of a single button, because we have learned that looking again at each statement before sending it is when you are most likely to catch accounting and data entry mistakes that may affect the amount you owe authors (and your relationship with them).

7.2 Add a new royalty

To add a royalty: Choose “Royalties” in the static menu on the left, and select “add new royalty.” You must select both a product and a creator. Enter a percentage and choose the royalty type from the drop-down menu (see below for an explanation of types).

Royalty tiers

Most royalties do not require multiple tiers.

Tiers are used for contracts where the royalty percentage and/or type changes based on type of sale or number of sales. The two most common scenarios are:

• An author earns a royalty based on list price, but for sales with very long discounts (eg, to Amazon or wholesalers) they earn either a smaller percentage of list price or the royalty switches to percent of net receipts
• An author’s contract states that their royalty increases five points after the first printing

You can add either type of tier in WorkingLit.

Royalty types

% of list price: This royalty is a percentage of the title’s retail price / MSRP, no matter how much the publisher earns from each sale. If the royalty is in dollar units, eg $1 for every copy sold of a $20 book, then the publisher should calculate that as a percentage, in this case 5%.

% of net receipts: This is based on all income from the titles, without taking expenses into account. Eg, if a publisher sells 10 copies of a book at the $10 retail price and 100 copies at a $6 wholesale price, royalties will be a percentage of this total income of $700 regardless of expenses.

% of net profits: This royalty is a percentage of sales of the title minus expenses assigned to this product. In the same example as above, if a publisher earned $700 from sales of a book and spent $100 on promotion in that same period, royalties would be a percentage of $600. 15% is a healthy net profit royalty, sometimes going up to 20% for reprints.

% of true profits / profit-sharing: This starts by calculating all sales of the title minus title-related expenses. The publisher’s bottom line percentage is then deducted from this total. The bottom line percentage is determined by calculating ALL the publisher's expenses for fixed costs (not related to any title) as a percentage of their income for the same period (WL calculates bottom line based on the previous calendar year’s expenses). For example, if a title earned $1100 and had a $100 expense, and the publisher’s bottom line was 53%, the royalty would be a percentage of $470 based on this calculation: (1100-100)*.47. A 50% true profit royalty on that amount would be $235. The profit-sharing royalty percentage is usually higher than the other tiers (eg, 50%).
If you don’t have expenses and income entered for the previous calendar year, your bottom line will default to 50%.

8 | ROYALTY PAYMENTS

There are two ways to generate royalty payments: from the Royalty Payments page and from the Royalties page.

When a royalty payment is created, that amount is subtracted from the royalties balance owed on that product.

To pay an advance on future royalties, enter the advance as a royalty payment here.

Single, one-time payments for contract work or work-for-hire would be entered under Expenses rather than Royalty Payments.

WorkingLit does not (yet!) generate actual monetary payments—it is up to the publisher to write a check, initiate a deposit, mark an invoice for author copies as “paid,” hand over the cash, or whatever method you are using to pay the author.

8.1 Royalty Payments Overview

8.2 Create a new royalty payment from the Royalty Payments page

• Workflow + screenshot

8.3 Create a new royalty payment from the Royalties page

• Workflow + screenshot

9 | ROYALTY STATEMENTS

To create author statements:

• In the Royalties page, select “New Statement” button at the top right of the screen, OR select “+ statement” next to a Royalty listing
• Select the start and end points of your statement period (Note: This should be a consistent period that matches your contractual reporting, for instance the previous quarter, half, calendar, or fiscal year)
• Select the Creator and populate email address if necessary
• Select your desired options:
• Generate Payment Record? Recommended (but you can also do this in Statements)
• Email Statement to Creator? Recommended (but you can also do this in Statements).
• Show Sales Per Customer? Not recommended unless you are contractually obligated to do this.
• Show Lifetime Royalties? Recommended.
• Select the projects that appear on the statement (Note: It’s recommended to select all of their projects, whether or not they have sales in the statement period)
• Add any personalized message you’d like to in “Note to Creator”
• Carefully check the statement in the right side pane!
• Select Create Draft Statement

To send statements:

• Once you have created drafts of all your statements, you can review and send them in the Statements page on the left hand sidebar.
• Open the statement, check your work AGAIN (trust us). Ask WorkingLit to email the statement to the author and record the payment.
• Grab your list of payments owed from the Payments page and go pay your authors!

FAQs

What should my royalty period be?
If at all possible, pay all of your royalties to all of your creators on a standard schedule. Most publishers pay once or twice a year; some publishers that do a very high volume find it easier to pay quarterly or even monthly. This period should be a standard time frame, for instance the calendar year, your fiscal year, or every Jan 1 - June 30 and July 1 - Dec 31. It’s a good idea to give yourself at least 2 weeks, preferably a month after the end of your royalty period before you send statements and payments, so you can make sure all of your income and expense data are complete and correctly entered.

How you decide what your royalty term is depends on your needs for managing cash flow, when you receive reporting from distributors or other major customers, and when in the year you have time to focus on royalties and accounting.

How do I enter author purchased copies?
It depends on how you handle these. Any money coming to you should be reflected in an Order, and any money you are paying is reflected as an Expense. Keep in mind that any money entered as an order attached to a specific title will be included in royalty calculations for that title - and adjust your author cost accordingly.

For free author copies, simply enter into an Order at $0 or 100% discount; unless you have a % of list price royalty set up for that item, in which case simply remove it from inventory on the Product page.

How do I enter publicity and sample copies?
As an order, with a $0 cost or 100% discount. If you use a list price royalty, you can simply remove these from inventory on the Product so as not to trigger a royalty payment.

Change Log

4/7/26:

• Added this change log!
• Added documentation of new bulk Statement processing feature
• Started an FAQ section