Rule #6 - Sales/payment reports

Every publisher out there must submit to you a report of what you've sold per pay period.

A good publisher will send you a detailed sheet that has the book title, number sold, the price sold at and a tally of dollars at the end. They will then add all those up for your subtotal and then come the horrid deductions. These will be from the 3rd party sites (Amazon, iTunes, etc) all charge fees - basically processing fees for the use of their site to sell your product. Then the publisher will take their cut and whatever fees (ie: marketing) that you approved for them and, after all that, whatever is left over is what you get paid. 

Each and every publisher has their own method of sending these to you.

• Some will send all the 3rd party sales reports along with a page from them of summary and what fees were deducted and your payment
• Some will send a multi-page document that lists each sales site in it's own little section. It would include their own site, the 3rd party's, with the names of each book, price sold at, quantity sold and the final $$ earned on that book and a total for each site before being added up as one giant subtotal. Before, once again, the deductions begin.
• Then there is the one that will send you a Word Doc, an Excel spread sheet, or something else of this nature that they have doctored up (like the below) with the magic words that should throw up a RED-mother-fucking-FLAG on the play... "Approx Price per Book".

ie: if you get something that vaguely looks like this, run:

(click image to view at readable size)

There is no "approx" book prices. Book prices are set, always are, and that is the price you sell at. Just because your publisher doesn't want to admit what the processing fees are from each 3rd party site because they are skimming your money is no reason at all. If you see this, fucking get up in their grill and demand the detailed reports from the 3rd party's. These will show exact numbers and the exact fees for processing the orders on their sites at the end of the quarters. Now, be warned about these 3rd party reports lag - you will have to wait a while for them, so a little patience at this point is required. Especially iTunes, they are one of the THE hardest places to get a sales report out of.

But if you haven't seen anything after 20 business days, make a pest out of yourself, huge. While they may claim you are annoying them by asking repeatedly for these reports, keep doing it. The more they refuse the more you need to be suspicious. A reputable publisher will get them for you.

Just remember, they do take a bit of time. Especially from 3rd party sales sites as your publisher has to request them and then wait until the request is processed and then wait some more until they get an answer back. Anything over a month though and it's time to put the gloves back on and dive into the ring.

Last thing before we run away - do everything in writing so you can keep track of when you sent the request. This way you have a good idea how long to give your publisher to get the reports to you. Keep the letter polite but firm in tone. You still have to do business with them but they need to know that you will not be yanked around by them. Also, if you can, send the email in a way that either a) you know when they've opened the email and therefore likely read it; or b) you get a return receipt from them when they've read it. Depending on your mail service you'll have one of these options or something similar. This way, if they claim that they never got anything or never read anything you have the evidence in your inbox ready to send to your lawyer so the next request will come from him. And trust us, lawyers don't play nice when it comes to their clients being fucked around for money - especially since you'll be using some of that to pay him/her!

There you have it and we're off to cause trouble elsewhere.

The Moderator