Author Portal – Relationship Management Software
Author Portal – Relationship Management Software
Turn compliance into efficiency and strategic gain – and build author engagement
Make your publishing house more attractive and competitive with our author portal
As self-publishing options grow and publishers battle over lucrative contributors, it’s never been more important to show authors and agents why they should choose you.
Schilling’s Author Portal helps you make information available online – whatever information you decide to share and whenever authors and agents want access to it – securely protected, of course.
Such transparent and flexible extra services demonstrate your value as a publisher, enhances communication, and improves author relations, all while keeping you in compliance with EU transparency directives and taking some of the burden off your editors, your customer service, and royalty departments.
You’ll save time maintaining master data and sharing sales figures with authors. Plus, you’ll have all communication with authors documented easily and accurately.
Simplify compliance with EU directive and national legislation on transparency
In response to the European Union’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, adopted in April 2019, publishers across Europe are now faced with the challenge of enhancing transparency and ensuring fair remuneration for authors. Our automated author portal directly addresses these needs by simplifying compliance with the new regulations. By providing real-time, detailed data on how authors’ works are being used, our portal not only aligns with EU requirements but also facilitates a more efficient and trusting relationship between authors and publishers.
- Store all written communication in one central, easily accessible location.
- Sign author and rights contracts online, save time, and minimise costs.
- Release information such as royalty settlements and sales figures immediately.
- Enable authors to update their personal data themselves.
- Simplify negotiations by uploading contracts, enabling authors to make comments and suggestions, print contracts, and even sign contracts online.
- Enhance author satisfaction and make yourself more attractive to authors.
- Increase author engagement and trust by providing easy access to important information.
- Reduce operational costs by minimising the need for manual updates and communication.
Features
Store all written communication for easy author access
Upload contracts and enable authors to make comments and sign contracts online
Release royalty settlements and sales figures immediately
Enable authors to update their personal data
Everything authors want in one convenient place
Authors have access to sales figures, contracts, calculations, payments, master data, and more, whenever they want it. Communication has never been more convenient.
FAQ - Author Portal
An author portal is an online platform that allows authors to manage various aspects of their work and to access for example sales figures, contracts, and royalty settlements. Publishers can use author portals to share sales data, automate royalty settlements and payments, and send contracts for signature. An author portal is a user-friendly platform designed to enhance the overall author/publisher relationship by improving communication and taking some of the administrative burdens off editors and customer service and royalty departments. Features typically include secure storage of communication, access to contracts, and tools for authors to update personal information.
An author portal is a powerful tool for publishers that helps them streamline operations, save time, improve communication, enhance author relations and author satisfaction, and ultimately help retain authors. Moreover, an author portal significantly reduces the time publishers spend on author support by automating and centralising processes. This efficiency gain enables publishers to manage a larger volume of authors, including those with smaller, niche publications (often referred to as the 'long tail') in an effective and scalable manner. Key features often include online contract signing, easy access to past and future royalty settlements, sales data for different sales channels, and seamless communication with authors.
Communicating effectively with your authors is key to maintaining a strong and positive relationship. You can use an author portal to share essential data such as sales figures, royalty settlements, contracts, and other documents with your authors. Automated tools on author portals ensure that authors always have up-to-date information, improving satisfaction and retention by fostering transparency and reducing delays.
Various software platforms and tools are commonly used to facilitate communication between authors and publishers, ensuring smooth collaboration throughout the publishing process. E-mail and file sharing tools such as WeTransfer or cloud storage platforms can be used but an author portal can be a far more efficient tool for author/publisher communication. An author portal enables efficient, transparent, and organised communication between authors and publishers, helping to ensure a smooth and collaborative publishing process. The choice of software depends on the specific needs of the publisher and author.
Good relationships with your authors are essential to ensure author satisfaction and good author retention. Regular updates, transparency, and accurate and timely royalty payments are all important and can be streamlined and automated via efficient author communication software such as an author portal.
Sanoma Pro chooses Schilling to streamline their contract, rights and royalty processes
“Sanoma Pro is already using Schilling’s Royalty and Author Portal solution, which is fully integrated with their corporate finance system. For Sanoma Pro it is vital to have a cutting-edge solution that can support and grow with their activities in the market to constantly ensure efficient business performance and always be at the forefront of developments in the publishing industry.”
We are happy to have released Schilling’s author portal to Studentlitteratur’s authors and we expect that our authors will highly appreciate the service and information it will give them. We already see the potential for a next step with the agreements we make with our authors.