- Recently, aggregate publishers, Publishdrive, announced
some pretty ground breaking news and this might be relevant
to you, especially if you are doing some type
of co-authoring or royalty splitting.
So, make sure that you stay tuned
to today's video for more details.
(electronic beat echo)
This is Self Publishing with Dale and if you want to learn
more about how to publish books that sell
and build an unstoppable author brand, then make sure
that you subscribe to this channel and turn
your bell notifications to on,
so you don't miss a single video.
If you've been watching my channel long enough,
you know that I don't simply talk
about Amazon Kindle direct publishing,
in fact there are so many other platforms
you can take advantage of, and one of them
includes aggregate publishers, Publishdrive.
Who exactly is Publishdrive?
Well, essentially, they're an aggregate publisher
meaning that they are an account that will send out
your publications to various avenues and, Publishdrive
just so happens to send out
to dozens of different platforms,
including the likes of Goggle Play, to Apple, to Kobo,
and so much more beyond and they do that
for just a simple 10% cut of the revenue,
which is not to bad in my opinion.
However, today's video is going to be little different
because it's not necessarily about utilizing Publishdrive,
more so about a new option they have available
to the self-publishers out there.
Publishdrive calls it Abacus.
Essentially, it is royalty splitting calculator of sorts.
It kinda figures out your earnings and expenses.
In their words, "It's the solution
for KDP and Kindle Unlimited authors have been waiting for."
So, if you're kinda functioning
like say as a small publishing house,
and you co-author some books, this is probably
the best way to track your earnings and expenses
from one dashboard, and your able to get
to where other people can come in and see that.
Now, to be clear, you don't have to publish
through Publishdrive to utilize Abacus, in fact,
Publishdrive has a totally different feature,
it's exactly the same, it's called Team Royalties,
and that's available if you
do distribute through Publishdrive.
But for those of you that do not utilize Publishdrive,
Abacus is available to you.
It's just as simple as importing your KDP report
or other reports that are relevant
to your publishing business and co-authoring.
To put it simply, Abacus features
include some of the following:
Keep track of co-author payments.
You can track KDP and ACX reports
which is really kinda nice, so rather than say for instance,
me having the KDP account and ACX account,
and I co-author with somebody and they just either
trust that I'm paying out what they have,
or giving them my login, which I wouldn't recommend,
this is an avenue to where that we can take
both those reports, put it into one dashboard,
and then everybody gets to see exactly what's going on.
Track additional costs and revenue
for full financial disclosure.
Again, this is kinda a way that we get into one dashboard
and everybody's kinda going "Okay."
They're feeling a bit loose,
a little bit more relaxed and not feeling
like they are getting the wool pulled over they're eyes.
So, if one of your co-authors wants to take a look
at the reports, all they gotta do is just
go right into that dashboard for Abacus,
and see exactly what's going on,
and they are going to be on the same page as you.
Royalty and payment reports downloadable anytime.
So, they're able to access that dashboard,
well now they can download those reports
hang on to those at anytime, so then they
can kinda expect exactly what they're going to be getting
as far as payouts from one month to the next.
Edit, add, and remove contributors.
So, of course, you can be able to add in authors,
or maybe editor, or anybody that's contributing
to one particular title or another.
There's really no limit, you can just put'em on in there
and get it to where you're splitting out each one of them,
according to the percentage that you promised them.
Add end dates to team contracts.
So if so some reason, you have somebody
that has signed a contract with you, and you know,
if you are a small publishing house,
chances are pretty likely, they probably did sign
a contract with you; well in this event,
you can actually set it to where it starts and ends
on a particular date, that way their able to go in
when they're supposed to and when a contract ends,
let's say for instance, you stop distributing through
a specific platform and the rights goes back
to the author, then you can go ahead and kill that.
Built-in message board.
So, rather than going and creating this gigantic email,
with all of this different communication,
and trying to track all of that; well the nice thing is
it's all going to be here, built inside your dashboard,
so you're able to talk to the people
that are contributing to various works
that you're listing through say Abacus.
Again, when I say listing through Abacus,
it doesn't mean that you are distributing through them,
again, we're just taking a look
at earnings and expenses through here.
(whoosh)
The fine folks over at Publishdrive wanted me tell you
that this is going to be available
to you 100% free all the way up to August 12th,
while it is still in beta.
After it launches, it actually is going to cost $2.99
per title; that's $2 and 99 cents per title.
This is also something that you can incorporate
as far as an expense when you're going into Abacus,
so remember that when you're negotiating with a co-author
of some sort; you need kinda let them know if Abacus
is gonna be a tool that your gonna be utilizing,
that that is an additional expense to take account for.
So big shout out to the Publishdrive team,
I really appreciate it.
About the week before last, they contacted me
before it became public, to let me know that Abacus
was gonna be coming out and sadly,
I was just a little bit delayed,
but at least I got it out to you folks,
and if you don't know exactly who Publishdrive is,
or my candid thoughts about them,
believe it or not, there is actually a full video
where I give you my insights on Publishdrive
from my experience.
Go ahead and take a look at it down here.
I'll see ya then.