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Matador pays author royalties quarterly; for books in January, April, July and October, covering the previousthree months’ sales; and for ebooks, in February, May, August and November. We send a detailed quarterlysales statement for each format that shows how many book/ebook sales there have been in the quarter, atwhat discounts, and what amount is owing to the author. Apart from the quarterly statements, all ourauthors have 24/7 access to sales information on our website. To access this, log into the Author Centre andclick on ‘Check sales’.

The Online sales informationThe sales information on our website is not linked live to retailers. It is updated periodically by us as wereceive sales information from various retailers and eretailers. The online sales information gives only basicinformation; you cannot thus work out how many copies have been sold and what your return is on eachsale using this data. We also record any costs that you have incurred (eg. asking us to send books to you,storage costs) and returns from retailers, so the data can be volatile, rising and falling seemingly at random.Please do not try to draw conclusions on sales from the online information. It is a snapshot only. Because ofthis, we are unable to answer specific queries related to the data online, but only when a full quarterly salesstatement has been sent.

The Quarterly Sales StatementWe send the sales statements out by email and make payment to authors in the UK by bank transfer.Authors outside the UK can either be paid by PayPal or we send a cheque. An international bank transfercan be made but costs us £20, which we shall pass on to the author if you request payment by internationalbank transfer. You can download a BACS payment form from the Resource Centre on our website.

The quarterly sales statement shows all sales made and for which we have received payment in the quarterin question. Note that some retailers pay up to 90 days in arrears, so a sale made in one quarter may notappear on a sales statement until the following quarter. We cannot pass payment to authors for books soldbut not yet paid for, as effectively we are then ‘bankrolling’ the sale. The quarterly statement shows all salesmade and the retailers’ discounts; Matador’s sales commission; stock remaining; stock sent to the author;and any costs. We do not list sales made by individual retailer – this is impractical given the thousands ofretailers – and often we don’t know who the end customer is because we are not party to who are thewholesalers’ end retail customers.

Please check your quarterly statement carefully, particularly the stock figures. We cannot check anomalieson stock figures from many months or years ago, it is not practical to do so; any stock figure errors must benotified immediately. Similarly, please check the statement carefully and notify us by email of anyirregularities.

© Troubador Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.

MatadorFactsheet 13—Royalties

Author Royalties

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If we are charging you storage for holding in excess of 300 copies of your book, this will be deducted fromyour royalty payment. If you wish to reduce or eliminate storage charges, please contact us immediately sothat we can reduce stock for you. Any storage charges are as advised on your Initial and Final Quotations,and they reduce as the number of copies we hold reduces.

Any costs that have been deducted from the royalties paid to you are noted on the ‘Notes’ section of thestatement. Deductions are generally only made for carriage costs of sending books to you, or requested bythe author to be sent elsewhere. However, there may be other costs, but these will be listed on thestatement.

Notes Accompanying Author Royalty Statements/Statement QueriesPlease read the notes that are sent out with quarterly statements before contacting us with queries aboutthe statement. The Notes cover most issues that authors raise when they receive their quarterly statement.The answers to the questions we most often are asked about royalties are given below in the FrequentlyAsked Questions section.

Please do not telephone us with royalty queries; we will not have all the figures immediately to hand, andwill not be able to investigate anything while on the phone and resolve queries. If you have a query on yoursales statement, please email the query to [email protected]; we shall then investigate and getback to you as quickly as possible.

Your First Quarterly Sales StatementThe first sales statement sent to you may well be up to five months after the date of publication. This isbecause the first couple of months’ sales may not appear on your account until we have received paymentfrom the retailers, and thus a statement sent within a couple of months of publication will show virtuallynothing (there may have been sales, but we are unlikely yet to have been paid for many of them).Depending on when during the quarter your book was published, your first statement may not be sent untilbetween three and five months after publication. Thereafter, a statement is sent every quarter. Note thatwe do not send a sales statement if there is less than £20 owing to an author in royalties. If there is less than£20 owing, this is held over to the next quarter, and so on until more than £20 is owing.

A Negative Sales BalanceBecause most books are sold to retailers on a Sale Or Return (SOR) basis, retailers can return unsold stockup to nine months after the initial sale for a credit. We note all returns on your account, and they will forma deduction from sales. Any commission that we made on a sale is also refunded to you on the salesstatement.

If there has been a large number of returns, or if the costs of storage have accumulated over a period, thenyour sales statement may show a negative balance. While the negative balance is less than £100 we maycontinue to carry the deficit on your behalf or send an invoice for the outstanding amount. When the deficitexceeds £100 we shall issue an invoice to you for the outstanding amount.

It is not uncommon for wholesalers to return unsold copies and order more copies of the same title in thesame month. Sometimes we do not note down returns separately, but deduct the returns from the salesmade in the period at the same discount (the returns and sales effectively cancel one another out).


Factsheet 13 Author Royalties

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is listed on the quarterly statement is different to what I have seen on the online sales system.Why is that?There are several reasons why the information shown on our online system may differ from that shownon the latest quarterly statement:a) The online system may show sales for which payment has not yet been received; the quarterly

statement shows only sales for which we have received payment.b) The online system is a cumulative summary of sales and returns activity that changes dynamically;

the quarterly statement is a definitive picture of sales, returns and expenses incurred during a fixedthree month period.

c) The quarterly statement is prepared as soon as the sales, returns and expenses for the last month of the quarter have been added to the database, and these changes will affect the total numbers sold and amounts received.

2. How do I know which retailers have sold my book and at what discounts?We list sales made by the discounts given to the retail customer. With over 16,000 bookshops in the UK,it is not possible to individually list which retailer has sold which book. As a guide, sales @60% areAmazon.co.uk direct sales (only Amazon get this discount level); sales @57–55% are the main UKwholesalers and library suppliers, who then sell on to retailers. Sales given on the statement at otherdiscount levels under 50% are usually direct retailer orders, or author special offer sales through ourwebshop. The latter will be noted in the ‘Notes’ box on the statement. Sales made by the wholesalersand library suppliers on to retailers are not notified to us, we are not party to who the wholesalers’customers are, so we usually do not know which retailers have bought which books to sell fromwholesalers.

3. How do I know what sales have been made overseas on a print on demand basis?Sales made using the Print On Demand service to fulfil overseas sales are listed separately on thestatement. The percentage discount such sales are made at (which takes into account the fact that theunit print cost of that POD sale also has to be deducted from the cover price) is given in the ‘Notes’ boxon the statement. We do not know which retailers have sold a book overseas, we only know that a salehas been made to an overseas customer in this way.

4. The Troubador sales commission is more than 15% of the receipts. Why is this?We take 15% of the cover price on copies of a book that we sell, not 15% of the net receipts. Our salescommission is thus calculated as [(No. copies sold, excluding gratis copies) x (Cover price) x 15%]. Ourcommission is not (Net receipts) x 15%. Our sales commission is given on our Initial Quotation andContract. Our sales commission largely covers our costs of distribution.

5. Why are there copies sold at 100% discount?There are usually only two reasons for copies being given away free: a) British Library legal depositcopies (6 copies); b) Copies sent to book reviewers. Legal deposit copies are a legal requirement andmust be sent to the British Library legal deposit office. Review copies are only sent to reviewers thathave been agreed in advance by you with the marketing department. The ‘Notes’ section on the





statement will list the number of review copies that have been sent, but if you require a list of reviewcopy recipients, please contact your marketing controller.

6. Why have deductions been made for ‘Expenses’?All expenses deductions are listed in the ‘Notes’ section on the royalty statement. Deductions areusually for things like the cost of carriage to send copies to or on behalf of the author, or for sendingadditional review copies requested by book reviewers that fall outside the pre-agreed reviewer list.

7. Why has a deduction been made for storing books? We make a charge for storing over 300 copies of a title, on a sliding scale. This cost and the sliding scaleis given on your Initial and Final Quotations and on our Factsheet in the Author Resources Centre. Thestorage charges apply monthly during any period in which we or our distributor hold over a certainnumber of copies in total on that sliding scale. If you wish to reduce or avoid storage charges, then youcan reduce the stock we hold at any time.

8. The amount shown as Earned differs from the amount that I have received as payment. Why is that?The ‘Royalties Earned’ field on your sales statement is the total amount that you have earned from salesof your book, before any deductions for things like carriage or storage have been made. These expenses(if there are any) are deducted from the amount paid to you when we send your royalty statement andpayment; any deductions are itemised in the ‘Notes’ box on the statement itself. The ‘Royalties Earned’is thus a total of the amount earned before expenses.

9. Can I use my royalties to pay my Troubador invoice?No. Our Royalty and Accounts systems are necessarily separate, and for tax reasons we are not allowedto mix payments from the two systems. Invoices should be paid in full when they fall due.

Royalties will not be paid if there is an overdue invoice on our Accounts system for services supplied.

If you would like more information contact [email protected]


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