Contracts

Contracts is where you record the agreements you have signed. Pubblish keeps two kinds, and treats them differently. A rights contract records who may publish a book, where, and until when. A supply arrangement records which company carries your books and what cut they keep. Both appear in one list.

Which kind to create

Create a rights contract when rights move between two parties:

  • An author grants your workspace the right to publish their book.
  • You grant translation rights to a publisher in another country.
  • You option film rights to a producer.

Create a supply arrangement when nobody’s rights change and a company is delivering books:

  • Amazon KDP sells your ebook and keeps a cut.
  • IngramSpark prints your paperback and ships it to shops.

The rest of Pubblish reads the two differently. Royalty runs read rights contracts and ignore supply arrangements. Your book’s Rights page is worked out from rights contracts alone. The ONIX export (the metadata file sent to retailers) reads supply arrangements, to name who supplies each market.

For the longer version, see Two kinds of promise.

Finding Contracts

Open Contracts from the sidebar. It is in the Business section. Contracts is included on every plan.

The list

Both kinds appear in one table, newest first. Each row shows five columns:

Column What it shows
Name What you called the record. Click it to open the record.
Type Rights contract, or Supply arrangement
With The person or company on the other side
Applies to Every title, or a count of titles
Dates The start and end dates, or No dates

Three buttons above the table filter it: All, Rights contracts and Supply arrangements.

A rights contract showing Nothing yet under Applies to has no coverage rows yet, so it covers no books. It is unfinished rather than broken. See Recording an author contract.

Adding a record

Two buttons sit at the top of the page: New rights contract and New supply arrangement. Editors, administrators and the owner see them.

A workspace with no records at all sees a welcome panel with the same two buttons. Under it sits a tick-box list headed Or start with common companies. Ticking a company sets up a supply arrangement for it in one step. See Stores and distributors.

Money

Royalty rates live on rights contracts, in a section called Money on the contract’s own page. You type a rate once and it pays on everything that contract covers. Add a second row naming a title when that one book pays something different.

The Money section appears only when your plan includes Royalties and you are an administrator or the owner. Editors never see it. Full detail is in Royalty rates and contracts.

A supply arrangement records a share too, in Our share and Their cut. That figure is for reference — royalty runs work from the sales reports you upload instead.

Where the signed document goes

Neither record holds a file. Put the signed PDF in your file library instead. Upload it on the Assets page, file it under the Contract category, and attach it to the person or company the agreement is with. Contract files are visible to administrators and the owner only.

The Notes box on each record takes anything else worth writing down.

Deleting a record

Deleting needs administrator access. The Delete button on a record’s page is shown to administrators and the owner, and hidden from editors.

Deleting a rights contract also deletes its coverage rows and every royalty rate under it. The confirmation says so before you go ahead. One case is refused: a contract whose royalty rates are on issued statements cannot be deleted at all. The page says so where the button would be, and suggests giving the contract an end date instead.