Contracts

Contracts is where you record the agreements you have signed. Pubblish keeps two kinds and treats them differently. Both appear in one list.

  • 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.

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 title’s Rights page is worked out from rights contracts alone.

For the longer version, see Two kinds of promise.

Finding Contracts

Contracts is included in the Publisher plan. In the sidebar, open Contracts under Business.

On any other plan, Contracts does not appear in the sidebar.

If you move to a smaller plan, your existing contracts stay. Contracts stays in the sidebar. Its pages show this message: “Your plan doesn’t include Contracts. You can see everything here, but not add or change anything.” To add or change contracts again, the owner moves back to the Publisher plan on Plan & payments.

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 titles. It is unfinished, not 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 is a tick-box list headed Or start with common companies.

  1. Tick the companies you use.
  2. Click Add ticked companies. Each one becomes a supply arrangement.

Once the list has records, a Set up KDP, Kobo and other common companies link above the table brings the tick-boxes back. The link stays until every company on the list is set up. See Stores and distributors.

Money

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

The Money section appears only when both are true:

  • Your plan includes Royalties.
  • 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

Each record holds its own signed document.

  1. Open the contract or arrangement.
  2. Click Edit.
  3. Scroll to Documents.
  4. Drop the signed PDF there.

Pubblish files it with that agreement. The record’s own page then lists it under Documents. The Files page shows it attached to the contract, not to the person you signed with. Only administrators and the owner can see these files. An editor sees no Documents section at all.

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.

Pubblish refuses one case: 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.