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Software for: Small Publishers
| Medium Publishers |
Large Publishers
We recommend that new book publishers put most of their
resources into producing and marketing books and limit the amount that they invest
in computer information systems.
New publishers should start with QuickBooks Premier
to handle their accounting and Publishers Assistant, AnyBook,
or DashBook to manage their sales and royalty
calculations. If you want to manage your sales through QuickBooks look at Easy Royalties to manage your royalty
accounting.
| Software |
Price |
| AnyBook |
$89 to $729 |
| DashBook |
$249 |
| Easy Royalties |
$500+ |
| Publishers Assistant |
$0! for Single User |
Download our
Publishing Software Recommendations for Startups for our
computer software and hardware recommendations.
Small book publishers with strong financial
backing should consider the Acumen book publishing software. Sourcebooks, named one of the largest independent
publishers in the USA, started with a single user Acumen system and now
has a 20+ user system. Three of the top 5 fastest growing independent
publishers in the United States use Acumen.
Opinion:
The best software solutions are
frequently updated with new functionality. This demonstrates a
software developer's commitment to the product and their clients.
All of the solutions listed in this section are frequently updated.
Acumen (About $25,000+)
"I would recommend ACUMEN. We bought it 5 years ago when we
had maybe 15 titles. It's helped us grow more than 10-fold since.
The nice thing about ACUMEN is that it will grow with you. We bought
the single-user version and had one ACUMEN workstation. We ran that
for about three months and went to three users. And then grew from
there. I know that when I bought that first one-user system, I
thought it was so...... expensive, but it has made such an enormous
difference that it's more than paid for itself. Actually, within
three months we didn't know how we had ever lived without it.
- Dominique Raccah, Publisher and
President, Sourcebooks, Inc.
Approximately 180+ small to medium sized
publishers use this software.
Website:
www.acumenbook.com
Request a free 36 page
overview of the Acumen Book Publishing software.
Opinion:
ACUMEN book publishing software is a fully integrated ERP
solution that offers publishers a technical support and
functionality (they have optional modules such as ecommerce, email list
management, remote fulfillment, point of sale, and subscriptions)
not offered by other vendors in this class. If you expect your
company to grow into a multi-million dollar operation and are well
financed you should consider this software. Used by small companies
with sales under $1M and large companies with sales of $30M+.
If you are not well financed we recommend that you purchase one of the
lower cost options listed below, and put the money that you save
into acquiring, producing and marketing new titles.
AnyBook (about $89 to $729)
Carefully crafted and well tested, AnyBook is the
winner of a number of shareware awards and is highly regarded in the
publishing and software worlds. Designed for small and
self-publishers, it generates invoices and billing statements, keeps
track of inventory, handles book returns, produces sales reports,
records customer payments, tracks consignment items, and creates
mailing lists.
Website:
www.ronwatters.com/RonSoft5.htm
Opinion:
We like AnyBook for its amazing feature set, frequent updates
and low price. Its perfect for the small publisher or self published
author just starting out and offers functionality not offered by
competitive products. You can start with Version I of their
software; however, you will need Version III ($239 for single user,
$269 for multi-user networked version) if you want to generate
royalty statements, and upgrade to more powerful versions as your
company grows.
DashBook ($249 per user)
DashBook manages your inventory, preparing invoices
and statements, tracking sales data, and calculating
royalties. A large number of reports are available to provide status
on any part of your business at a moment's notice. DashBook has a
dashboard that gives you a good overview of your sales and
receivables. A free 30 day trial version is available.
Website:
www.dashbook.com
Opinion: An easy to use and
affordable solution for small presses. Dashbook has a modern user
interface and is frequently updated based on user requests.
Easy Royalties (starting at $500
for 50 or fewer titles)
Easy Royalties is an affordable royalty
solution for small to medium sized book publishers that can handle
complex royalty contracts. You can import authors, titles, royalty
contracts and sales and and export payment information to your
accounting software.
An optional rights management module; That's Rights, integrates
with the software. This module is designed to help you market
subsidiary rights (i.e. translation) rights and collect the monies
due on these rights sales.
That's Rights and Easy Royalties have clients in
more than 10 countries. The New York Museum of Modern Art is one of
their larger clients.
A free 30 day trial version is
available.
Website:
www.easyroyaltiesusa.com
Opinion: Start with a 50
title system and upgrade your license to 100, 200, or a 1000+ titles
as your company grows. You can manage subsidiary rights sales
(foreign translation rights) with their optional rights management
module. Most clients in the United States use Easy Royalties with
the QuickBooks accounting software.
Publishers Assistant ($0 to $420/year)
For publishers with 1 to 100 titles.
Handles royalties,
commissions, consignment, inventory, review copies, backorders, standing
orders, subscriptions, and other issues specific to the publishing
industry. The single user version is Free! The multi-user versions costs $35/month.
Publishers Assistant
also offers two affordable optional modules/services that offer
important publisher specific functionality.
Couplet
stores and transmits title information; such as author bio, long
description, short description, table of contents, to major
retailers and wholesalers. Price $99USD.
Publisher Assistant Web Services
provides publishers with a turnkey ecommerce ready website.
Visit their website to
download a demo of the Publishers' Assistant software free of charge.
Approximately 200 small publishers use this software.
Web Site: www.pubassist.com
Opinion:
We like Publishers Assistant for its ease of use, frequent
updates, strong feature set and their focus on the book publishing
industry.
Updated: December 27, 2009
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