Medium Press

Book publishers with revenue of $1M to $50M have a wide choice of book publishing ERP software solutions.

Top Five

In the United States the top five book publishing software vendors are; Acumen Book, IBS Bookmaster, Klopotek, Media Services Group and Publishing Technology.

1. Acumen Book is known for their affordability and ecommerce functionality. (180+ clients)
2. IBS Bookmaster is known for their distribution management and resource planning functionality. If you are an educational publisher that deals with sets and coursepacks. (100+ clients)
3. Klopotek excels in editorial and production management. (300+ clients)
4. Media Services Group Ltd. offers publishers two solutions; the affordable Cats Pajamas software for publishers with revenue of $5M or less and the powerful hosted Elan Bookworks for larger publishers. (Cats has 150+ clients)
5. Publishing Technology’s Advance product is known for it’s customizability and work-process controls. (Publishing Technology has 100+ clients)

ERP Solutions for Medium Sized Publishers

Acumen Book

 

ACUMEN Book is an integrated ERP software with a true Windows graphical user interface. It handles order processing, inventory management, accounts receivable, accounts payable, financial reporting, job costing, purchase orders, direct mail analysis and contact management. Optional modules for e-commerce, digital asset distribution, EDI, on-line credit card authorization, consignment sales, foreign currency transactions, point of sale, subscriptions, VAT, and fulfillment import for publishers that use an outside service or distributor for order fulfillment.

The Acumen book publishing software allows you to start with a license for a few users and add more as your company grows. The  software is updated quarterly with new features and clients can vote on-line for the new features that they want to see implemented. Acumen Book is targeted at companies with $500K to $50M in sales with prices starting at about $20,000 including implementation.

Web Site:  www.acumenbook.com

Opinion: Acumen’s has the largest market share; 180+ clients, among publishers with sales of $1M to $15M.

Cats Pajamas

Cats Pajamas was purchased by The Media Services Group in December 2006. 

This is a tried and true book publishing program that does a few things very well.  – accounts receivable, order processing, royalties, and inventory management. Its simplicity and ease of use make it a powerful option for publishers looking for an affordable solution to complement their existing accounting systems.

Cats Pajamas targets publishers with sales of $500K to $5M. Cats Pajamas is priced at about $10K, including implementation assistance.

Web Site:  www.tcpj.com

Opinion: Cats Pajamas is simple to use. Existing Cats Pajamas users can upgrade to The Media Services Group’s new .NET based Élan software. We do not recommend Cats Pajamas to new clients as all software development has ceased; however, it remains the lowest cost book publishing software solution available for publishers with sales of $1M to $5M.

Focus on Publishing

Focus is an integrated production management and accounting solution for book publishers with optional modules for EDI and title information management.

Focus on Publishing software is used by 29 companies in the United Kingdom and a company in Nigeria.

Web Site: www.focusservices.co.uk

HiPoint

 

Hipoint Ultralight provides publishers with a low cost standalone title bibliographic and royalties solution. HiPoint is designed by a Canadians to meet the needs of Canadian publishers.

Hipoint Professional is a scalable book publishing software solution for publishers with sales up to $50M.

• ISBN-13 Compliant
• Built in BookNet Canada Compliant EDI
• BookNet Canada compliant Bibliographic Data

Web Site: www.hisoftwareinc.com

Opinion: We like Hipoint. Canadian publishers should look at Hipoint when evaluating their software options. HiPoint is scalable and and easy to use.

IBS Bookmaster

The IBS Bookmaster book publishing software ERP solution is used by over 110 publishers worldwide. It is known for its best of breed warehouse management and distribution software in addition to fast implementations.

As a division of IBS, a publicly traded company with sales exceeding $300M USD, it is one of the more financially stable vendors in the industry. Bookmaster is targeted at book publishers with sales of $10M to $2B with prices starting at about $100,000.

Web Site: http://www.ibs.net/industries/publishing

Opinion: IBS Bookmaster’s staff is the most experienced in implementing warehouse and distribution management solutions for book publishers, and has a track record of rapid implementations.

iPUB

iPUB from iPro Business Systems is a modern web enabled software solution for book publishers that offers integration with Microsoft Office and EDI translation functionality. iPUB offers a unique transaction based pricing model for smaller publishers. The iPub soltion is available as a stand-alone or a hosted solution.

Web Site: www.ipubtech.com

Klopotek

Klopotek is a leading ERP solution used by over 250 publishers. They are known for their excellent contracts, royalties, rights and production management software. They have offices in Germany, the United Kingdom and the USA. Klopotek runs on an Oracle database.

Their target market is publishers with sales of $30M to $2B.

Web Site: www.klopotek.com

Opinion: Klopotek offers powerful contract, rights, royalties and production management solution, and an affordable $365/yr stand-alone title acquisition planning software called Editorial Planner

Knk Publishing

Knk offers a suite of Microsoft certified publishing specific optional modules that integrate with the Microsoft Navision software.

The Knk publishing software has been developed for the business organization of small and medium-sized editors of books, journals, magazines, newspapers, electronic media and other kinds of media (e.g. yellow pages, calendars and so on). It handles a publishers editorial requirements and pays attention to the newest and important developments in this industry, i.e. eBooks, new media; standardization of information interchange with authors, surveyors, printers; and best business practices in the publishing industry.

KnK Publishing is distributed in the Midwest United States by Solution Dynamics .

Web Site: www.knk.com

Media Services Group’s Elan

Publishing Technology’s Advance

Schilling

Schilling offers stand-alone and hosted solutions for publishers in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Schilling focuses on providing publishers a fully integrated e-publishing solution. Imagine a publisher operating 24 hours a day with order processing and automatic royalty calculations, bound books published at the same time as e-books, automatic reprints according to demand and a stock kept on the same server. All of which is carried out by fewer resources.

Shilling’s customer base of 40+ publishers includes small, medium and large companies.

Web Site: www.schilling-ltd.co.uk

Trilogy Publishing

Publishing Manager does not just offer to save you time and money but gives you the opportunity to enhance profitability and turnover through active marketing, greater knowledge of customers buying history, improved efficiency and the automation of time-consuming, routine tasks.

This book publishing software solution runs on a Windows 2000 MS SQL server platform and is written in VB and .NET. It is among the few software solutions; including IBS Bookmaster, Klopotek and Vista, that offer integrated production management.

Web Site: www.trilogypublishing.com
Web Site: www.trilogynorthamerica.com

Virtusales

BiblioLite is the hosted, leading edge publishing system that enables you to capture title information easily and accurately in a single integrated database, and use it in a variety of ways to increase business efficiency.