How do authors track royalties?
- Track in a spreadsheet or accounting tool (QuickBooks, Wave, FreshBooks).
- Monthly entries per retailer.
- Six core columns: retailer, period, gross, fees, net, payment date.
- Reviewed monthly; reconciled quarterly.
- 50-150 entries per year for authors with 5+ books.
Authors track royalties through a single spreadsheet or accounting tool with monthly entries per retailer — KDP, IngramSpark, Apple, Kobo, B&N. Standard columns: retailer, period, gross sales, fees, net royalty, payment date. Reviewed monthly; reconciled quarterly. Most working authors with five-plus books track 50-150 royalty entries per year.
Chapter i·Why it matters
Authors who don’t track royalties miss errors (it happens), miss tax deductions, and can’t see which books actually earn. A simple tracker turns royalty income from "a number that appears" into "a number you can predict and manage." Reconciliation catches retailer errors before they become permanent.
Chapter ii·What to include
- A row per retailer per period per book.
- Six columns: retailer, period, gross sales, fees, net royalty, payment date.
- A monthly review of new entries.
- A quarterly reconciliation against bank deposits.
- A tax-prep folder with the annual totals.
- A retailer-specific notes column for fee patterns.
Chapter iii·Example
A working novelist tracks 96 royalty entries per year across six books and five retailers in a Google Sheet. The monthly review catches a KDP fee anomaly (deducted twice in October), which she contests and recovers. The quarterly reconciliation against her business bank account is a 20-minute task.
WriteLoom holds royalty tracking alongside each book’s metadata and launch data — see the data per book in one place.
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