In separate announcements e-book distributor LibreDigital and business software developer MediaMorph announced a strategic partnership to launch LibreDigital Business Intelligence, a software service that tracks and manages e-book sales; and British house Faber and Faber announced a similar pact with royalty accounting firm RoyaltyShare to use its Digital Advantage for eBooks service to manage its worldwide eBook revenue.
In addition, Faber Factory, the house’s digital service for independent publishers, will also use RoyaltyShare’s Digital Advantage for eBooks. RoyaltyShare Share CEO Bob Kohn said the platform offers publishers cost savings and accuracy for the revenue data coming from dozens of ebook, audiobook and POD retailers. The platform supports revenue data feeds from more than 30 digital retailers and distributors around the world.
“By using RoyaltyShare’s services, Faber and Faber is completely automating the management of its sales reporting, freeing up IT and management resources to focus on creating, marketing and selling eBooks,” Kohn said.
Simon Blacklock, director of Factory Sales at Faber Factory, said the RoyaltyShre platform, “has radically simplified the processing of our revenue data, allowing for timely, accurate reporting both internally and to our authors and publisher partners.”
In a release, LibreDigital president and CEO Russell P. Reeder, described LibreDigital Business Intelligence as a software service that will allow publishers to more efficiently track, analyze and measure distribution and sales of digital titles across different formats, sales channels and pricing models. The service will be available beginning in February.
“Digital sales are changing the book business,” Reeder said, “by working with Mediamorph and the existing platform they’ve built to support the digital media, film and video market, we can immediately give publishers the comprehensive analytics and tools they need to grow and manage their digital business and utilize best-practices from other industries.”
Frank Lyman, LibreDigital CMO, said the new service tracks and reports “aggregated sales data (to include submission to financial systems).” Lyman said “the key differentiation is the business intelligence layer that sits on top of the sales data that gives publishers visibility into analytics such as campaign results, business model variations, and price sensitivity across formats and marketplaces.” Asked about pricing and he said, “the pricing model will have a strong variable component reflecting our shared goal with the publisher to drive new e-book revenue.”
He said that LibreDigital has “deep experience with the current state of sales reporting across all of the e-book retail marketplaces. The need to normalize this data for both auditing and market analysis is a key reason we are launching this new service. Net, the data exists, but it is not in a form that is easily usable by publishers to manage their e-book business.” And while Lyman said the product is being marketed to publishers, he also said that “we ultimately create related products and services that serve agents and authors.”
MediaMorph CEO Michael Sid, said, “As the e-book distributor for 7 of the top 10 U.S. trade publishers, they have a uniquely strategic role connecting publishers and marketplaces in the e-book market, and are a natural partner to create the industry standard for market analytics and management tools.”
