Chronicle Books: Giving Authors (and the Royalty Team) the Gift of Automated Statements
Interview with Mike Conway, Executive Director of IT, Chronicle Books
About Chronicle Books
Chronicle Books is an independent publisher based in San Francisco that partners with artists, writers, and organizations who represent diversity and inclusion. From cookbooks to kids’ books to entertainment, Chronicle Books specializes in publications that are perfect for gifting.
Challenge – Time consuming manual processes
Chronicle Books’ royalty team was generating and sending out royalty statements manually, which could take days. They were also receiving requests from authors for online access to statements.
“We were really looking for efficiencies. That was the main driver. The process was so manual for our team. We would run the batch, generate the statements, print the statements out, and literally mail them to the authors. The whole idea of mailing things in this day and age is just archaic and getting away from that was key.”
Solution – Statement Portal – Online Royalty Statement Delivery
FADEL Statement Portal is a cloud-based solution that enables Chronicle Books to quickly and securely deliver royalty statements and documents to authors and agents. In addition to automatic statement notification, the portal allows for customized communications, which Chronicle Books uses to alert recipients before statements are posted, reducing the number of inquiries before and after statements are delivered. FADEL Statement Portal also includes self-service capabilities that allow authors and agents to change personal and banking information and review statement status and history at any time.
“With Statement Portal, we simply need to generate the batch and then all of the statement generation and deployment is done electronically.”
Results – Efficiency + better relationships
Statement Portal has delivered on FADEL’s claims of better communication, greater transparency, and increased operational efficiency. It has lessened the workload on the royalties team, freeing them up for more strategic activities like deal analysis and data integrity. Statement Portal has also allowed Chronicle Books editorial team to grant transparency to authors and agencies, which has strengthened their relationships.
“We’ve given authors more transparency and functionality, which many people were asking for. Having better access to information and more transparency is only a good thing and it definitely helps our relationships.”
