Small Presses ($0 to $500K)
With the eBook market share stabilizing at about 30% of sales and the decline in the number of retail bookstores new publishers have forsaken traditional inventory based publishing for digital publishing and print on demand (POD). These presses are have turned to QuickBooks to track sales, inventory and expenses while using royalty software such as Easy Royalties for royalty statement generation.
Medium Publishers ($1M to $15M USD)
The lower end of the medium publisher market in the United States is dominated by Acumen Book.
Klopotek and Virtusales; purveyors of publishing systems to large publishers are competing with the Media Services Group’s Elan Book ERP solution and MetaComent’s RoyaltyTracker to offer hosted solutions to publishers.
About 80+ book publishers in the United States; with 200 to 1500 titles (and up to 10,000 editions) use EasyRoyalties to manage royalty and rights obligations alongside their existing accounting systems.
Medium Publishers ($15M to $50M USD)
The market for publishers with revenue of $15M to $50M is highly competitive. No book publishing software solution dominates this market. In this market the leading solutions are ACUMEN Book, The Media Services Group, Klopotek, knk Publishing, and Virtusales. Trilogy Publishing; represented by PubTech in North America, has began to make inroads into this market segment with implementations at book distributors such as IPG. A few publishers in this market segment have selected EasyRoyalties for their low cost royalty solution.
The leading competitors in this segment are:
- ACUMEN Book – Affordable ERP solution for book publishers.
- Elan Book – Hosted publishing solutions. Subscription management functionality and turnkey ecommerce.
- Klopotek – Powerful ERP solution that excels in sales, rights, royalties, editorial and production management. Hosted and standalone solutions.
- knkPublishing – A fully integrated Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP solution. knkPublishing is the only Microsoft certified publishing software worldwide. knkPublishing combines the classical functions of financial accounting, supply chain management and marketing of Microsoft Dynamics, with industry specific functions for book, periodical and specialist publishers.
- Media Services Group – Designed for book and subscription based products. Also offers event management solution.
- Trilogy Publishing – .NET ERP solution for publishers and distributors. Targets book distributors.
- Virtusales – Powerful and highly scalable solutions for publishers.
Large Presses ($50M to 1B+)
Publishers with revenue $50M to $1B+ tend to favor publishing specific solutions from IBS Bookmaster, Klopotek, Publishing Technology or Virtusales. Each of these solutions are highly scalable and offer internal controls that are SOX compliant. Publishers looking for a royalty only solution will consider Real Software Systems.
During 2016 Klopotek and Virtusales dominated the market for new system sales in the United States. We did not encounter IBS Bookmaster competing for new sales in the US market. Knk was encountered when the publisher was looking for publishing software solution with integrated financial reporting.
- IBS Bookmaster’s focus is distribution and warehouse management. Strong presence in Asia.
- Ingenta is the most user customizable. Their pub2web product is a publications platform for publisher websites with millions of articles. Powerful turnkey ecommerce solution for journal publishers.
- Klopotek is strongest in editorial, production management, rights and royalty processing. They also have sales, subscription and order processing functionality.
- knkPublishing; with many $100M+ clients in Europe, is targeting the US market. knkPublishing combines the classical functions of financial accounting, supply chain management and marketing of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, with industry specific functions for book, periodical and specialist publishers. This product has been specifically designed to support digital publishers by allowing definition of saleable chunks at the sub-ISBN level and providing that content–level transparency all the way throughout the data structures, from editorial thru to royalties and rights.
- Real Software Systems offers a powerful rights and royalty solution for large publishers.
- Virtusales offers powerful hosted solutions for digital asset management, editorial management, title information management, rights and royalties.
In summary;
- IBS Bookmaster: Inventory management
- Klopotek: Editorial, production, rights & royalties and sales.
- knkPublishing: ERP solution for publishers with integrated financials
- Publishing Technology: ecommerce leader
- Real Software Systems: Rights and royalties
- Virtusales: Hosted back office: editorial, production, rights and royalties