Book Publishing Software

Independent guide to business management software for small, medium and large book publishers looking to improve their operations.

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Accounting - Distribution - Inventory - Job Costing - Marketing - Royalty Calculations - Title Management

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Acumen book publishing software is used by over 170 book publishers in the United States, Canada, England, Africa, and Asia. (more)

Target Market: Sales $500K to $30M USD.
Geographic Area: Worldwide
Price: Starting at $20,000 USD.
Email: sales@acumenbook.com
Web: www.acumenbook.com

Key Strength - Acumen is regarded as one of the most powerful and affordable solutions for small to mid sized publishers. In 2006 it updated its software with four new modules for warehouse management and was one of two vendors selected by the Association of Canadian publishers to provide software to their membership.

Advantage Computing System offers feature rich order fulfillment software designed for all types of books with optional modules for book clubs, royalty, commissions, adoption tracking, and convention management.

Price: Starting at about $75,000 USD.
Geographic Area: United States.
Web: www.advantagecs.com

Key Strength: Advantage Computing excels at handling large large volumes of subscription and mail order transactions.

Anybook shareware is designed for the self publisher looking for an affordable way to handle inventory, royalties, and sales.

Target Market: Small book publishers.
Geographic Market: US and Canada
Price: $30 to $80 USD.
Web: www.ronwatters.com/RonSoft.htm

Key Strength - Designed for self publishers, this series of software solutions is available in four versions. Each version offers additional levels of functionality. You can download a trial version of the software at no charge from their web site.

AVATAR is a complete business management system for book and journal publishers and distributors.

Target Market: Publishers with 5 to 500 users.
Geographic Area: United Kingdom & Ireland
Web: www.avatar-software.com

BookMaster is a book publishing software package for publishers and book distributors built around a highly functional and robust book distribution system that also handles non-book products such as CD's, videos and promotional material. Used by 110+ publishers in 16 countries. (more)

Target Market: Sales $5M & up, USD.
Geographic Area: Worldwide
Price: Starting at about $36,000 USD.
Email: sales@bookmaster.net
Web: www.bookmaster.net , www.ibs.net

Key Strength - Bookmaster is known for its rapid implementation and award winning warehouse management functionality.

Bookworks by the Media Services Group, Ltd. is unique in that it can provide applications for ad sales, ad billing, trade shows, periodicals, royalties, book and product fulfillment, and directory production. All of these products working together can draw from a single customer database.

Target Market: $3M to $100M USD.
Geographic Area: US, Canada, UK
Price: ASP option is priced at $250/user per month
Web: www.msgl.com

Key Strength - ASP option for publishers. Strong support for periodicals and event management.

Bradbury Phillips software for author's royalties and rights management is used by over 250 companies worldwide.

Geographic Area: Worldwide
Web: www.bradburyphillips.co.uk

Key Strength - Bradbury Phillips is used by over 200 publishers in the UK and USA to manage rights and royalties. They offer one of the most affordable solutions for publishers seeking a PC based software solution.

Cats Pajamas is an easy to use book publishing software package that handles accounts receivables, inventory, and royalties. Used by over 160 publishers in North America. MSGL purchased Cats Pajamas in 2007. (more)

Target Market: Sales $500K to $5M USD.
Geographic Area: United States & Canada
Price: Starting at about $10,000 USD.
Web: www.tcpj.com

Key Strength - Cats Pajamas is widely known for its ease of use and short learning curve.

CISPUB ERP System. First designed and implemented in 1977, CISPUB has grown and evolved with the Publishing Industry throughout the years. Media Services Group Ltd purchased S3 Publishing Technology in 2005. CisPub installations are being upgraded to MSGL's .NET based Elan Bookworks product.

Target Market: Sales $5 Million to $500 Million
Price: Replaced by Elan Bookworks
Web: www.msgl.com

Easy Royalties. Powerful royalty software for small publishers. Optional rights management module manages sales of foreign rights.

Target Market: Startup to $10M
Price: Starting at $500
Web: www.easyroyaltiesusa.com

Key Strength: Affordable royalty software.

FWL Technologies - FulfillmentSCE provides an integrated suite of applications including a royalty module and warehouse management module. For book & music publishers. Offices in London, New York, and Singapore. (more)

Target Market: $5M to $100M USD.
Geographic Area: Asia, Europe, North America
Web: www.fwltech.com/fwl.html

Key Strength - Distribution & warehouse management

Global Turnkey Systems - A powerful scalable solution for publishers with books and subscription products. Subscription Management component is fully compliant with all aspects of ABC and BPA audits. (more)

Target Market: $10M and up (book & periodical)
Geographic Area: Worldwide
Price: Starting at about $100,000 USD
Web: www.gtsystems.com

Key Strength: Highly scaleable solution with strong support for periodicals management. Parent company is Klopotek.

Klopotek - This book and journals publishing solution handles product planning, production, marketing, sales, distribution and customer relationship management. Used by over 260 publishers, including many of the biggest publishers in the world. In 2006 Klopotek purchased Global Turnkey Systems.

Target Market: Publishers with sales of $30M plus.
Geographic Area: Europe and North America
Web: www.klopotek.com

Key Strength: Standardized software that excels in editorial, production, royalty and rights management for book and subsciption publishers.

Morse Data InOrder - Provides publishers with order processing, inventory control, promotion analysis, and list management. Optional modules for royalties, subscriptions, job cost and more. (more)

Geopgraphic Area: US and Canada
Price: Starting at $18,600 USD
Web: www.morsedata.com

Key Strength - Direct marketing fulfillment

Publishers' Assistant - An affordable fully featured, multi-user application. It covers basic accounting plus royalties, consignment sales, commissions, inventory and purchasing. Available in 3 editions; Sonnet, Lyric and Epic. Each edition comes with a product called Couplet which helps publishers manage and communicate all the details of their titles from one database.

Couplet supports the ONIX standard and works with our web services.  PubAssist web services is an e-commerce web solution that is integrated with the Publishers’ Assistant product set.  Together, these tools allow you to manage your titles locally, update your web site automatically, and download orders from your web site into PubAssist for fulfillment purposes.  PubAssist, also contains many importing and exporting capabilities and specific interfaces to support Quickbooks, Outlook Express, and UPS Online WorldShip.

The developers of Publishers Assistant prides themselves on providing an amazing amount of functionality at a price that new publishing businesses can afford.  However, they are definitely a product that will continue to work as your publishing business grows. Publishers’ Assistant is published by Upper Access Publishing and has been offering software solutions to the publishing community since 1989.

Target Market: Small publishers.
Price: Starting at $295
Web: www.pubassist.com

Key Strength - Affordable for the new publisher

Quality Solutions - Software to help publishers with title management, publicity, production scheduling, and paper management. Complements ERP systems that lack this functionality.

Target Market: Publishers of all sizes
Web: www.qsolution.com

Key Strength - Editorial and production management.

PUMAR - A purpose built advanced sales reporting system for the publishing industry. PUMAR draws data from many different sources (including CisPub, Trilogy and Vista) and re-formats this data into a central repository – a data warehouse. PUMAR utilizes the market leading business intelligence tool, BusinessObjects to present this data to the business user.

Web: www.trilogygroup.com

Trilogy Publishing Manager - A fully integrated ERP system for the international publishing market.

Target Market: $5M+ publishers in the USA and UK
Geographic Area: USA and UK
Web: www.trilogygroup.com

Key Strength - Concept to customer functionality in a Microsoft
environment.

Vista - A high end book publishing software package used by larger book and subscription publishers ($20Million to $1Billion in sales) throughout the world. Offers an ASP version for smaller publishers. Vista has about 80 clients worldwide with 29 of them located in the United States. (more)

Target Market: Sales $15M to $1Billion+ USD.
Geographic Area: Worldwide
Price: Starting at about $150,000 USD
Web: www.vistacomp.com

Key Strength - Integrates all aspects of a publishing company.