Net publisher's share
What a publishing catalog keeps after writer royalties and collection costs.
Net publisher's share is the money a publishing business retains once everything owed to other people has been paid out. It is the publishing equivalent of a margin figure, and it is the number a buyer values, because gross collections say nothing about how much of that flow the owner keeps.
The calculation starts with gross receipts — everything collected from societies, licensees and administrators — and deducts the amounts payable to writers under their agreements, then the costs of collection, including society commissions, sub-publishing retentions in foreign territories, and administration fees. What remains is NPS. Because writer obligations vary from deal to deal, two catalogs collecting identical gross can produce very different NPS.
Two adjustments matter when the figure is used for a valuation. Income should normally be measured at source rather than after every intermediary has taken a cut, and the basis should be stated explicitly, because at-source and receipts-based figures for the same catalog are not comparable. And unrecouped writer advances complicate the picture: a catalog whose writers are heavily unrecouped shows a flattering NPS today that falls once those accounts clear and writer royalties begin flowing again.
Buyers therefore normalize. They average several years, strip out one-off income, adjust for any income that will not transfer with the catalog, and check the figure against actual statements rather than a summary. A valuation is then expressed as a multiple of that normalized NPS.
The reason to compute NPS carefully outside a sale is that it is the only honest measure of what a publishing operation earns. Gross collections are a vanity number; NPS is the one that tells you whether the catalog supports the business built on it.
Common questions
How is net publisher's share calculated?
Gross receipts, less amounts payable to writers under their agreements, less the costs of collection — society commissions, sub-publishing retentions and administration fees.
Why does NPS matter more than gross?
Because gross says nothing about what the owner keeps. Two catalogs collecting the same gross can retain very different amounts depending on their writer deals.
What distorts an NPS figure?
Unrecouped writer advances, which flatter it temporarily, and mixing at-source and receipts-based measurement, which makes catalogs look comparable when they are not.
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