Royalty Splits
Record how a publication's royalties are divided among its contributors — fixed percentages off the top, with the rest split proportionally by shares.
What Royalty Splits Are
When a publication has more than one contributor — an anthology with a dozen authors, a collection with a cover artist owed a cut — you need a record of who gets what share of the royalties. Royalty Splits is that record, kept per publication as a tab on the Publication Command Center.
Splits are record-keeping, not payout automation. Inkwren does not apply these percentages to your Sales figures or calculate per-contributor payments — the splits document the agreement, and you run the numbers when it's time to pay.
Royalty Splits is turned off by default for every workspace — it's the one Inkwren feature that's opt-in for both author and publisher tracks. Enable it under Workspace Settings → General, and the Royalty Splits tab appears on every publication in your workspace. There's no per-publication override.
Adding and editing splits, and the bulk actions, require an active subscription — without one, those controls prompt you to subscribe. Removing a split always works on any plan, so you can take your data out at any time.
How the Split Math Works
Every contributor split uses one of two allocation types:
- Fixed Percentage — the contributor gets exactly the percentage you enter.
- Remainder Shares — the contributor gets a proportional slice of the remainder pool: whatever is left after all fixed percentages are taken off the top.
Say an anthology gives the editor a fixed 10%, and three authors split the rest equally with one share each. The remainder pool is 90%, so each author's effective share is 30%:
| Contributor | Allocation | Effective % |
|---|---|---|
| Editor | 10% (fixed) | 10.00% |
| Author one | 1 share | 30.00% |
| Author two | 1 share | 30.00% |
| Author three | 1 share | 30.00% |
Shares are relative weights, not percentages — a contributor with 2 shares gets twice the slice of the pool as one with 1 share. Effective percentages recalculate automatically whenever you add, edit, or remove a split.
Viewing a Publication's Splits
Open a publication to its Publication Command Center and click the Royalty Splits tab. (Inside the tab, the heading and dialogs say Contributor Splits — same feature.)
Three summary cards give you the at-a-glance math:
- Fixed Allocations — the sum of all fixed percentages
- Remainder Pool — what's left for share-based contributors (100% when there are no splits yet)
- Total Shares — the total share count across remainder-shares contributors
Below the cards, the splits table lists each contributor:
| Column | Shows |
|---|---|
| Contributor | The person's name, with the role description underneath for Other roles |
| Role | Author, Editor, Artist, or Other |
| Allocation | What you entered — a fixed percentage or a share count |
| Effective % | The calculated final percentage, to two decimals |
Each row also has edit (pencil) and remove (trash) actions. The table includes the standard export control, which downloads the current view as a CSV named after the publication.
Adding a Contributor Split
- Click Add Contributor on the Royalty Splits tab
- Fill in the details:
- Contributor (required): Type two or more characters to search your workspace's contributors by name or email. The person must already exist as a contributor — there's no way to create one from this window
- Role (required): Author, Editor, Artist, or Other. Choosing Other reveals a Role Description field (e.g., Cover Designer, Narrator)
- Allocation Type: Remainder Shares (the default) or Fixed Percentage
- Shares: A whole number, 1 or more (defaults to 1)
- Fixed Percentage: 0–100, decimals allowed
- Notes: Optional notes about the arrangement
- Click Add Contributor
If a fixed percentage would push the total fixed allocations over 100%, the split is rejected and you'll see an error.
Editing a Split
Click the pencil icon on a row to open Edit Contributor Split. The contributor and role are locked when editing — you can change the role description, allocation type and value, and notes, then click Save Changes. To change who the split belongs to or their role, remove the split and add a new one.
Removing a Split
Click the trash icon on a row and confirm. Removing works on any plan, with or without a subscription.
Bulk Actions
Select rows with the checkboxes to reveal two bulk actions:
- Share % Equally — Enter a total percentage to divide equally across the selected contributors as fixed allocations. A live preview shows each person's resulting percentage. If other, unselected contributors already hold fixed percentages that would conflict, the dialog names the conflict and blocks the change. Applying converts every selected contributor to a fixed allocation.
- Split Remainder — Converts every selected contributor to one share each in the remainder pool, clearing any fixed percentages they had.
Tips
- Add people to Contributors first: The contributor picker only finds people who already exist in your workspace's contributor roster, so set up the roster before building splits
- Use shares for "everyone else splits the rest": Share-based contributors rebalance automatically as people join or leave the split, while fixed percentages need manual edits
- Watch the Remainder Pool card: If fixed allocations creep up, the pool shrinks for everyone on shares — the card shows exactly what's left to divide
- Record the agreement in Notes: A note like "per anthology contract, May 2026" tells future-you where each percentage came from
- Remove and re-add to reassign: Since editing locks the contributor and role, the way to move a split to a different person is to delete it and create a new one
- Export when it's time to pay: The table's CSV export gives you each contributor's effective percentage to take into your accounting, since Inkwren doesn't calculate payouts from Sales itself