Getting Started
The first step towards experiencing the ease of using PubGizmo is probably the least fun: prepping for import your press’s data, including the titles, contacts (creators, translators, literary agents, etc.), editions, contracts, and optionally, previous sales numbers. While you could manually enter everything, importing will be faster, less work, and more accurate, especially if your dataset is large.
Get Your Data into Excel
PubGizmo imports your data from spreadsheets, which you may already use to manage your data. Most software will export to Excel or tab- or comma-delimited formats, which we can also work from. We have templates to get you started organizing everything in the correct format and columns:
- Google Sheets: we prefer working in Google Sheets, because you can share them with us, and we can test import these. If there are minor issues, we make the edits on the sheets themselves, and try again. Less back-and-forth than emailing Excel sheets. Plus: Google Sheets are free. Open the template here, then go File > Make a Copy to create your own document on Google Drive to work from.
- Microsoft Excel: you can also work directly in Excel, and email us the sheets. Click here to download pre-formatted sheets to use as a model for organizing your data.
When you submit your sheets, please indicate the version. Files you download today are Version 1.7.
Prepare Five Excel Sheets
- Contacts (people)
- Organizations
- Titles
- Editions
- Contracts
You can email us at any time for help with formatting your sheets. Share your work with us at any time in the process (by using the share function in Google Sheets, or emailing your Excel files) so we can ensure you’re going in the right direction.
Rules
- Please maintain the column order.
- Try to use date format YYYY-DD-MM (Excel may reformat these to match your computer’s format settings – this is okay).
- Be relentlessly consistent with all spelling and capitalization. You’ll see in the notes below instances where consistency is essential.
- Data used to match must exactly match; for example, the Title column on the Editions sheet must perfectly match the title as it appears on the Titles sheet; computers are extremely literal. To match correctly, the following column data must be consistent throughout:
- Author Name
- Title (only – do not include the Subtitle when matching)
- Organization Name
Here are specific sheet notes:
Titles
- Title: you get to decide on the convention for the first article (A, An, The) when entering a title, by placing it at the beginning (e.g., A Tidy Armageddon) or at the end (e.g., Tidy Armageddon, A) – just be consistent. All title entries must be unique.
- Genre: you can enter multiple genres in each cell; please separate them with a semicolon (not comma). Important: since PubGizmo will add any genres(s) you input to your master value list, ensure that these are consistent through, e.g., if you call it “Science Fiction” for one title, do not call it “SciFi” for another, or you’ll end up with both genres in your list and selectors. Tip: “Nonfiction” (or “Non-fiction,” or “Non fiction”) remains the most evasive genre in terms of consistency – use whatever you like, but please make sure it’s identical throughout.
- BISAC Codes: enter if you have these (max: 3).
Contacts
- First Name, Last Name: Use the Contact’s real or legal name, e.g., the name you’d make a cheque out to.
- Pen Name(s): If the Contact/author publishers under a name or names other their own legal name (i.e., pen name, pseudonym, nom de plume), enter them, each separated by a semi-colon, if there is more than one.
- Organization: Enter only if this is relevant to the Contact’s data; for example, if this Contact is a literary agent, the name of their affiliated Literary Agency should go here; PubGizmo will create both the Contact record and the the Organization record, plus will tie them together. And please fill in the Contact’s Role at Org column – what role does the Contact play at that Org?
- Deceased: Enter “1” if this contact is deceased; also, fill in one or both of the following, if applicable:
- Estate Contact: The name of the Contact (person) who manages the estate, or acts as executor or beneficiary.
- Estate Organization: iY the estate is managed by an organization, enter it here.
Editions
- ISBN: Import will accept valid ISBN13s with or without dashes.
- Edition Format: To simplify data entry, PubGizmo uses Royalty Groups, which each cover a subset of Edition Formats. The out-of-the-box definitions from PubGizmo’s Admin module are shown at right. For example, Royalty Group “Print” includes paperbacks and hardcovers; “Electronic” includes ePubs and PDFs, etc. You can fully customize Royalty Group and Edition Format names and grouping to suit your press’s needs, and your import sheet should reflect your definitions; please let us know how you will set these up before we import your data. Entries in Edition Format column must exactly match those shown in the screen capture at right, if you will not be customizing these, or they must match those from a list you provide to us before import.
- Units Sold to Last Statement: Royalty rates that include an escalation clause are based on number of books sold, so any quantities that do not come from sales sheet data must be entered/imported manually. That is, PubGizmo needs to know how many copies have been previously sold, to compute escalation. Fill in this column if both of the following are true:
- applicable contract includes an escalation clause, and,
- you are not going to import previous sales data.

Contracts
Columns for the Entire Contract
For columns B-R (shaded in the template), do not not enter repeating data, i.e., the Contract Holder Name column applies to/covers all subsequent editions, so you need only enter it in the first row for that particular contract (subsequent entries for the same title will be ignored). In other words, these columns cover the entire contract; rows S and beyond represent individual clauses of this contract, and so they will each differ.
Always keep clause data for a contract together in subsequent rows, so the import knows they belong to the contract on the first line.
- Contract Holder Name: The entity who actually signed the contract, generally an author, but it could be translator, or an organization, in the case of a publisher sub-licencing the title’s publication (see Contract Holder Type, below).
- Contract Holder Type: Either “Contact” (i.e., a human, with a contact record), or “Org”, if the contract is an organization.
- If a title has multiple contracts (e.g., author, translator), enter each separately, and be sure to indicate the Role.
- If a contract applies to a collective (several names on a single contract, who will receive one royalty payment, i.e., not separate contracts), input all names in the Contract Holder Name column, each delimited by a semicolon. Each will receive a copy of the royalty statement, with all names listed as the contractee.
- Languages Included: You can leave this blank if the rights cover all languages, or enter “All”. If the contract covers a specific language or languages, separate these with a semicolon.
- Languages Excluded: Enter languages here only if the contract specifically excludes them. Again, for multiple entries, separate each with a semicolon.
Columns for Clauses on the Contract
Columns after this point represent individual clauses on the single Contract record defined above.
- Royalty Group or Edition: this must be one of the following (royalty groups show here in bold; this would be most commonly used, but if you have different terms for, e.g., Paperback vs Hardcover, use the actual edition format, as shown here in italics):
- Electronic
- Audio
- Paperback
- Hardcover
- ePub
- MOBI
- Audiobook
- Region: indicate one region only, and use the exact format shown below.
- Several regions are pre-defined; the following continents consist of countries listed in the “seven-continent model” defined on this Wikipedia page:
- Africa
- Asia
- Europe
- North America
- South America
- World – all countries
- PubGizmo includes several pre-defined special regions:
- CA Foreign – all countries except Canada
- Canada – Canada only
- Canada & US
- United States – United States only
- US Foreign – all countries except United States
- You can also create your own regions; each must use a unique name (not used above), and can be assembled from any combination of countries. But let us know about those before we import, so we can define them in your instance of the solution.
- Countries are defined using their official ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 designation; these match the code as used on sales sheets from Ingram, iTunes, etc. With that in mind, ensure that any sales sheets you receive or produce use the official ISO code to identify the country of sale.
- If your press uses unconventional region definitions, e.g., North America includes CA and US only, please let us know before import – we will edit those regions to match your definitions.
- Follow the model to enter the rate in the Rate column. Only if the clause includes escalation, fill in each next tier with the “starts at” rate (the number of sales at which point the royalty escalates to the next tier), and then the rate for that tier. Fill in only as many tiers as you need.
- Only if the clause includes escalation: populate the Esc Count Sales from Region column with a region name only as shown above, in items 3 and 4. This will determine which sales in which regions (countries) will be counted to determine when the escalation hits the next tier. Most presses use World (i.e., sales anywhere in the world count).
- Only if the clause includes escalation: populate the Esc Count Sales of Royalty Group or Edition Type column with a royalty group, as defined in item #1, above.
Sales Data
PubGizmo includes a feature that makes the import of sales data, either individual or aggregated sales, a cinch. You can find more info on importing sales data here.
You can import sales sheets for previous years, if you have them. So for example if you have all your Ingram sheets from 2021, you will be able to import these – PubGizmo uses the Invoice Date (or equivalent) column on the sheet to determine what year to apply the sales to, and compute that royalty.
Finishing Up
When you are done, submit the sheets by email. We will import them and provide a report if problems prevented something from importing.
You will have to perform a bit of work on your data after import. Excel cannot represent everything the way the database in PubGizmo can (otherwise you wouldn’t need PubGizmo).
Please let us know if you need any help prepping your data.