BISG Royalty Statement Standards and HUGO: A Prototype Tool

The BISG Translation Rights Royalty Statement Standard (https://knowledgecenter.bisg.org/226a2o7/) defines a structured set of fields that make royalty statements clearer, more consistent, and easier to verify across publishers, agents, and rights holders. Its purpose is not to prescribe one visual layout, but to identify the information that should be present in a good translation-rights royalty statement: who the parties are, which contract and work the statement relates to, which formats were sold, how royalties were calculated, what balances or reserves affect payment, and what remittance or tax details are needed to reconcile the final amount.

The standard organizes royalty information into several practical categories.

• Contract-related fields identify the licensee, payer, licensor, contract IDs, contributor names, original and translated titles, language, sales territory, and advance. 
• Statement-specific fields cover the statement date, reporting period, prior balance, units sold, ISBNs, product formats, publication dates, list prices, royalty rates, royalty basis, royalty earnings, reserves, closing balance, and payment due. 
• Conditional fields cover sublicense income where applicable, including sublicensee, sublicense type, income received, licensor share, and amount due. 
• Remittance fields address payment-matching information, co-agent commission, VAT or tax ID, tax exemption status, withholding tax, and the final remitted amount.

The prototype translates these standards into a practical web-based tool. It allows a publisher to manually enter royalty-statement data, see a live two-page statement preview, validate completeness against BISG field categories, and export the result as PDF, JSON, or CSV. Field labels show whether information is required, recommended, conditional, or remittance-related, and optional BISG field IDs make the statement traceable to the underlying standard. The tool also includes formula transparency so that royalty earnings, reserves, balances, commissions, and net remittances can be reviewed rather than accepted as opaque totals.

HUGO was developed by Rights Committee member Sebastian Ritscher after comparing a real publisher royalty statement with the BISG standard. That comparison showed that real-world statements often contain useful sales and payment information but omit or obscure key fields such as advance amount, sales territory, list price, reserve activity, sublicense income, tax treatment, and payment reconciliation.

HUGO responds to those gaps by showing what a fully standards-aligned statement could look like and by helping publishers check whether their own statements contain the information needed for clarity and auditability. As a research tool, HUGO supports discussion about how royalty reporting could become more transparent without forcing publishers into a single accounting system or visual design. It demonstrates that BISG compliance can be implemented as a practical data checklist, a readable statement layout, and an exportable reporting format. 

The goal of this meeting is to introduce HUGO and consider its potential to help publishers, agents, and rights holders move toward royalty statements that are easier to understand, easier to compare, and easier to verify.