Founded in 1990 and based in Montreal, Quebec in Canada, renowned comic book and graphic novel publisher, Drawn & Quarterly, has been described by Time magazine as “the most elegant comics publisher in North America”. From its humble beginnings as a single-issue magazine, D+Q is now an internationally-recognized publisher of the world's best cartoonists which continues to innovate and grow at an impressive pace.
D+Q is dedicated to high production values, editorial integrity and artistic autonomy, and as such the publisher has been on the look-out for a system that will not only uphold its present-day high standards, but also support its growth and development for many years to come. As a graphic publishing house, D+Q needed a system that both understands and enables a business model that is more readily focussed on images and illustrations than your average ‘traditional’ book or product publisher. D+Q selected the Biblio suite of publishing software to:
Consolidate its bibliographic, production, contracts, rights and royalties data in a single, fully-integrated system - enabling D+Q’s teams to see a single source of truth for all its metadata;
Automate and streamline digital workflows that are essential to the publishing lifecycle to reduce costs, save time, increase productivity and ensure that their metadata reaches those who need it most; and
Better record, report on and communicate Rights and Royalties information, ensuring that staff, authors and agents have easy online access to statements (on a range of devices).
The Problem
Prior to Biblio, D+Q had separate systems for its title data, production data, contracts, rights and royalties. For staff, this meant that there was no single location from which to retrieve the necessary data and no way to be sure that the information on their screens was the most up-to-date version. Metadata was being manually sent to a variety of distributors through each of their systems, making it very labor-intensive to keep each source up-to-date with the latest title data and most complete marketing materials.
Furthermore, D+Q’s Rights and Royalties processes needed an overhaul to better record rights sales and manage the ingestion of various sales files internally. Royalties statements were being manually delivered to authors and agents, and their royalty system did not have the flexibility for increased subrights sales and a more comprehensive e-book program.
The Solution
D+Q identified Biblio as the solution to its issues and will be implementing the Bibliographic, Contacts, Contracts, Rights, and Royalty processing workflows, plus the Royalty Portal into its digital infrastructure over the coming months. We look forward to working with them even more closely and seeing the implementation take wing!
D+Q explains why it chose Biblio above all the other publishing systems presently on the market:
“As D+Q enters its fourth decade of business, we did a full audit of our current systems with an eye towards moving to the cloud and all departments working in sync, internally and with our distributors. Virtusales impressed us with how holistic the Biblio system is; how they have been doing this for twenty years; and upgrading what they offer based on the changing needs of the industry and technology. Streamlining our workflow will allow us to focus on our #1 priority – publishing graphic novels by the world's best cartoonists.”
Peggy Burns, Publisher, Drawn & Quarterly
“We are excited to have this iconic graphic novel publisher using BiblioLIVE to manage and improve efficiencies in their publishing process.”
Rod Elder, Executive Vice President - North America
Virtusales Publishing Solutions
About Biblio
Biblio enables content-led publishing models to help businesses to fully utilize their IP and maximize their income regardless of the publishing formats chosen. Publishing houses are therefore free to focus on growing their business in the sound mind that all their data, assets and essential documentation – from editorial right the way through to royalties – are being recorded and stored in a way which will better the performance of the business, and will increase effective communications (both internally and externally, with staff, business partners, authors and agents alike).
Biblio is proven to help publishing houses of all shapes and sizes to save time, reduce duplication of efforts and increase the access to key information and documents company-wide. The only difficulty after implementing will be deciding what to do with the time you’ve freed up!
By choosing Biblio’s comprehensive system, your publishing house will be able to:
manage multiple formats including books, e-books, audiobooks, packs which include non-book products, and merchandise;
easily maintain high-quality metadata and enhanced ONIX feeds;
control and record all aspects of safety-testing (if applicable);
generate and authorise contracts with software that enables full rights management;
create costings and schedules for production;
raise purchase orders within the Biblio system;
handle complex royalty calculations and payments;
and much, much more.
About Virtusales Publishing Solutions
Virtusales is the creator of the industry leading Biblio suite of publishing software.
Working with some of the world's leading academic, scholarly, professional and trade publishers such as Penguin Random House, Harvard University Press, Hachette, Bloomsbury and Macmillan Publishers, Virtusales is streamlining publishers' workflows and bringing efficiencies to their business processes with innovative software, exceptional service and a collaborative approach.
Our leading edge, web-based technology, rapid development cycle of new functionality and close working relationships with our customers ensure that our client publishers are able to manage and adapt to the industry's challenges more efficiently, now and in the future.
Find out more here or contact us for further information.
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