"The AuthorPortal.com platform grants authors access to their royalty statements and centralizes their contracts, manuscripts, and other documents in one easy-to-navigate interface. AuthorPortal.com also stores contracts and other information in the cloud and performs regular back-ups and security updates to ensure the safety of the documents. In addition, the platform can be directly integrated into MetaComet’s Royalty Tracker system."

Powerful. A central hub for all of the paperwork + royalties? That sounds amazing, not only for authors but for publishers. The added bonus of back-ups and security means that it's fit for independent presses who may spend inordinate time keeping track of the numbers at the expense of author marketing or other business development they could be doing. And, in fact, that's a big reason why the tool was created in the first place.

"Our objective is to bring the powerful features that the Big 5 [publishers] and Amazon provide their authors to the relationship-oriented independent publishers,” said MetaComet president David Marlin.

That's exciting news for the new generation of independent and smaller presses who can publish and market on par with the Big 5, but may run into trouble with the exponentially growing bookkeeping that comes with success.

The other bit that makes this great? It can work for authors as well. If both authors and publishers have equal access to the complicated financials and fine print, we are all one step closer to coming together as a publishing industry to walk strong and successful into what it means to publish in the 21st century.

What do you think? Does this sound like a good idea?

Image courtesy of Autumn2May via flickr