26 June 2026
From now on, royalties for all Canongate contracts will be paid four times a year rather than twice, getting money into authors’ and agents’ hands more regularly and more quickly.
For longer than anyone alive has been working in publishing, the industry standard has been to pay royalties every six months. That convention has held even as the systems for managing money have improved and sped up.
We realised we could do better by our authors and, after a lot of work behind the scenes, now we can. It’s a process change, but it's an important one: starting this month we're moving from twice-yearly royalty payments to quarterly ones. This new schedule applies to all our book contracts. The first quarterly payment goes out at the end of June, covering the period from January to March 2026.
As a certified B Corp, we're committed to finding ways to improve how we work – for the people we publish, for the wider industry, and beyond. How quickly authors see payment for their work isn’t trivial. As our board director David Olusoga has put it, conventions like twice-yearly payment have “long had the effect of making it more difficult for people to make a living through their writing.” This is one meaningful way to make authors’ lives easier.
The change was led by our Head of Finance, Laura Wilkie, working in partnership with Virtusales, whose Biblio royalty system we use. It took real effort to make happen, and we're glad it has.
Jamie Byng, Canongate’s CEO, says, “Everyone at Canongate is thrilled at this exciting step as we all recognise how indebted we are to our authors and know how much this change will be appreciated by them.”
“Publishers often say that authors are at the heart of their businesses,” says Anna Ganley, Chief Executive of the Society of Authors, “but antiquated accounting practices often do not bear this out. And so, we are delighted that Canongate is leading the way in modernising its royalty accounting.”
You can read more about the change at the Bookseller.