Doing the taxes for my little writing company led me to discover two shorts on the DMsGuild front. I'm wondering how common this situation is before escalating it to them, because there's frankly not a ton of juice here to make it worth the squeeze. But trying to tie royalties to sales for tax purposes failed, and I had to fall back to what they actually paid. Here are the two issues I found:

1) They take a dollar off the top every time you pull money out. Not a huge deal, as this is $12 a year for us. But since they already get a 50% cut, it bothers me when they take their transaction fee out of my side.  Presumably their cut is to cover their costs of doing business.

and, more importantly...

2) The numbers simply don't match. The royalty report shows just under $1000 for 2021 and the payouts plus current balance are around $140 lower. I can't see any reason why. No purchases are in the account for the period, etc.

Am I alone here?

To recreate, run your "Royalty Report" for a time period.  Then run your "Customer Account Payment History" report.  Do these match?

From their site...

QuoteWith each digital sale, you receive either 70% or 65% of what your customer pays, depending on whether you are an exclusive partner with OneBookShelf or non-exclusive, respectively.

Similarly, on print sales, you receive 70% or 65% of the price paid, less the print cost of the book (or cards) that we print to fulfill the customer order. For example, your rulebook might be $20. If it costs $5 to print the book, you'd receive $20 − $5 = $15 x 70% = $10.50 per sale.

Which is now different from last time I looked at the site a year ago.

But could some of the loss be accounted for from POD purchases? Because in the example above they give you could lose 25% of a sale just from printing, then 30 or 40% more lost from that due to retailer fee. In their example the total sales loss amounts to about 47.5% for an exclusive product if my math is right?

Quote from: Omega on April 01, 2022, 10:38:23 PM
From their site...

QuoteWith each digital sale, you receive either 70% or 65% of what your customer pays, depending on whether you are an exclusive partner with OneBookShelf or non-exclusive, respectively.

Similarly, on print sales, you receive 70% or 65% of the price paid, less the print cost of the book (or cards) that we print to fulfill the customer order. For example, your rulebook might be $20. If it costs $5 to print the book, you'd receive $20 − $5 = $15 x 70% = $10.50 per sale.

Which is now different from last time I looked at the site a year ago.

But could some of the loss be accounted for from POD purchases? Because in the example above they give you could lose 25% of a sale just from printing, then 30 or 40% more lost from that due to retailer fee. In their example the total sales loss amounts to about 47.5% for an exclusive product if my math is right?

It tells you the royalty level on the report, and DMsGuild are all 50%.

And we're not cool enough for POD.  They're only doing it for pre-approved titles, AFAIK.

That doesnt match up even with their stated fees???

Quick check shows yeah, DMs Guild does indeed take 50%.

Doing some quick math looks like you lost 57% of the total sale. Or 7% more than should. Almost looks like a state tax. But Drive-Thru makes no mention of regional sales tax or taxes at all so that is likely a dead end too.

They do mention that funds can not be withdrawn until a month has passed. Could it be they also do not show you actually have the funds till you can access them? Also seems unlikely.

Might want to get on Redit or BGG and ask on one of the applicable channels. Or ring up Druve-thru and ask?