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QL Software Royalties

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 4:40 pm
by RWAP
It is interesting that a few software authors have mentioned to me that they never received royalties on the software they produced and which were sold by various QL publishers. Oddly the criticism is not just aimed at the smallest software houses, but some of the better known ones too.

Possibly because of the size of the QL market and the amount of any royalties was too small to care about, but I wonder whether this is why several authors are not now willing to release their software as freeware.

At least I always ensure that I pay out my royalties when they are due - but then I always received my royalties for my own software back in the day :D

Re: QL Software Royalties

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 7:38 pm
by RWAP
Thinking about it - didn't I read somewhere that a full page advert in QL World was around £1000 - if it was that much it's no wonder there was no money left to invest in new software and pay royalties.......

Re: QL Software Royalties

Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:56 pm
by NormanDunbar
Hmm. I must be one of the lucky ones then. DJC always paid royalty cheques, on time and with never a quibble. It was an absolute pleasure writing software for Dilwyn. As a budding author, Dilwyn offered me lots of advice and guidance and I believe, I wrote better quality programs as a result. And he's still on my Christmas card list even now! :D

Thanks Dilwyn. 1991 seems a long time ago now!


Cheers,
Norm.

Re: QL Software Royalties

Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2017 8:21 am
by robheaton
RWAP wrote:Thinking about it - didn't I read somewhere that a full page advert in QL World was around £1000 - if it was that much it's no wonder there was no money left to invest in new software and pay royalties.......
A £1000! I'm amazed anyone took them up on advertising space.

Re: QL Software Royalties

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 1:42 pm
by sdmicro
I can say from personal experience that trying to make any money at all, let alone a living, out of selling QL software from adverts in QL World was almost impossible for a small supplier. If you look at the ads issue by issue you will see how few were repeated after a short run. That is a sure sign that most didn't manage to break-even let alone make a profit. The answer was to build a substantial range of products as DP and DJC did with plenty of variety to attract as many users as possible. We ended up getting the majority of our sales through TK Computerware but even they eventually disappeared along with the likes of PDQL whose range always seemed rather smaller than their 3 or 4 page ads would suggest.

So, no, there wasn't a lot of money to pay wages or royalties although in my case I wrote my own programs anyway. Just as well!