Anyone arrange/compose for Sheet Music Plus?

[scottw]

Just curious: I received an e-mail from them offering to publish anything I wanted to sell.

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They will set it up on their website, sell it, electronically distribute it--to the tune of 55% of the list price. If there were enough volume, I suppose there is a profit to be made, but that's still a pretty steep cut!

[PMeuph]

Do they take care of copyright permissions, too, or are you left holding the bag for that bit? You must have permission to arrange, permission to publish, and possibly mechanical rights if it will be recorded. (This last one is pretty uncommon, however. Usually the group who is making a CD would pay this themselves.)

Permission can be both difficult to obtain and a bit costly.

Nope, they won't do that for you.
What is going on is publishing with SMP's Digital Printing program:

Do I need to have publishing rights to the sheet music?

Yes, we take publishing rights and copyright laws very seriously. You will be asked, as part of your sheet music submission, to validate what type of rights you currently have:
Original composition - the sheet music is entirely your own
Publishing and distribution rights acquired - you have worked with a publisher or copyright holder and received approval to sell the sheet music on a worldwide basis
Unique version of a public domain sheet music - you have arranged a public domain work in a unique way that differentiates it from products currently available for sale on sheetmusicplus.com

I imagine that this is kind of like Sibelius' score exchange and whatever Finale's was called.

I never sold anything on Sibelius, but one of my free arrangements has 100 views and 50 prints.


I might have to transfer some music over to SMP.

[scottw]

I don't have too many reasons to worry about public domain, as virtually everything I would put up there is Civil War in origin and arranged for the instrumentation of that period. They seem to take care of everything, but I balk a little at the 55% commission they charge. That seems a tad excessive.

[PMeuph]

I don't have too many reasons to worry about public domain, as virtually everything I would put up there is Civil War in origin and arranged for the instrumentation of that period. They seem to take care of everything, but I balk a little at the 55% commission they charge. That seems a tad excessive.

Honestly, that's better than ANY traditional publishing company.

Most offer between 10% and 20%.

PM "who has gotten royalty cheques for $4.50" euph

[scottw]

Yes. 55% is much higher than from a traditional publisher.

doesn't seem right somehow that you do all the work getting something ready and make less than half. I do understand though, that I would have to set up marketing apparatus and that that would be costly and likely to reach a lot fewer people.

[PMeuph]

Several friends of mine are published through big houses, like Southern, Kendor-Vanguard, etc.

I would say that 11% to 14% is pretty close to what they get.

You do next to zero work. Arranging at that level is pretty fast and fairly easy. The real work and EXPENSE is vetting/editing it, engraving it, printing a run of it, marketing it and shipping it. An online publisher has pretty much zero overhead, so giving 45% to the schlub who provides them with stuff to sell is pretty fair.

If you do not like how the business works you are free to self-publish to your heart's content. It is a fairly low profit, high cost way to make a living.

And copyright law is pretty confusing and can lead to large legal expenses or loads of wasted work.

+1

_____
The only case where self publishing makes sense, imho, is if you're an established composer, with the right mindset for business. Peter Graham owns his own publishing company, as does Philip Sparke and several others in that realm. In that case, it might become profitable...

But, if you have about 10 arrangements, you'll never recoup the time you spend promoting, printing equipping yourself to print, setting up upfront runs, travel to shows, setting up a webpage. etc...

Plus the market for PD arrangements seems to be growing smaller and smaller by the minute. Many people (not unlike Klaus on this forum) seem to be distributing a lot of material for free, a lot of midi/sibelius/finale files are available on IMSLP or CPDL. Many people have access to computer notation software....All these factors are making the skills of transcribing a bach prelude for TE Quartet a lot more commonplace than they were, let's say 40 years ago.

[scottw]

Thanks, all, for the mini-education!
I had no idea how this all works. I have never had occasion to need such knowledge before. I will look into it further. thanks again!
Scottw

[scottw]

Got over 1100 pieces there now.

It's great exposure, if you don't mind doing the printwork.

Ken

What do you mean by "the printwork"?

[scottw]

Every piece they order, I do the printing.

whoa! Isn't everything digital and sent by e-mail? At least that's my understanding of it. It is ordered online and they send the encrypted file to the customer?