How the Imprimatur Index is built.
A transparent rating system for literary intermediaries — agencies, publishers, imprints, adaptation studios, prizes, and magazines. Six data sources. Five weighted subscores. Quarterly refresh. Institutions cannot pay to improve their grade — methodology and source data are published in full.
Guiding Principles.
The Imprimatur Index exists to answer a single question for authors, agents, and producers: which literary intermediaries actually compound author careers — and which extract from them?
- Public records + payment-rate disclosure. Every input sourced from publicly available author payment-rate disclosures, BookScan / NPD Book sales data, PACER author-publisher disputes, Hollywood adaptation production records, trade press (Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch), and Hard Shiver's editorial-cohort framework.
- Institutions cannot pay. No rated institution has paid, can pay, or has been offered the opportunity to pay for inclusion, exclusion, or modification of their grade.
- Quarterly refresh. Grades update every 90 days; material events trigger interim updates.
- Subscore transparency. Every grade decomposes into five public subscores.
- Right of correction. Institutions may submit documented corrections via published Appeals process.
The Six Data Sources.
Author Payment-Rate Disclosure
Author Guild surveys + author payment-disclosure databases. Critical for Author Treatment subscore.
BookScan + NPD Book Sales Data
Industry-standard book sales tracking. Source for Sales / Distribution Reach subscore.
PACER Federal Court Filings
Author-publisher disputes, royalty audits, contract enforcement litigation. Critical for risk-band classification.
Hollywood Adaptation Records
Production company filings, IMDb production records, trade press (Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline). Critical for Adaptation Track Record subscore.
Trade Press
Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, The Bookseller (UK). Industry-perspective benchmarking.
Hard Shiver Editorial-Cohort Framework
Hard Shiver's published anonymized opt-in editorial-cohort feedback on intermediary experience.
The Five Subscores.
Author Treatment
Royalty rates, advance norms, contract clarity. Right-of-reversion practices. Audit-rights enforcement. The author-economics dimension.
Editorial Quality
Selection rigor, editorial-craft depth, list curation. Substantive vs. line editing. The literary-craft dimension.
Sales / Distribution Reach
Actual market impact: BookScan + NPD sales velocity, distribution depth, international rights placement.
Adaptation Track Record
IP sale-through to screen + stage + audio. Studio relationship depth. The IP-monetization dimension.
Rights Posture
Author retention vs. acquisition aggressiveness. Reversion clauses. Subsidiary rights handling. The author-IP-protection dimension.
Weighting & Scoring.
Why these weights? Author Treatment is heaviest because royalty rates + contract clarity directly determine the author's economic position over the life of the work. Editorial Quality second because editorial craft determines the literary work itself. Sales / Distribution Reach and Rights Posture complete the institutional-quality assessment. Adaptation Track Record is meaningful but bounded — many serious literary works are not optimized for adaptation.