ABSTRACT
The range of rights that can be licensed has continued to expand over the years, reflecting wider trading between different countries, new channels of book supply and the development of new technologies with potential for exploiting the written word in a variety of ways – the extraordinary expansion of the internet and the advent of media such as e-books are probably the most significant developments since the last edition of this book appeared in 1997. On the other hand, some more traditional areas of licensing have contracted, in particular the licensing of paperback rights to independent licensees (now largely replaced by vertical publishing within the same group) and to some extent the granting of low-price reprint rights (replaced in some markets by direct supply of the original publisher’s own edition at a special price). With the increasing number of multinational publishing groups, intercompany licensing also continues to expand.
