ABSTRACT
The importance of selling rights has increased greatly since the 1960s, although their importance has also inevitably been affected by such developments as vertical hardback–paperback publishing, multilingual publishing within the same publishing group, and restrictions on the range of rights granted to publishers by agents, particularly in the trade sector. Within a medium-sized to large publishing house, a specialist rights department is advisable, even if it starts as a single person with a computer and a simple record-keeping system. Externally, licensees like to build up relationships with rights sellers as regular partners who understand their markets and what projects are likely to be of interest to them; they are disconcerted by frequent changes of staff. Academic rights sellers will need to be up to speed on the range of content in a title, specialist terminology and competing titles from other publishers.
