Making Book Rights, Right
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Making Book Rights, Right Jeffery Corrick1 · Kris Kliemann2 · Brian O’Leary3
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract In 2017, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), a U.S.-based trade association dedicated to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the book industry supply chain, published Publishing Rights: An Untapped Opportunity. The white paper outlined six findings from an industry survey. Since then, BISG’s rights committee extended that initial research by updating a draft taxonomy for rights transactions. The new taxonomy defines rights data, transactions requests, transactions licenses, and royalty data. The taxonomy is being tested now in a set of pilot agreements between trading partners. Benefits of the proposed taxonomy are expected to include lower transaction costs, fewer errors in rights tracking and sale, and improved turnaround times for rights inquiries. Information about the work may be obtained by writing to [email protected]. Keywords Books · Rights · Licensing · Taxonomy · BISG · Rights committee · Standards · Metadata At its core, book publishing is a rights business. To be sure, manufacturing, distribution, and retail and library sales are all critical parts of book publishing. But the publishing process starts with someone who has rights to a work conveying some portion of those rights to another party. Those agreements usually are followed by payments that recognize the value of negotiated rights agreements. Authors, agents, and publishers are deeply involved in creating, interpreting, and managing the financial and operational aspects of rights and royalties. The business is complex, and practices have generally been home-grown. Attempts to create a standard format for reporting royalties based on rights agreements date back more than three decades, with only moderate progress obtained over that time. * Kris Kliemann [email protected] 1
Penguin Random House, New York, NY, USA
2
Kliemann and Company, Hastings on Hudson, New York, NY, USA
3
Book Industry Study Group, New York, NY, USA
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Publishing Research Quarterly
Contributing to the confusion: sometimes people use different terms to describe the same things. The opposite is also seen, with different things having common or similar names. These challenges affect the management of both inbound, purchased rights and outbound, sold rights. Difficulty tracking and managing rights affects reporting and paying royalties in a timely manner. A lack of standards increases transaction costs, slows response times, and can lead to avoidable errors. Developing a standard way to talk about rights, royalties, and permissions has been a Book Industry Study Group (BISG) priority for more than a decade. At BISG, we feel that addressing rights complexity starts with an agreed-upon taxonomy—a standard way to talk about rights. Since 2018, our Rights Committee, a group of BISG members who volunteer their time to discuss and address challenges affecting rights across the industry
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