From Fellini to Barthes: A Subsidiary Rights Perspective on Baltimore

It seemed as if a corner had been turned.

MaryKatherine Callaway stressed in her inaugural address that, in order for university presses to survive, we will need to be sensitive to business realities and industry change to continue to drive our missions forward; we will need to collaborate; and we will need to be a more visible part of our parent institutions' messaging and mission. Further meeting discussions focused on how best to capitalize on new platforms and, looking ahead, how to imagine and adapt to future publishing models. The enormity of these tasks is daunting; but, thinking from a subsidiary rights perspective, I have to laugh and admit that these are all objectives for which subrights staff is particularly well-suited. As a group, we are now in a uniquely strong position to contribute to each of them.

(1) Looking for new and hidden markets.

In "The Global Marketplace: International Sales," we learned that "there is a great and increasing hunger for American content." Sales are up in Southeast Asia and China, up as much as 40% in India, and holding steady in Japan. Appetite for our product overseas is strong, and whereas information is flowing more freely, it still has to secure a sublicense to be translated. William Hamilton (University of Hawai'i Press) has been able to grow his subrights program several-fold; it now contributes roughly 10% of the press's total revenue. Hamilton attributed much of this to translation subrights and copubs. Over time, he has found partner presses overseas that specialized in similar subject areas, and these presses have become "regular customers" for Hawai'i. Other presses may be able to follow Hawai'i's lead and capitalize on increasing appetites in foreign markets to similarly grow our translation revenue.

Further, permissions revenue continues to rise at university presses—up some 15-20% at some houses. This growth is spurred by new technology, adequate staffing, and swift and accurate handling of rights metadata (parsing IP profiles). Additional streamlining, automation, and procedural investment can support continued profitable growth in this area as well.

Last, all university press front and backlists are rife with material that could, potentially, be adapted to stage, radio, and/or TV and film. Derivative deals are rare, but they do happen, and it's important to recall that Hollywood, per se, would only be only one market for us; documentary and stage adaptations may be more common. These are all long shots but may be worth exploring. Traditionally, we have not courted such interest; but Hollywood and other new media publishers persist in offering derivative projects, and the financial upsides for a press is significant—10, 20, or 100 times that of translations. We have begun to venture some of our time at Indiana in this direction, and I will be happy to report back on the results. It may be laughable now, but it could result in serious capital and beneficial exposure; I wish us all such comedic trips to the bank for our presses.

(2) Behaving more collaboratively.

The focus of "Subrights and the Small Press" was on how tier-1 and tier-2 presses can grow subrights programs, preferably sooner rather than over many years. Drawing from nearly a century of subrights experience, both academic and commercial, panelists offered specific advice and recommendations for achieving benchmarks more quickly while minimizing costs. The panel shared strategic advice for growing subrights revenue and exposure with IP managers and press directors. Notes and resources have been posted to the AAUPWiki, and panelists are still open to fielding questions via email.

The panel's three key ideas exemplified collaboration: AAUP-wide cooperation, including sharing information and building subrights tools; vertical partnering, e.g., tier-4s sharing information on vetted and interested subagents with smaller presses; and lateral partnering (or tier-to-tier networking), e.g., presses with complimentary lists could pool resources to create significant economies of scale.

I conducted a survey of subrights staff after the meeting to gauge interest in some of these collaborative ideas. Approximately half of the AAUP membership responded (64 individuals from 62 presses), and the results have been posted via the AAUPWiki [link] and shared with the AAUP Central Office for further exploration. Formal and informal resource sharing and cooperation seem likely to increase as presses pursue more subsidiary rights opportunities.

(3) Being a more visible part of our parent institutions' messaging and mission.

At first blush, this particular call-to-action seems to be a reach for subrights—but translation deals are actually very "good ink" for our presses. Translations further the dissemination of our authors' work not only geographically but also culturally, embedding scholarship and the university brand deeply into international markets. They also give rise to new revenue on already held and paid-for properties (and yield gratifying bragging rights to authors!). Therefore they give our directors worthy ammunition when speaking with advisory boards and parent institutions.

As the AAUP membership reconsiders press-parent relations, we may find that news and statistics of translation deals with foreign university presses and commercial scholarly and trade houses are as well-received by advisory boards as they are by our authors. If not done so already, we may want to fold stats on new deals and trends in subsidiary rights into our reporting to our directors.

(4) Help prepare for new models—the competitive divide for the next ten years.

Callaway observed that "the sheer pace of change remains staggering." The pre-meeting workshop "Third-Party Permissions" discussed what rights and permissions managers can do in light of accelerating industry changes.

Participants acknowledged that hybridized models require hybridized information, and that publishers are in the midst of an adaptive curve with respect to handling this information. The traverse of accurate rights information from author to data feed illuminates an increasing competitive divide for commercial scholarly presses and university presses: from a profitability standpoint, the ability to streamline rights information is an opportunity to gain advantage over other houses.

Regardless of how sophisticated the approach—press-wide database or robust spreadsheets—publishers that can accurately parse and efficiently communicate rights metadata have an edge moving forward. They and their authors are able to generate the most revenue with the least staff-hour revisits, and thus to devote more of their time to other profitable endeavors and new models.

While we can't anticipate each and every new information need and implementation horizon, we can easily observe the trends toward "chunkability" and toward the resulting transparency required by automation. For systems to chunk content for access or sale, metadata is needed on each chunk. Metadata processes that are now merely advantageous may soon become a matter of necessity, and as adapting to new procedures from a standstill is often suboptimal, presses will need to embrace these trends to gain and keep an advantage.

Of course, a balance must be struck between staying ahead of the curve and focusing on existing publishing opportunities and profitable subrights initiatives. Workshop discussion focused on finding this balance by improving internal and external communication, for example, through the use of permission logs to share information between author and press, through stressing new trends and timelines in manuscript preparation guidelines and on our websites, through ongoing copyright training for staff, and through clear instructions to authors and editors throughout, along with exceptionally open communication between departments.

Ultimately, our authors are the ones that must understand not only what is required of them and us today but also why it is required: namely, that the sooner accurate and complete rights data comes together and is communicated to the press, the more profitable publishing and promotional options are open to us.

From the pre-meeting "Clearing Third-Party Permissions" workshop to the closing "Subrights and the Small Press" session, it was good to learn that the work of subsidiary rights and permissions has such strong resources across the AAUP. There are specific ways subrights can increase revenue and improve options for our presses: looking into support from and collaboration with other presses and the AAUP to increase benefits, including the possibility of sharing information on subagents; continuing to pursue lucrative translation and adaptation deals, and keeping clear records of them for parent universities; and through streamlining procedures and improving on internal and external communication to free up time and money for strategic exploration.

I have heard that Roland Barthes once remarked that the real work in life happens while one is on vacation. He must have been speaking of an AAUP Annual Meeting. I can't wait to hear what's happening in Chicago!

Peter Froehlich
Rights & Permissions Manager and Assistant to the Director, Indiana University Press