26 Tips for Licensing International Rights
Any publisher can sell the right topic
Jan Nathan, executive director of PMA, the Independent Book Publishers Association, says it does not depend upon the size of the publishing company in regards to selling international licensing rights. Her organization, based in Manhattan Beach, Calif., represents 4,000 independent publishers. “People who are small can have as much success with rights sales as major publishers. The independents or small publishers sometimes have topics that the major houses have not even touched yet,” Nathan says.
Some books that do not sell well internationally are ones that contain a lot of references to American products or the U.S. dollar system, Nathan says. “Anything with too many Americanisms—those books will probably not achieve any kind of success internationally.” She says topics have to be general enough to affect everyone around the globe. “I think that if you have the right topic, you can do a lot of good business.”
Brian R. Hook is a freelance journalist based in St. Louis. He has written hundreds of articles for numerous publishers, including Dow Jones, McGraw-Hill and U.S. News & World Report, among others. Contact him by e-mail at brhook@msn.com.
