Manhattan Beach

“Wide open and full of potential” is how Anne Landa, rights and exports manager for Sourcebooks Inc., characterizes the market for licensing international rights. “It is simply about placing the right books with the right people and seeing the whole thing through,” Landa—who works out of her home office in San Diego, Calif.—says about selling licensing rights to publishers around the globe for Sourcebooks. International licensing rights increased 20 percent last year at the Naperville, Ill.-based publisher. Sourcebooks, an independent publisher of more than 900 trade titles, has had books translated into 36 languages and published in 34 countries. Landa says she expects the upward

In a world where small, independent business owners have been giving way to the likes of Wal-Mart or the seemingly ubiquitous Starbucks, there is one segment of society in which independents are on the rise. Independent operations in publishing are swarming the market like bees on a honey-drenched hive. The reason, some say, is due in part to advanced home technology, making the idea of becoming a published writer more accessible to the masses—specifically with the advent of print-on-demand, blogging, e-zines and other venues that allow sometimes even the not-so-literate to become self-described authors. But high numbers do not translate to