Licensing electronic rights: a starter for 10 - by David Attwooll
David Attwooll, Director of Attwooll Associates Ltd, a publishing
consultancy and licensing agency specializing in electronic media
Finding the right customers in the area of electronic rights usually requires active
hunting, and there are technical issues around delivering content. Electronic
rights deals can be very time-consuming and, as with all rights, can be done
in-house or outsourced to a specialist agency. Here are some pointers:
1. Electronic markets are more various than book markets, and can be segmented
in similar ways. But they can also sorted by ebusiness type, including:
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library ‘aggregators’ of data,
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ebook companies,
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internet service providers (ISPs) and portals,
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hardware manufacturers,
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elearning vendors,
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company websites, and
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mobile phone companies.
2. Understanding your ecustomer’s business model facilitates successful
licensing deals – for example, do they charge subscriptions, sell individual
ebooks, or rely on advertising revenue?
3. What do you actually own? What rights do you have to sell or license?
Conducting an audit of your intellectual property assets (including image rights)
is a critical first step.
4. Information-based content works well on screen and in searchable databases,
especially non-fiction and learning materials not organized in continuous prose.
Any metadata enabling users to find immediately what is relevant to them is
extremely valuable: the structure and formal tagging of content (including
images) are key elements.
5. Electronic file formats are becoming more generic. Using a flexible data
structure such as XML facilitates many deals. Many e-customers (especially
ebook companies) will also take adapted PDFs.
6. There are some industry norms for electronic licensing deals. Firstly, licensing
deals are non-exclusive. The definitions of e-rights granted will not usually be
territorial or by retail sales channel (as for print rights), but by specific product,
platform and market. Definitions should prevent data being reused in other
products (possibly in small chunks) by the same e-companies. Regarding payment
terms, for licences to aggregators of larger data products, advances or minimum
annual guarantees and a royalty based on usage are often achievable. By contrast,
ebook agreements are distribution deals, so revenues are retrospective, and
should be seen as net of an agreed discount (rather than a royalty).
7. Online users expect up-to-date content, and publishers may be required to
provide updates. This is both an organizational problem and a commercial
opportunity to add greater value.
8. Licence periods should be short and some control over the start date should
be specified (since launches are often delayed).
9. Security of data is essential and should be covered in the contract. Similarly, it
does not make sense to license unabridged, valuable data to a paying customer
who is then giving it away free on the web. Smaller subsets are usually sufficient
here.
10. Acknowledgements and feedback: in addition to full publisher and copyright
credits it is often possible to negotiate links to the publisher’s website. Analysis
of actual usage can be specified in the agreement and is extremely useful in
improving editorial content.
