Why Permissions Matter to Publishers

PLS Rights Group - Permissions Subgroup

Permissions can often be at the bottom of a publisher’s to do list so it’s important to know why you should have a process for managing permissions as efficiently as possible. Hopefully the five reasons below will convince you that permissions are worth investing a little extra time and effort into creating efficient processes within your business.

1. Revenue

It’s the first item on this list because permissions can be an additional source of revenue for you and your authors. Permissions revenue doesn’t require a sales team to generate business and revenues generated from an efficient permissions process can often be an added bonus on top of your usual rights sales.

2. Opportunity to reach new audiences

It’s worth keeping in mind that just because you’re granting a permission free of charge doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. While permissions can certainly benefit you financially, it can also be an opportunity for your content to reach a wider audience whether you’re granted permission for a fee or free of charge. Many publishers see issuing licences for free as another channel to get exposure for their content and their authors, particularly in the academic sector where authors want their research to reach as wide and audience as possible.

Often, permissions requests are authors are seeking permission to republish their own content so it can also be an opportunity to continue author care by providing good, prompt service to your authors and allow them to spread their content to different audiences.

Also at the more showbiz end of things, a reading or quote from a work in  a film or TV show can bring an author to the attention of a whole new audience.

3. Engagement with readers and customers

Permissions also offer an opportunity to engage with readers and customers. Often, the permissions team will be the only opportunity a member of the general public may have to interact with a publisher. Providing a good service for requestors can help boost the reputation of your company and perhaps even increase the number of incoming requests and permissions revenues as requestors will know they can receive a quick response from you in the future.

4. Protecting copyright and your content

We also need to remember that permissions is an important part of the copyright framework. If you make it easy to get permission to reuse content, you’re limiting the chances of requestors using your content without permissions. Additionally, we need to be able to say as an industry that there are efficient processes in place to license content in order to mitigate risk of further copyright exceptions in the future and permissions are particularly at risk for quotation exceptions.

5. Supporting new creative endeavours

And finally, permissions is an opportunity to support new creative endeavours. While the majority of requests will likely be for standard republication rights, there are certainly no shortage of interesting and innovative projects that come through the permissions pipeline. Projects that have come through our PLSclear platform include books being used as props in new television shows and films, quotes to be included in museum exhibitions and installation art, reinterpreting a poem into dance, and lines of poetry going onto Poems on the Underground posters.