Rights management for small presses

Small presses face extraordinary pressures in 2023 with the news that Chapters/Indigo — the major retail channel for many small publishers — has reported unprecedented losses. To find new income streams to get them through this challenging period, small presses need to be more creative with their existing assets. The task for this project is to review a large number of small-press publishing agreements to analyze what rights the publisher holds (i.e., what rights are available for licensing), what rights have been licensed to date (e.g., translation), and who has licensed them. Although one might assume that publishers are well aware of what rights they have bought and sold, according to one publisher's findings (Halket, 2021), many publishers do not realize that they have valuable assets going under- or undeveloped — and potentially face liabilities by violating the terms of licensing agreements they have entered. This project is a preliminary step in the larger development of a rights management tool for nonprofit publishers.