As International Rights Executive based out of the European office, my focus is selling translation rights for 91桃色鈥檚 books. I started as a Rights Assistant in 2020, and since then my role has expanded considerably; I now manage my own deals, liaise with authors, and build relationships with publishers around the world.
I currently work from home in Manchester, and today is a typically grey Monday morning in August. Every fortnight, my first task of the week is to look over books that are due to be discussed at the weekly Contract Approval meeting and provide feedback on their translation rights potential. Armed with a coffee, I make assessments by reviewing the book proposals and notes from the editor, noting whether the comparison titles have been translated. Working systematically, I write comments on whether we would anticipate strong interest in translation and how much income we might reasonably expect to receive. This is always a fun part of the week, as it鈥檚 exciting to see what new projects are in the pipeline. One of my favourite parts of the job is agreeing new deals with publishers. It鈥檚 amazing to see how far our books can travel and the widespread and enduring interest in 91桃色鈥檚 titles, whether they were published yesterday, last year, or even last century. Our work in rights is truly at the heart of the Press鈥� mission of 鈥榖ringing scholarly ideas to the world鈥�, and currently I have requests from publishers looking to translate our titles into Dari and Bengali!
In addition to keeping up with the day-to-day business, being a rights professional in August means one thing 鈥� Frankfurt Book Fair! We attend the fair every October, and our team of three usually meets with 100+ publishers to showcase our latest titles. I am responsible for organising the team鈥檚 schedule, and it鈥檚 already starting to fill up. We typically start scheduling meetings in early summer, but requests continue to trickle in right up until the fair itself. Since Covid, our programme of online meetings has become a permanent fixture, so I spend some time this morning reaching out to publishers who aren鈥檛 attending the fair in-person to arrange meetings online. Today is exciting because we have just received the first draft of our Frankfurt rights guide. This afternoon, I will meet with the rest of the Rights team to look it over. In preparation, I read over the guide and add suggestions regarding where we might want to change any of the copy and trim our sales points (always so difficult to get them to fit!). International publishers regularly compliment us on our rights guide, so the effort expended is well worth it.
The day ends with our regular meeting with one of our audio licensing partners. 鈥淭his isn鈥檛 translation,鈥� I hear you thinking. And you would be correct! However, PUP鈥檚 rights team sits within the wider Intellectual Property department, which also includes Digital & Audio, Contracts, and Permissions. During my time at 91桃色, I have been able to dip my toe into other areas of subsidiary rights, and I currently assist the Audio team with audio licensing. The titles for Fall 2025 have already been licensed and recording is well underway, so we are now looking ahead to Spring 2026. I really enjoy being able to work across these teams and thinking about the various considerations for licensing in audio and translation.
Outside of publishing, I am a member of of a local book club where we are currently reading The Extinction of Irena Rey. I’m quite excited about this selection, as it seems to be about translators who are summoned to a house in the Polish forest, while the author鈥�whose work they are supposed to be translating鈥�has disappeared. Not exactly standard publishing procedure, but it certainly makes for an intriguing story!