Our Rights team extend the reach of our authors’ books so that readers everywhere can enjoy them. These include translation rights to foreign-language publishers, rights to other English-language publishers (e.g., the US, Canada, or Australia), serial rights to magazines and newspapers, and media rights for film, TV, and stage adaptations.
As soon as the manuscript is ready, they negotiate the best deal to make sure both Penguin and the author – get the best outcome. The sale of rights often helps to cover the cost of an author’s contractual advance.
Rights build fantastic relationships with editors and buyers all around the world and have a deep understanding of what our customers (the retailers) are looking to acquire. Rights make lots of international sales trips and attend many book fairs in different places, making them a close-knit team.
This group function department has four distinct teams organised around our publishing houses. Each team has location-specific territory experts and point people to connect with the individual publishing houses or streams.
Children’s Rights
This team sells rights across all of the PRH Children’s imprints encompassing pre-school, picture books, classic brands, fiction, and nonfiction. They also sell rights and printed co-editions for established global brands such as Peter Rabbit and Moomins alongside exciting new authors.
This team’s work spans illustrated publishing across all of Penguin’s adult ‘trade’ publishing houses, selling rights and co-editions for global brands such as Jamie Oliver and Ottolenghi, as well as singular titles such as Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book.
Adult’s rights
Mono Rights
The department then has have two teams licensing mono (black and white book) rights across fiction and nonfiction for our publishing houses, all the way from from serialisation and translation rights to large print and production files.
The team that sits in our Vauxhall Bridge Road location represents Ebury, Cornerstone, General, and Press. Their authors range from Michaela Coel to Josie Silver and Neil MacGregor to John Cleese.
The team that sits in our Embassy Gardens location represents Michael Joseph, Transworld, and Vintage. Their authors range from Raynor Winn to Anna Bailey and Tim Spector.