Case studies: Rights manager: Amelia

Amelia has a BA Hons English Literature from Newcastle University and works as a rights manager for a large publishing company.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my English degree. I really loved reading so looked into publishing and applied to loads of companies for some work experience. I was offered some temporary work with my current employer and got on really well with the team. I later got a call from their rights department asking me if I’d be interested in a job as a rights assistant. Since then I have become rights executive and now manager.

I don’t think my degree was that instrumental in my getting the job. Knowledge of books and literature and an appetite for reading are key, but I think anyone who wants to go into publishing enjoys reading. My most relevant skill was being adaptable and open to anything that came my way. Once I was on the work experience placement I was happy with everything that was on offer and just soaked up as much as I could. I went into it with no preconceived ideas which, looking back, I’m glad of it as it allowed me to make choices as I went along as to what interested me.

My days are pretty busy and I never leave the office feeling like the job is done. My inbox is usually full when I arrive and I’m often working to catch up with myself as things can come up in a day and take over.

I look after all UK-based rights and the rest of the team looks after translation rights, so I’m a bit of a one-person team a lot of the time. There is a lot of prioritising involved and I have a lot of ‘to do’ lists on the go.

I work across our entire list, including first serial, large print, audio and English reprints. As first serial rights are directly related to the newspapers, it can be sparked by a news story or a sudden hole in their next day’s paper that they need to fill.

I spend a lot of time submitting books, so there is a lot of skim reading involved, which I do on the tube or at home. As we are such a large publishing company, we also have an enormous backlist, which I have to keep on top of at the same time.

My main job is to try and get people to buy the rights to our titles. I’m fortunate that we publish some truly great titles, which can make my job easier but, at the same time, high-profile authors come with high-profile issues.

Often, more than one publisher/paper is interested so I conduct an auction, which can be very tricky and happen over the course of a day, with some serial auctions, or months for large print.

We draw up all our own contracts so I consult with the legal teams regularly. Once the books are sold I have to supply all the material and make sure they run when they are supposed to. There is a lot of back and forth with editors/publicity/agents to get it all to tie in to our wider publishing plans.

I love getting to read such a variety of books and having a direct impact on how they sell and where. Also, the team I work with is friendly and relaxed. Our director leads by example and is easy to approach.

Working with newspapers is the most challenging part of my role as they are pretty demanding and work quite differently from us. Also, working in such a huge company can be hard sometimes as there are so many people doing everything that things can get lost/overlap.

My advice to others is to make sure you’re not in it for the money. Also, be open about where you want to work, what department you want to work in (everyone wants to be an editor but you can have just as much say in a book working in sales or rights) and be patient. Publishing can be hard to get into so take any work experience that comes your way and be flexible and enthusiastic.

Also, publishing doesn’t just mean working for a book publisher - the publishing world is changing and there is a lot of cross-pollination between creative industries. We recently employed people with backgrounds in TV, bookselling, the music industry and marketing. All experience is good experience.