Publishing technology analyst and author Thad McIlroy at BISG Doing Rights Right event
By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
‘If you don’t know the value of IP, you don’t know the value of your company.’
On Friday, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) hosted their “Doing Rights Right 2026” event in New York City at the Goethe-Institut, organized by the organization’s Rights Committee.
Juergen Boos, President and CEO Frankfurter Buchmesse
Frankfurter Buchmesse President and CEO Juergen Boos provided the keynote for the event, recalling the first Frankfurt Rights Meeting forty years ago, and noting that the key issues that group of rights professionals were challenged with then are similar to the issues of today—changing world markets; the role of rights directors in an increasingly global business; and the day-to-day challenges of buying and selling rights across languages, territories, and formats.
“What I noticed, looking at that agenda is that, though the world, the tools, and some of the more unique challenges have changed, the actual business of rights remains remarkably the same,” Boos said. “Working in rights means navigating complexity: Different markets. Different legal frameworks. Different expectations.”
International rights expert Kris Kliemann
International rights expert and chair of the rights committee Kris Kliemann took a series of polls of attendees (both in-person and virtual) to highlight some of the challenges faced in the rights business—notably, not enough time to follow up on opportunities, not enough investment in systems and databases, and publishers seeing rights as an afterthought.
Presentations by some key companies that are trying to solve these challenges for publishers were included in the program to provide some solutions for these key problems.
In addition, Kliemann rolled out the “Translation Rights Royalty Statement Standard,” which the BISG Rights Committee has been working on for two years and which will help rights professionals spend “less time wrangling data, more time with actionable insights, and deeper conversations about good books and good business.”
The program would not have been complete without a discussion of how AI is impacting the business. Publishing technology analyst and author Thad McIlroy (pictured above) brought to life a blog post of his from the fall, “Licensing for AI: What Should Book Publishers & Authors Do?”, in which he attempted to dispel the fears and mistrust many publishers and authors have for AI by providing some insights into how they can, instead, work with these companies to create LLMs while also generating licensing revenue.
McIlroy highlighted a point that some publishers likely didn’t want to hear: that books make up an incredibly small percentage of the information out in the world. Furthermore, he noted that the publishing market is also quite small in comparison to the revenue and investment generated by AI companies, suggesting that there may be value in finding a way to work with these companies to make some revenue while it is an option.
The day closed out with founding partner and president of Neon Literary Anna Sproul-Latimer whose popular Substack How to Glow in the Dark pulls back the curtain on various aspects of the publishing industry. Sproul-Latimer talked about the things—both quantitative and emotional—that go into a book’s success, and how to navigate that.
For more information from BISG, visit their Knowledge Center which features a number of videos and tools for all areas of publishing.