Print Publishing Top Licensing Earner

A list of the top licensing properties of 2006 hit my virtual desk today. From The Licensing Letter, a publication of market research firm EPM Communications, it tracks licensing sales - the money made in various industries by charging money to allow companies to use their intellectual property. For example, celebrities make money by allowing use of their names and images. Sports teams license logos and names. Guess what's seventh on the list? Print publishing. In terms of average royalty of 8.5%, it's almost up there with fashion's 8.6% and even the 9.2% that sports gets.

Don't get into the dollar amounts for a moment. What this data says to me is that printed text - old fashioned magazines and books - get licensed for sums that would be considered significant in the licensing industry. When publishers tell you that all the ancillary rights are insignificant, you know that selling the use of content to others is actually big business in the aggregate, and that sum is made up of the individual parts. When you give away rights because you won't "do" anything with them, you miss the point of modern business. You should be making money because someone else is making money.