Rights Manager (Rights & Permissions)

Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876, is America's first research university and home to nine world-class academic divisions working together as one university.

We are seeking a Rights Manager who will be a professional member of JHUP management with primary responsibility for managing subsidiary rights sales for all Press books and journals. The incumbent will be required to work closely with the accounting department to ensure that Rights revenue is promptly and accurately recorded.

Under the direction of the Associate Executive Director of the Press, the Rights and Licensing Manager will be responsible for managing subsidiary rights sales for the Press’s books and journals divisions. The Rights & Licensing Manager handles master licensing partnerships, permissions, and LLM licensing for both divisions, oversees the translation business for the books division, and manages JHUP’s rights database, copyright registration, and archiving processes.

The Press is committed to honoring every person’s inherent dignity as human beings and making that the foundation of our organizational culture. We proactively find ways to ensure opportunities that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. We strive to publish courageously, giving voice to groundbreaking ideas. We support each other and our stakeholders and envision a future where knowledge enriches the lives of every person. The successful candidate will join a welcoming community that is inclusive and values the contributions and perspectives of individuals from all backgrounds.

Specific Duties & Responsibilities

• Manage permissions business. Develop and maintain a process for establishing permissions fees (for reprinting, excerpting, or otherwise licensing journals and book content), negotiating and documenting agreements, collecting on permissions requests, processing and documenting incoming permissions payments.
• Administer master licensing partnerships with vendors such as Copyright Clearance Center, Cengage, and ProQuest. Ensure timely collections of revenues, facilitate timely reporting to accounting, negotiate contract renewals, and evaluate new opportunities.
• Manage translation business. Identify, pursue, and negotiate translation opportunities for the books division and ensure timely and systematic collection of revenues. Establish relationships with sub-agents and international publishers. Attend Frankfurt International Book Fair, BookExpo America, and other rights meetings as required.
• Recommend enhancements to rights database and ensure that it is kept up to date, indicating rights available, rights and permissions sold, terms of license, and other critical data elements.
• Develop and oversee production of collateral material, when necessary, to facilitate rights sales.
• Help books marketing and acquisitions staff facilitate licensing agreements with corporate entities (such as pharmaceutical companies), corporate or consumer web sites, audio publishers, publishers seeking reprint or co publishing opportunities, and electronic content aggregators.
• Manage copyright registration and archiving processes (including the Press library) for all Press books and journals.
• Collaborate with Executive Director of the Press on LLM licensing opportunities, staying abreast of new markets for licensing including for training, retrieval augmented generation, and other emerging applications.
• Facilitate audio licensing agreements, new audio partnerships, and existing audio agreements, ensuring that knowledge of AI-narration and other AI-tools is current.
• Work closely with the journals division director to manage existing licensing agreements, post revenue, and manage timely payments of permissions revenue to journal authors.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree.
• Five years of professional experience in subsidiary rights or business development work in a publishing organization, including prior contract negotiation experience required.
• Additional education may substitute for required experience, and additional related experience may substitute for required education beyond a high school diploma/graduation equivalent, to the extent permitted by the JHU equivalency formula.

Classified Title: Rights Manager
Role/Level/Range: ATP/04/PD
Starting Salary Range: $62,900 - $110,100 Annually ($86,000 targeted; Commensurate w/exp.)
Employee group: Full Time
Schedule: M-F 8:30 am - 5:00 pm
FLSA Status: Exempt
Location: Hybrid/Homewood Campus
Department name: Press General Administration
Personnel area: Academic and Business Centers