The rights clearance process
Using this guide to the clearance process will help you to organise your activities so as to structure, clarify and simplify what can appear from the outside to be a tangled web of uncertainty.
Steps One and Two should take place as early as possible, preferably before any writing or production work has taken place. There is a very strong interrelationship between the cost and availability of works being embedded into the product, and the process of editorial selection. If Steps One and Two are left until after production has commenced, you may face high clearing costs which could have been reduced given more time to negotiate. You could find yourself in the position of having to deal with the withdrawal of content for which rights cannot be obtained, or, worst of all, with the withdrawal of content and a late and costly rewrite of the surrounding, linking contents.
We have produced a simple Rights Checklist which can be printed and taken to meetings, or simply used to help to create standard templates.