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'The copyright business'

2 August 2010

'The fundamental relationship between authors and publishers is changing. My first 40 years in the business have been very much working as a collaboration with booksellers, having bought the author's work via the agent. Now authors have an alternative, they can sell their book themselves, in many different ways. We now have to say we are actually in the copyright business, not the book business. It is a whole new dimension of understanding various media, in the larger context of being the author's business partner.

It's better to get things wrong than not to try at all. You can't just pretend the world is the same as it always was.'

Anthony Cheetham, Director and Associate Publisher of Atlantic UK, in the Bookseller