This study investigates the use of coagents in the book industry. To reach international markets, domestic publishers typically license a title’s rights to third-party international publishers, a practice known as 'selling rights’. Rights sellers can either choose to work directly in a local market or with intermediaries known as coagents. Using a data set of over 2000 international rights sales for Australian-authored titles of a major publisher, we examine whether employing the services of a coagent leads to superior outcomes as measured by the size of the advance. We find a positive relationship between the use of coagents and the size of the advance. This result is robust to a variety of contract lengths and international market conventions. The evidence suggests that, on average, coagents help secure better outcomes for authors and domestic publishers. More broadly, our study suggests that international intermediaries may play an important role in the export of cultural goods.

中文翻译：

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图书行业中的助剂作为中介

本研究调查了图书行业中助剂的使用情况。为了进入国际市场，国内出版商通常将图书的权利许可给第三方国际出版商，这种做法称为“销售权”。版权卖家可以选择直接在当地市场工作，也可以选择与称为合作代理的中介机构合作。我们使用一家大型出版商的 2000 多份澳大利亚原创作品的国际版权销售数据集，研究了使用合作代理的服务是否会带来更好的结果（以预付款的大小来衡量）。我们发现助剂的使用与预付款的大小之间存在正相关关系。这一结果对于各种合同期限和国际市场惯例都是稳健的。证据表明，平均而言，助剂有助于确保作者和国内出版商获得更好的成果。更广泛地说，我们的研究表明国际中介机构可能在文化产品出口中发挥重要作用。