Lynette Owen

After graduating from London University, Lynette Owen started her publishing career at the London offices of Cambridge University Press, first in journal sales promotion and then transferring to the rights department. In 1973 she moved to Pitman Publishing to establish a rights department there, working with both academic and trade titles. In 1975 she moved to Marshall Cavendish as North American Sales Manager, selling coedition rights in illustrated titles. In 1976 she returned to educational and academic publishing when she joined Longman Group Ltd (now Pearson Education) as rights manager and where she is now Copyright Director.

Lynette has always had a particular interest in establishing licensing business in developing and transitional countries, and was an early visitor to central and eastern Europe, the then Soviet Union, China and Vietnam. She has run many training courses on copyright and licensing for publishers in those regions, some of whom were new to acquiring copyright licences when their countries first joined international conventions, whilst others were new private publishers replacing state publishers in former communist states. Her most recent courses have been in Kenya, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Malaysia.

She is the author of Selling Rights (6/e 2010, Routledge) and is the General Editor of and a contributor to Clark's Publishing Agreements: A Book of Precedents (8/e 2010, Bloomsbury Professional). She has also written a number of special handbooks on copyright and licensing for publishers in overseas countries, which appear in the local language; the most recent is for the United Arab Emirates.

Lynette was awarded the second London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award, the inaugural Kim Scott Walwyn Prize and in the 2009 New Year's Honours list she was awarded an OBE for services to publishing and international trade.