The Publishers Licensing Society after 36 years is changing its name and undergoing a complete re-brand from 11 October, to coincide with the European launch of the PLS Permissions service at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Mark Bide, Chair of the PLS, explained the rationale: “Our change of name to Publishers’ Licensing Services is designed to reflect our increasing dialogue with and growing responsiveness to publishers’ needs and wishes.

It was through such conversations with the industry that we developed our new suite of permissions management services. Launched earlier this year, PLS Permissions has already garnered for PLS the ‘Innovator of the Year’ title at the 2017 Stationers Innovation Excellence Awards.”

Sarah Faulder, PLS chief executive, added “With the launch of the PLS Permissions service, it seemed appropriate to review our entire brand afresh to create a new look that could be consistently applied across a growing family of services to the industry.

Even the small detail of the addition of an apostrophe on “Publishers” is designed to emphasise how the organisation is owned and directed by the industry itself in the shape of the four publisher trade associations that own and manage us: the Publishers Association (PA), the Professional Publishers Association (PPA), the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).

I believe the industry will view our new logo as symbolising PLS values: modern, flexible, innovative and authoritative.”

Publishers’ Licensing Services is launching PLS Permissions in Europe at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair (Hall 6.0, D108) where the new logo family will be on show.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Publishers’ Licensing Services (PLS) provides collective rights management services to publishers by overseeing collective licensing for book, journal, magazine and website copying. PLS also provides permissions and other rights management services to the publishing industry. PLS is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1981.

PLS retains its website URL (pls.org.uk) and e-mail address pls@pls.org.uk

PLS Permissions is a suite of three complementary services designed to help publishers optimise efficiencies. It comprises:

• PLS PermissionsRequest—a new interface for those seeking to reuse content.
• PLS PermissionsDirect—a service that helps rights holders streamline the permissions process and automate requests if they wish.
• PLS PermissionsAssist—an option for publishers to completely outsource their permissions management to PLS.

Contact: Robert Stein, Communications Manager, PLS on r.stein@pls.org.uk or +44(0)20 7079 5938.