Jonathan Lyons

Jonathan Lyons is the Executive Director of Subsidiary Rights for Folio Literary Management and also serves as the agency’s legal counsel regarding contract and copyright matters.

After graduating from Washington University and Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Jonathan briefly practiced with a litigation firm before joining the publishing industry – starting first in the children’s department at Curtis Brown, where he worked with such authors as Jane Yolen and S.E. Hinton and titles such as Goodnight Moon and The Chocolate War. Jonathan later became an associate in the Curtis Brown Foreign Rights Department, where he sold intellectual property rights for both adult and juvenile titles. Three years later he joined McIntosh & Otis, where he served as legal counsel, subsidiary rights manager, and literary agent for the company, representing numerous authors and estates, including John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair. In 2007 Jonathan founded his own agency and law practice.

Jonathan’s other legal clients include authors, publishers, literary agents, distributors, and artists, among other publishing industry businesses and professionals. Jonathan focuses on the negotiation and drafting of publishing, licensing and distribution agreements and copyright counseling. In the last year alone Jonathan has completed over 300 successful contract negotiations on behalf of clients, including works by numerous bestselling and award-winning authors.

Jonathan is a member of the Authors Guild, the Contracts Committee of the Association of Author Representatives, the Copyright Society, and the New York State Bar Association. He regularly delivers lectures on publishing agreements at conferences across the country.