As copyright holders of published illustrations we unite to protect our copyrights, establish transparent accountability of the reprographic royalty streams earned by American illustrators, and promote the proper licensing of our works.

A collective rights administration for published American illustrators is long overdue. Significant sums of reprographic royalties due artists are being lost or dissipated without accountability while reprographic usage is escalating. Reprographic royalties are paid when published work is photocopied by libraries, institutions, corporations and other users. This income is earned when copyright collecting societies license secondary rights users to photocopy or digitally republish printed material anywhere in the world. Reprographic royalties may derive from published articles, cartoons, illustrations, photographs, maps, charts, etc.

Reprographic rights are held individually by each artist but are licensed collectively by a copyright collecting society that artists have mandated to administer these rights. Regrettably, there has not been a U.S. copyright collecting society to represent American illustrators, and illustrators do not currently receive any compensation for the exploitation of their reprographic rights.

In 2001, the Illustrators’ Partnership of America founded the IPA Reprographics Coalition to establish transparent accountability, protect these copyrights, and create a system to assure that artists are properly represented in this emerging source of secondary rights income. The Coalition grew to 12 professional illustration societies representing over 4,500 of the most prolific and widely published illustrators in the world. In October 2007 the Coalition united as a non-profit named the American Society of Illustrators Partnership.