Advocacy
Holiday Message from Roy Blount Jr.:
Buy Books From Your Local Bookstore, Now
December 11, 2008. I've been talking to booksellers lately who report that times are hard. And local booksellers aren't known for vast reserves of capital, so a serious dip in sales can be devastating. Booksellers don't lose enough money, however, to receive congressional attention. More...
How the Authors Guild v. Google Settlement Will Work
December 4, 2008. The landmark settlement between the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and Google promises to create new markets for out-of print books, while vastly improving reader access to those books. More...
Related Articles
Macadam/Cage Royalties on Track, According to Publisher
September 19, 2008. After today's Publishers Weekly report about layoffs and a "cash crunch" at San Francisco publisher Macadam/Cage, we gave editor-in-chief Pat Walsh a call to check on the company's fiscal health. More...
$125 Million Settlement in Authors Guild v. Google
A message from Roy Blount Jr.:
October 28, 2008. A couple months after I became Authors Guild president in 2006, we met with Google to propose a settlement to our class-action lawsuit. The Guild had sued Google in September 2005, after Google struck deals with major university libraries to scan and copy millions of books in their collections. Many of these were older books in the public domain, but millions of others were still under copyright More...
Authors Guild v. Google Settlement Resources Page
October 28, 2008. On this page, we've gathered documents and links that will be of interest to authors and others regarding this settlement. More...
Press Conference Remarks of Guild Executive Director
[October 28, 2008] It's a pleasure to be here to jointly announce what may be the biggest book deal in U.S. publishing history. More...
Authors Guild to Work With F&W/Adams Media to Review Accounting Practices
August 15, 2008. F&W/Adams Media has contacted the Authors Guild in response to our August 13 member alert about an arbitrator's award to Guild member Sherry Argov. F&W expressed its confidence in its royalty accounting practices and has offered to work with the Guild to demonstrate that its accounting systems are appropriate. We'll take F&W up on its offer and will be reporting the results of our review to our members. More...
Related Articles
Simon & Schuster Proposes E-Book Amendment
July 17, 2008. Simon & Schuster has recently sent a one-page letter to many, perhaps thousands, of authors with unspecified e-book royalty rates in an attempt to set those rates at 15% of the "catalog retail price" of the e-book. More...
Authors Guild to Study F&W/Adams Media Royalty Accounting
August 13, 2008. Internal e-mails, including an admission that Adams Media has "no system in place for tracking inbound Royalty Statements from translation rights deals," and a recent arbitrator's ruling in Massachusetts awarding $209,000 to an author raise serious questions about the accounting practices of F&W Publishing and Adams Media. More...
Amazon Squeezes Long Tail
April 4, 2008. Last week Amazon announced that it would be requiring that all print-on-demand books that it sells be printed by BookSurge, Amazon's on-demand printer/publisher. Amazon pitched this as a customer service matter, a means for more speedily delivering print-on-demand books and allowing for the bundling of shipments with other items purchased at the same time from Amazon. More...
Authors Registry Hits $2.5 Million Mark for 2008
June 30, 2008. The Authors Registry, the not-for-profit organization founded by the Authors Guild and others in 1995, has paid more than $2.5 million to authors since the start of the year, a record for the organization. More...
Reversal in Freelance Class-Action Settlement
November 29, 2007. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, in a 2-1 decision, the district court's approval of the settlement.
The news is stunning. The appellate court ruled that the district court lacked jurisdiction over claims relating to unregistered freelance articles. It was an issue that no one brought up on appeal.
The appellate court's opinion. More...
Dead Celebrities Bill Dormant; May Revive
June 22, 2007. The New York State Assembly and Senate adjourned their regular sessions yesterday without taking action on the "Dead Celebrities" bill. This is good news. More...
Apology, Movement from Simon & Schuster
June 1, 2007. Simon & Schuster executives yesterday apologized for "any early miscommunication" regarding reversion of rights, according to the Association of Authors' Representatives (the literary agents' organization). S&S is willing to negotiate a "revenue-based threshold" to determine whether a book is in-print, says the AAR. The AAR's alert follows. More...
Literary Papers Tax Bill Needs Your Support
May 3, 2007. In an e-mail to members, the Authors Guild asked for support of the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, which has been reintroduced in the House and Senate. The bill would allow authors to deduct from their income for federal tax purposes the fair market value of donated manuscripts and other literary papers. More...
Global Chilling Update: Major Libel Ruling in London
October 11, 2006. The House of Lords, the United Kingdom's highest court, ruled today that British journalists may now publish allegations about public figures without fear of libel claims, provided that they acted responsibly and in the public interest in carrying out their reporting. A recent Authors Guild Foundation panel discussed how British libel law was affecting American authors. We don't yet know whether or how the ruling will apply to book publishing, but we're trying to find out more information. More...
Trademark Bill Threatens Free Expression
February 14, 2006. A bill that would drop express protection for "noncommercial use" of a trademark and would weaken the protections for those who use trademarks in news commentary will be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, February 16. The legislation has already passed the House. The Guild is encouraging writers in states represented on the Judiciary Committee to contact their senators about the bill. More...
Is Google a charity? Some handy talking points for the Google Class-Action Lawsuit
September 23, 2005. In an e-mail to members, the Authors Guild lays out some basics about the class action suit against Google. More...
Related Articles
Authors Guild Sues Google, Citing “Massive Copyright Infringement”
September 20, 2005. The Authors Guild and a Lincoln biographer, a children's book author, and a former Poet Laureate of the U.S. filed a class action suit today in Manhattan against Google over its "Library" program. The suit charges the $90 billion company with massive copyright infringement. More...
Jung Biographer Stands Firm, Wins
October 19, 2005. This past summer, heirs of Carl Jung pressed a German imprint of Random House to insert "corrections" to the text of the German language edition of a Jung biography by Authors Guild member Deirdre Bair. With the help of Guild attorney Anita Fore, Bair succeeded in having her lauded biography published without alteration. More...
Immediate Help Needed on New York "Dead Celebrities" Bill
June 20, 2007. There's been a sudden and alarming push in the New York State Legislature to pass a bill that would create a posthumous "right of publicity" for anyone who died since Jan. 1, 1938. The Guild has sent out an e-mail to members encouraging them to take action against Assembly bill (A.8836) and Senate bill (S. 6005). More...
Not at the Writers' Expense
On October 22, 2005, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Authors Guild President Nick Taylor on Google Library. In it, Mr. Taylor asks why increased exposure is the only compensation a wealthy company can offer authors for this commercial venture. More...
Five Publishers Sue Google over Google Library
October 19, 2005. The Association of American Publishers announced today that The McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson Education, Penguin Group (USA), Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons had sued Google over its Library project. The suit seeks a declaration from the court that Google's scanning of entire works is copyright infringement and an injunction preventing such scanning. More...
Google's "Renegade Notion of Eminent Domain"
October 2, 2005. In a letter published in today's New York Times, Authors Guild president Nick Taylor responds to the recent op-ed written by Google advisory board member Tim O'Reilly. Mr. Taylor urges "a better way: let's build a real digital library, not just 'snippets.' Writers are willing, but not at the cost of our rights." More...
Google Launches Book-Browse Competitor to Amazon
October 7, 2004. Unlike Amazon's "Search Inside the Book," Google Print offers to place ads beneath book excerpts and share revenues with publishers. Authors are entitled to 50% of publishers' ad revenue in most cases. More...
Class Action Settlement Amended to Cover Amazon.com and Highbeam
On July 28, 2005, Judge Daniels gave preliminary approval to an amended settlement in the freelancers' class action suit. The amendment is intended to resolve a dispute over the licensing by one or more of the defendants of freelancers' articles to Amazon.com and Highbeam Research during settlement negotiations. The Authors Guild and other plaintiffs believed these licenses to violate the settlement. More...
