How far has the Guild come? In a few years, it’s moved from being trade-based to spanning today’s increasingly complex writing and publishing community. It now offers memberships to self-publishing writers as well as to aspiring, unpublished writers who are smart enough to work on learning the business.
Aimed at “writers of all stripes,” the Guild’s new E-Publishing Guide, just announced this week, is being rolled out to members in a series of eight sections and will ultimately become available for download as a free ebook for members. The Guild, in a prepared statement, says the guide includes information on “choosing an e-publishing platform; hiring editors, designers, publicists, and other freelancers; working with ebook retailers; registering ISBNs; creating EPUB files from scratch; marketing your work,” and more. Non-members will only be able to see a sample chapter. Full disclosure: The Hot Sheet’s Jane Friedman worked with the Guild to create the guide, and she is also partnering with the organization on a webinar series that teaches best practices for author platform and digital marketing.
Self-publishers aren’t alone in having new help available from the Guild. Its Writers’ Resource Library has been launched with material for authors on searching for agents, financial management for freelancers, and more. It’s an updating compendium of material primarily directed to newer members.
Bottom line: The Authors Guild’s development in this direction is another good step in its efforts to become a more inclusive service organization for writers. In particular, the signals that these new offerings send to the industry are healthy, making the point that the author corps is now a far more layered and diverse workforce than it has been in the past—and that the Guild’s intent is to serve the full breadth of writers’ needs in an expanding, comprehensive program.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
