The Authors Guild has pulled off a surprise for the new year, launching a letter on Jan. 5 to publishers’ associations. This is the activation of the Guild’s Fair Contract Initiative, toward which the organization has been building for many months. The Guild now is calling on publishers to come to the table in a series of meetings to discuss what can be done:
“The Fair Contract Initiative’s fresh look at standard book contracts has proven without doubt that provisions that would never be acceptable in other contexts have long been taken for granted in publishing agreements. Authors are now standing together to say ‘no.’ It is time for publishers to give authors the respect, compensation and fair play they deserve.”
The surprise factor lies not only in such aggressive language—“standing together to say ‘no’” is tantamount to a threat of labor resistance—but also in an unexpected array of international support revealed in the release of the Guild’s letter. On its second and third pages you can see the support of twenty-six leading author-advocacy organizations from Europe, Australia, Africa, and North America. Several key genre authors’ bodies are signatories, as well, in science fiction, fantasy, crime, horror, mystery, children’s books, illustration, and graphic arts.
As pointed out in this piece with NPR’s Lynn Neary on Weekend Edition Saturday, the Guild and its international sister organizations are leveraging their global digital reach to pressure the publishing establishment.
The U.K.’s Society of Authors has played a significant role in co-leading the charge with the Guild, releasing a letter of its own simultaneously with the Guild and pressing the seven reforms it terms the C.R.E.A.T.O.R. project. And it’s in the U.K. that we have the first response: the Publishers Association’s outgoing chief, Richard Mollet, writes that the problem lies not in contracts but in market conditions:
“Publishers share the frustration of the author community that it is increasingly difficult for authors to make a decent living from their writing. However, we locate the principal source of this problem not in the contractual relations between publisher and author but in deeper market factors. With margins being squeezed across the whole supply chain, books facing increasing stiff competition from other media and entertainment sectors for consumers’ time, and there simply being more writers … the reasons for the decline in average author income are wide and varied.”
So far, we’ve seen no formal response from the Association of American Publishers. We’re inquiring as to whether a comment may be coming. Meanwhile, a small-press publisher, Edward Renehan, has criticized the contract reform effort, calling the Guild “a mouse roaring” and claiming that it has a “simplistic understanding” of publishing economics.
This is hardly the usual pile-on, however, that the Guild has experienced from many writers in the last year. Look at the first comment on the letter’s page. The author J.A. Konrath has been outspoken in his criticism of the Guild, saying that he felt that the development of the white papers wasn’t action, just talk. Now, in this new comment on the Guild’s letter, Konrath simply writes: “Well done.”
What to do now: We recommend that authors and their agents find the time to read the white papers that the Guild has produced: a readable, concise, and comprehensive picture of what the Guild calls “draconian provisions” for writers. The more clearly authors understand the demands being made, the more ready they’ll be to evaluate the publishing community’s responses. If you haven’t done so, this is a great time to open a dialogue with your agent to learn whether you’re in agreement on the issues being debated. Here is some additional coverage of the Guild project.
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.
