Authors Guild

The outcry from publisher and author groups has been swift and furious after the Internet Archive announced last week the launch of it's National Emergency Library, which has removed access restrictions for some 1.4 million scans of mostly 20th century books in the IA's Open Library initiative, making the scans available for unlimited borrowing during the Covid-19 Outbreak.

In an effort to gather as much information as possible about how much authors earned in 2017, the Authors Guild conducted its largest income survey ever last summer, reaching beyond the guild's own members to include 14 other writing and publishing organizations.  Read more

In one of those quirky coincidences of news coverage, a familiar number has arisen in the top-line reporting from the United States' Authors Guild about author incomes.

Since 2009, their newly released report says, median incomes for authors from writing have fallen by 42 percent.  Read more

After polling 1,674 Guild members, Mary Rasenberger, executive editor at the Authors Guild, created a splash a few weeks ago by claiming that most of its members' annual earnings were below the federal poverty level of $11,670. She spread the blame around: bookstore closures, the rise of Amazon, publisher consolidations, and the low royalties authors receive from publishers.  Read more

The Authors Guild and its allies have recently appealed to the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon's possible monopoly control of the book business. It is hard to quarrel with the fact that Amazon delivers more of the publishing output to consumers than any single account ever has and that they are, inevitably, changing the economics of the business as a result.  Read more