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the pitch winter 2018 The Newsletter for the Association of Authors' Representatives CONTENTS LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT 1. LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT AS I REALIZE THAT, once again, 2. COMMITTEE REPORT: CHILDREN'S COMMITTEE it is time to order my holiday cards and arrange my holiday gifts, it 3. IN RESPONSE TO COURSE PACK SUIT, AAR FORMS seems that I was doing these same COPYRIGHT COMMITTEE jobs just a few weeks ago. Can it UPCOMING AAR PROGRAMS have been a whole year already? 5. BECOME AN AAR AMBASSADOR The older I get, the faster these COMMITTE REPORT: years seem to fl y. It seems like just INTERNATIONAL last week we were having lunch at 6. TRUMP DEFEATS LIBEL CLAIM Mary Elizabeth’s, a little British- ON FIRST AMMENDMENT GROUNDS style teahouse across the street 7. AAR ETHICS COMMITTEE from G. P. Putnam’s Sons, in the years when it was still a family- 8. AAR BOARD REVISES CANON OF ETHICS ON PAYMENTS FROM owned fi rm, and when the wildly WRITERS' CONFERENCES underpaid assistants could fi nd COMMITTE REPORT: DIGITAL a full lunch for under $4. I have INNOVATIONS been in this business long enough 9. KEEPING TRACK OF MONEY IS ESSENTIAL FOR AGENCIES to have seen revolutionary new glorious it would have been if I technologies change the face of could have known in my twenties 10. MY AAR FELLOWSHIP WAS 'MY GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT' our work world—from Telex to all these wise things I know now, fax to email to virtual bookstores in my, well, more-than-twenties. I 11. BOOKS, BAGELS AND MY SUMMER AT CURTIS BROWN to ebooks to blogs to Twitter. And try to be a good mentor—which, maybe beyond Twitter! (I am a in my mind, involves helping my 12. ASK AN AGENT COMMITTEE REPORT: ROYALTIES little slow to follow the trends.) And mentees think for themselves, how much wiser we’ve all become, and make sense of issues before 13. THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MASS MARKET PAPERBACK as we continue to do what we do taking some (hopefully) wise next through the decades: read our piles step. I inherited this 110 year 15. COMMITTEE REPORT: CONTRACTS of manuscripts, nimbly negotiate old offi ce, and I think about its new contract terms, manage our next generation, as they are being 17. RARE BIRD BRINGS BOOKSELLER INSIGHTS TO WEST clients’ outsized hopes and their groomed for the future. COAST PUBLISHING even larger fears. I am afraid to move (either my 19. COMMITTEE REPORT: SMALL I think I am almost at the age house or my offi ce) because I BUSINESS where writers for the Association am a little afraid of what stuff I 20. DESIGNING A PARENT-CHILD of Authors’ Representatives will fi nd behind the thousands of BOOK CLUB INCREASES FAMILY TIME Newsletter will be asking me books on the shelves, in the backs secrets of my century-long career. of overstuffed drawers (probably 21. WHAT ARE AGENTS READING? The assorted aches and pains not a long lost royalty check or 22. NEW MEMBERS earned by carrying 25 pounds of a misplaced piece of jewelry, 24. CANON OF ETHICS manuscripts back and forth each though), and I don’t know if I have 26. BOARD OF DIRECTORS day for 40 years have taken a toll. the energy to do the big culling job CONTRIBUTORS (Gabapentin is the drug of the era.) that would be necessary to pack up I fi nd myself thinking how and move on. continued on page 2 page 2 the pitch winter 2018 continued from page 1 All around me the people I and for big new concepts in have come up with in publishing nonfiction. I still believe it is good are talking about retirement. to invest time in children’s books, RETIREMENT?! That is not as the child readers of today will really a word in my vocabulary. be the adult readers of tomorrow. RETIRE?! What would I do with There is nothing like watching those 16 waking hours, if there young children realizing for the were no piles of manuscripts first time, suddenly, that they can screaming to be read, or editorial actually read a short book on their notes waiting to be written? What very own. I have come to enjoy do you mean, “more time to the ins and outs of contracts and travel”? I think I travel quite a bit- the intricate grades of problem -any more would strain my U.S. solving. I even relish figuring out a Customs allotments. weird royalty statement problem, And I could take more time to and am no longer surprised when I relax, and reflect on life? Well, I am receive a manuscript (not a bottle of not the relaxing sort, and reflecting Champagne) on Christmas day from on life is a full-fledged hobby as a relentless and aggravating client. it is. I confess, it seems that I can This career we have all chosen there is usually no one right and focus better on a novel that is in may not buy all of us luxurious one wrong, and hoping to be right manuscript, rather than book form. country houses, but it is a career all the time is like trying to push a I think of legendary editors, and rooted in life-affirming principles, huge boulder up the side of a huge legendary agents who, it is said, culture, ideas, escapism and mountain. “died at their desks,” and I always analyzing important issues (the For the holiday season, I firmly figured something like that would opposite of escapism). In a believe that BOOKS MAKE someday happen to me. small way, and with the best of GREAT GIFTS and so I have spent BUT, I am actually still going intentions, I feel it is a microcosm time in my local independent, strong. of our larger world. Looking back— browsing and ordering books for I am still an enthusiast for life, and looking ahead—I would not numerous people on my lists. Over for new voices in fiction or memoir want to be in any different field. the Christmas break, you will find I confess, I have never read me at home, in front of the fire, MOBY DICK to the end, nor a hot mulled cider by my side, COMMITTEE WAR AND PEACE. My favorite red pencil in my fist, Schubert REPORT: CHILDREN'S book is still LITTLE WOMEN. on the stereo and a pile of letters COMMITTEE My own long-ago ambition to to answer at the ready when the write a volume that would change manuscript in front of me seems CHAIR & BOARD LIAISON: the world has long been set just not “fresh.” ELIZABETH HARDING aside. Committed as I am, I still I might gaze into space, wondering occasionally fall asleep late at what the new year will bring…. The Children’s Books Committee night with a pile of manuscript So: My best New Year’s wishes to is working on a future program pages in my hands, pages found in all, hoping for joy and success and a about the YA and Teen market. a tangled pile on the floor the next better sort of balance in 2019! Stay tuned for further news this morning. I have passed on books – Gail Hochman spring. If anyone is interested that became best-sellers or award- President, AAR in joining, please reach out to winners, and I still keep striving Elizabeth at [email protected]. to perfect my imperfections. But in this apprenticeship business, page 3 the pitch winter 2018 IN RESPONSE protections significantly. Because composed of excerpts of copyrighted of this, the AAR has formed a works, publishers have been TO COURSE Copyright Committee, co-chaired collecting royalties for those uses. PACK SUIT, by Pamela Malpass and Wendy The judge in the Kinko’s case found Strothman, to monitor developments that the reproduction of significant AAR FORMS in the law. excerpts for course pack use did not COPYRIGHT An example of the way quality as “fair use” and therefore assumptions about copyright required permission and payment. COMMITTEE law are being challenged can The Copyright Clearance Center LOIS F. WASOFF be found in the long-running, (CCC), a nonprofit organization, ongoing dispute between a group took on the responsibility of MOST AGENTS UNDERSTAND of publishers and Georgia State collecting and distributing royalties that the fact that their clients’ University (GSU). The October on those types of uses, among works are protected by copyright 19, 2018 appellate court decision others, and developed mechanisms is what makes them valuable. The in that case (the latest in a series of for collecting fees on behalf of right of the author to control the lower and appellate court decisions) authors and publishers based on reproduction and other uses of a is an encouraging indication that algorithms or estimates of which work is the principle that underlies at least some long-held underlying works were being reproduced. every publishing agreement. Most assumptions about copyright In the early 2000s, CCC noticed agents take copyright for granted continue and remain relevant in our that income from course packs had and, until recently, that was a increasingly digital world. plummeted. It became apparent that luxury they could afford. But recent The dispute concerned GSU’s use course packs were being replaced developments, in particular the of excerpts from copyrighted works by new digital tools. Universities growth of technologies that make in its electronic reserve (e-reserve) had discovered e-reserves. Students reproduction and distribution system. Since at least 1991, when were not buying paper course of copyrighted works easy and a federal judge ruled in favor of a packs.