Tap, Tap, Click Empathy As Craft Our Cornered Culture

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The Authors Guild, Inc. SPRING-SUMMER 2018 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor PRST STD US POSTAGE PAID New York, NY 10016 PHILADELPHIA, PA PERMIT #164

11 Tap, Tap, Click 20 Empathy as Craft 41 Our Cornered Culture Articles THE AUTHORS GUILD OFFICERS TURNING PAGES BULLETIN 5 President Annual Benefit Executive Director James Gleick An exciting season of new 8 Audiobooks Ascending Mary Rasenberger Vice President programming and initiatives is General Counsel Richard Russo underway at the Guild—including 11 Cheryl L. Davis Monique Truong Tap, Tap, Click our Regional Chapters and Editor Treasurer 16 Q&A: Representative Hakeem Jeffries Martha Fay Peter Petre enhanced author websites— 18 Making the Copyright System Work Assistant Editor Secretary on top of the services we already Nicole Vazquez Daniel Okrent offer our members. But as for Creators Copy Editors Members of the Council Heather Rodino Deirdre Bair we all know, this takes funding. 20 Empathy as Craft Hallie Einhorn Rich Benjamin So, in our seasonal Bulletin, 23 Art Direction Amy Bloom we are going to start accepting Connecting Our Members: Studio Elana Schlenker Alexander Chee The Guild Launches Regional Chapters Pat Cummings paid advertising to offset our costs Cover Art + Illustration Sylvia Day and devote greater resources 24 An Author’s Guide to the New Tax Code Ariel Davis Matt de la Peña All non-staff contributors Peter Gethers to your membership benefits. 32 American Writers Museum Wants You to the Bulletin retain Annette Gordon-Reed But our new ad policy copyright to the articles Tayari Jones is not merely for the benefit of 34 Authors Guild Annual Meeting Report that appear in these pages. Nicholas Lemann Guild members seeking Steven Levy advertisers. If there’s enough 41 information on contributors’ John R. MacArthur interest from members, we plan Featured Panel: “Our Cornered Culture” other publications are D.T. Max invited to contact the Susan Orlean on launching a low-cost, small Guild office. Published by Douglas Preston advertising section. Need a The Authors Guild, Inc. Michelle Richmond Departments James Shapiro researcher, assistant, agent, The Authors Guild, Hampton Sides beta reader, etc.? This section 2 Short Takes the oldest and largest T.J. Stiles will give you the opportunity association of published Jonathan Taplin 4 From the President authors in the United Rachel Vail to place classified ads for writing- States, works to protect Nicholas Weinstock related services. Stay tuned 6 From the Home Office and promote the Ex-Officio & for more information. professional interests Honorary Members 28 Legal Watch of its members. The Guild’s of the Council Turn the page to see our forerunner, The Authors Roger Angell first ad. 30 Advocacy News League of America, was Roy Blount Jr. founded in 1912. The Bulletin Barbara Taylor Bradford 62 Books by Members was first published Robert A. Caro in 1912 as The Authors Susan Cheever 65 Members Make News League Newsletter. Anne Edwards The Authors Guild Erica Jong 67 In Memoriam 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor Stephen Manes New York, NY 10016 Robert K. Massie t: (212) 563-5904 Victor S. Navasky f: (212) 564-5363 Sidney Offit e: [email protected] Mary Pope Osborne authorsguild.org Letty Cottin Pogrebin Roxana Robinson Jean Strouse Nick Taylor Scott Turow Advisory Council Sherman Alexie Judy Blume Jennifer Egan Louise Erdrich CJ Lyons Frederic Martini Cathleen Schine Georges Ugeux Meg Wolitzer “ OVERHEARD ”

“[W]ith art comes empathy. It allows us to look through someone else’s eyes and know their strivings and struggles. It expands the moral imagination and makes it impossible to accept the dehumanization of others. When we are without art, we are a diminished people—myopic, unlearned and cruel.”

Dave Eggers, “A Cultural Vacuum in Trump’s White House” The New York Times, June 29, 2018 SMALL-TOWN The organization is warning of “Once everyone in the possible job losses at newspapers publishinghouse was paid, publishers’ PAPERS LOSE OUT and printers across the country. shareholders received up to three IN TRADE WAR The Department of Commerce times the amount paid to authors,” applied the new tariffs based on Solomon writes. “And authors still had While the Trump administration’s a complaint from a single American to pay their own expenses and agents.” trade war with China received newsprint mill, the Northern She clarified that the calculations used significant press coverage, lesser Pacific Paper Company (NORPAC), were her own—because publishers known new tariffs on imported which was acquired by a New York– do not separate out what authors earn Canadian paper products have rattled based hedge fund in 2016. NORPAC in their reports. the newspaper industry. In January, argued that lower-cost Canadian Society of Authors president the Department of Commerce newsprint (uncoated ground wood) Philip Pullman agrees, stating that increased the tariffs from 4.4 percent was harming the American paper it is “shockingly bad husbandry” to 9.9 percent. This decision was industry. However, the American to have such high profits while author preliminary and awaits finalization Forest & Paper Association does earnings are smaller than ever. by the U.S. International Trade not support the tariffs, nor do several “I like every individual editor, designer, Commission; the final determination is concerned industry groups that have and marketing and publicity person scheduled to be issued on or around come together to form Stop Tariffs I deal with,” he said, “but I don’t like June 30. A second “Antidumping on Printers & Publishers (STOPP). what publishers, corporately, are doing Duty Determination” (also preliminary) The group includes the Printing to the ecology of the book world. was announced on March 13; a final Industries of America, the Book It’s damaging, and it should change.” determination may be issued on Manufacturers’ Institute, the Association The article has stimulated intense or around August 2, depending on of American Publishers, and the discussion in the London publishing how the department’s investigation News Media Alliance, among others, world. The Bookseller ran a response turns out. But in the meantime the all concerned that a single company from Andrew Franklin, cofounder of new taxes are in effect. has been empowered to speak for the successful independent publisher The Daily Jeffersonian, an the industry. They are busy lobbying Profile Books. Franklin emphasized the Ohio newspaper, predicts a 10 percent the International Trade Commission myriad and complex costs of running increase in overhead due to the and the Department of Commerce a publishing house, the ever-present tariffs. According to the paper’s April 3 to overturn the preliminary decision. risk, and the importance of making a editorial, its publisher, GateHouse profit simply to remain viable. Media Ohio, “spends millions of dollars SHOCKINGLY Publishing Perspectives a year on paper, and an increase of used the opportunity to take a deep almost 10 percent amounts to hundreds BAD HUSBANDRY dive into the issue, laying out the of thousands more in production costs.” (OF AUTHORS, case for authors and publishers, In Wisconsin, a major commercial NOT SHEEP) and adding the perspective of a literary printer reported that it was seeking agent, Andrew Lownie. Lownie $10 million in operational cuts to The Society of Authors in the UK is pointed out the negative effect of make up for the projected increase shining a light on writers’ plummeting discounts and sales on author royalties: in paper costs. incomes. In an essay for The Bookseller, “There’s nothing particularly new The News Media Alliance, which Chief Executive Nicola Solomon about special sales, except that represents more than 2,000 news asked why Simon & Schuster and increasingly nowadays they seem to organizations, confirmed in late March Penguin Random House are reporting be part of the initial marketing and that the new tariffs have resulted in 16 percent profit margins at the sales strategy, rather than just a useful major price increases on newsprint, same time that their authors are taking tool for reinvigorating interest in a in some cases up to 20 to 30 percent. home just 3 percent of the pie. book or disposing of surplus stock.

2 Authors Guild Bulletin The benefits to the publisher of P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall, and posts a lengthy history of the practice these deals...are of little to no benefit Resurgence of an American Gang, of banning books in America on to authors.” was banned in Illinois prisons. its website—a subject that Alexander Philip Jones, editor of Coauthored by Lance Williams, the discusses in The New Jim Crow. The Bookseller, put in his two cents book is a social history of a Chicago with a column that concluded, gang. It received high praise from BANKING ON “Solomon makes a compelling case, Kirkus and was called “a must-read for but it is not open and shut. In a anyone interested in the history BOOKS flat market, the more authors who of Chicago” by a local newspaper. The Wall Street Journal and Publishers are published, the less each will Just not the incarcerated. Weekly reported recently on an receive....[T]hough publishers Moore looked into how titles unexpected enterprise: a start-up have undoubtedly improved their get placed on the list and found that book company. Several prominent businesses, it is not always through decisions are typically made at the business executives have invested factors under their control: returns discretion of local officials. Objections in Lezen Acquisition LLC with and digital are not yet fixed entities, tend to revolve around concerns that the intention of buying up publishing while Amazon looms ever larger. a book’s content will promote drug companies. Their first purchase Last, agglomeration is not an absolute. use, lead to violence, or “challenge the was Arcadia Publishing Inc., a South It may work, but it is generally system,” although in fact, erotica seems Carolina–based company specializing resisted by authors and agents.” to be of equal concern. (In South in regional guides and local history, The debate continues, and each Dakota, a three-judge court of appeals with a backlist of 14,000 titles. of these articles is worth a read panel recently ordered a lower court The group includes David in full by U.S. authors as well. to determine whether the state’s 2014 ban on pornography in prisons was Steinberger (chairman of the constitutional.) National Book Foundation and former READING WHILE Meanwhile, efforts by the CEO of the Perseus Books Group), INCARCERATED American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Michael Lynton (CEO of Penguin and other organizations to challenge Group from 1996 to 2000 and In December 2017, the New York book bans continue. In January, currently chairman of Snap Inc.), State Department of Corrections the ACLU successfully removed Lynton’s sister Lili Lynton (cofounder introduced a pilot program that would bans on Michelle Alexander’s critically and operating partner of the Dinex limit incoming packages to a short acclaimed The New Jim Crow from Group, which manages the Daniel list of department-sanctioned vendors. prisons in New Jersey and North Boulud restaurants), plus a handful The change barred care packages Carolina, though it remains off limits of investors from a range of fields from loved ones and shipments to prisoners in Florida, Michigan, unrelated to publishing, including an from organizations such as Books Texas, and elsewhere. In speaking engineering entrepreneur and the Through Bars, which provides books to a local NPR station, Chris Brook, principal owner of the Atlantic Hawks. to inmates. Widespread outrage legal director of the ACLU of North “We see an overlooked from the families of inmates, the media, Carolina, noted that not only are opportunity to create value in the activists, nonprofit organizations, the bans frequently in violation of book industry by backing the right and the public led Governor Andrew inmates’ civil rights, but the lists management team and building a Cuomo to swiftly rescind the program. of banned books are often bewildering. unique publishing company through But the battle for prisoner North Carolina bars The American a series of targeted acquisitions,” access to books goes on. The same Heritage Dictionary and The Dog Michael Lynton told PW. Arguing against month that New York backed away Encyclopedia. Specific issues of the oft-cited claim that traditional from its vendor policy, The New York numerous magazines are prohibited, publishing is dying, Steinberger pointed Times reported on the 10,000 titles including issues of The Atlantic; to the proven stability of the publishing banned from prisons by the state Cosmopolitan; O, The Oprah Magazine; industry through good times and of Texas, including a pop-up version Sports Illustrated; Vanity Fair; and bad. “A lot of people put books in the of A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Vogue. Thanks to efforts by the ACLU same category of other traditional 2005 bestseller Freakonomics, and and North Carolina Prisoner Legal media that are in decline,” he told the a four-volume collection of Dave Services, the list is now under review. Journal, “but that’s not the case here. Barry titles—a display of arbitrariness More recently, the Human We intend to make other acquisitions, impossible to dissect. Rights Defense Center (HRDC) filed a and that will give us scale. If you can In a report for Chicago public lawsuit against the Illinois Department find the right publishers and bring radio station WBEZ in February, of Corrections, alleging that the them together, you can create a lot of writer Natalie Moore investigated center’s educational materials were value, because certain costs don’t rise why her book, The Almighty Black being kept out of prisons. HRDC proportionately with revenue.”

Spring–Summer 2018 3 H. L. Mencken called him the “red- She tweets some of her findings haired tornado from the Minnesota as @TinaJordanNYT. “Unsurprisingly, wilds.” His biographer Mark Schorer there’s quite an appetite for literary said in 1961, “He was one of the worst feuds,” she tells me. She also mentioned writers in modern American literature, a Mexico City movie premiere in but without his writing one cannot 1976 at which the great Peruvian writer imagine modern American literature.” Mario Vargas Llosa reportedly sucker Also present that evening punched the great Colombian was another contender for that writer Gabriel García Márquez, giving same Nobel Prize, Theodore Dreiser, the future Nobelist a black eye. the 60-year-old author of Sister Carrie At this point, some of you and An American Tragedy. Dreiser are probably thinking about the and Lewis weren’t getting along. famous brawl between Norman Mailer Lewis had married Dorothy Thompson, and the aforementioned Vidal at a Dear Fellow Members, a pioneering foreign correspondent— party in Lally Weymouth’s apartment You will recall that we have soon to be the author of I Saw Hitler in 1977. Mailer knocked Vidal to the been engaging in conversation about (“the splendid journalist Dorothy floor, which gave Vidal the opportunity, changing views of copyright in an Thompson, who never stopped talking supposedly wiping blood from era of fast technological change. either,” says Vidal). Thompson had his mouth, to punch back with the This month, let’s digress. I want accused Dreiser of plagiarizing immortal line, “As usual, words to tell you about the Slapping Incident. her work in a book of his, and Lewis fail Norman.” As we prepare for the 2018 repeated the accusation, and... What can I say? Those were Authors Guild Gala, it is useful— well, let The New York Times tell us the days when men were men... even sobering—to recall a gathering what happened next: or something. (Mary McCarthy feuded of literati for a formal dinner 76 years with Lillian Hellman for years, but ago, in the spring of 1931, in what The generally smooth they never descended to slapping.) The New York Times described course of American letters spun In the Dreiser-Lewis match, as “the softly plushed rooms of the suddenly off course on a the intrepid Times reporter—whom Metropolitan Club.” Honored that tangent late Thursday evening. I can’t name, because the story evening was Sinclair Lewis, who had For, as the quite unexpected ran without a byline—continued: just become the first novelist to bring conclusion to a formal dinner, the Nobel Prize in Literature home Theodore Dreiser, who was They were seated and were to the United States. “That was the generally considered a runner-up indignantly pounding a table... period,” Gore Vidal once remarked for this year’s Nobel Prize, One man said later that he acerbically, “when the Swedes singled slapped Sinclair Lewis, the heard the words “cheat” and out worthy if not particularly good winner....The slapping—which “liar” used by Mr. Lewis. It was just writers for celebration, much as they was said to have been both after the last word had been now select worthy if not particularly hard and repeated—came spoken, he said, that Mr. Dreiser interesting countries or languages after a literary disagreement delivered the first of his series for consolation.” that had lasted three years. of direct reprisals....Mr. Dreiser, The 46-year-old Lewis, an a large man, swung again... early Authors Guild member, was I’ve learned about all this What happened then is still a famous for his gimlet-eyed portraits thanks to Tina Jordan, a new editor at matter of discussion...At all events of American life, including Main The New York Times Book Review who the two separated, both very Street, Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry— began poking around in ancient bound angry, with Mr. Lewis’s face about all big best sellers, for their time. volumes, hunting for buried treasure. the same color as his hair.

4 Authors Guild Bulletin I’m not aware of any incidents of fisticuffs at Authors Guild Galas, and we’re not looking for any this year. I should add that Dreiser Annual Benefit himself steadfastly refused to join the Guild (or as it was then known, The Authors Guild Foundation held its 26th annual benefit on the Authors’ League). His biographer May 16 at Gotham Hall in midtown Manhattan, honoring suspense W. A. Swanberg says he called the novelist Mary Higgins Clark, the author of 51 bestselling novels; League a “pink tea and chocolate bon the Colorado independent publisher Fulcrum Publishing, and bon brotherhood of literary effort.” its owners Charlotte and Robert C. Baron, and the feminist literary Fighting words indeed! But that didn’t advocacy organization VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. All were stop us from waging a campaign presented with the Guild’s Distinguished Service to the Literary on Dreiser’s behalf when his semi- Community Award. autobiographical novel, The “Genius,” Guild president James Gleick kicked off the evening with was declared obscene by the a warm welcome and thanks to all who were supporting the work New York Society for the Suppression of the Guild and the Foundation. “If you’re here, it’s because you also of Vice. feel yourself to be part of a community. We know this is paradoxical. As for Sinclair Lewis, he wrote Authorship is a solitary business, always coming down to a writer 11 more novels, but he’s not the and a blank page, but inevitably it becomes a social act as well, because household name he once was. the book is inextricably part of the world. It finds readers, it begins a To quote Gore Vidal one more time, conversation, it tells a kind of truth that can’t be told in any other way— he “seems to have dropped out or else it fails to do that.” of what remains of world literature.” Award-winning actress and author Jane Alexander—a former Babbitt is not much read nowadays, Chair of the National Endowment of the Arts—was the Mistress though the word has entered of Ceremonies for the evening, and Mary Rasenberger, the Guild’s the language (“a materialistic, executive director, joined Nick Taylor, the Foundation president, complacent businessman”). So has in rallying support for Boot Camp, the Foundation’s latest initiative, the phrase “It can’t happen here,” for which it won its first NEA grant. An intensive writer’s workshop, which was also the title of his 1935 Boot Camp is designed to equip emerging writers around the novel about a demagogic fascist country with the skills they need to thrive, helping to foster new called Buzz Windrip who wins diverse voices and enable these voices to be heard. election by promising to restore the country to greatness and soon * The Guild is grateful to the Gala’s supporters, who, shows his authoritarian colors. through their generosity, are actively enriching the American It Can’t Happen Here is literary landscape. still in print, and it briefly surged onto the Amazon best seller list late in 2016.

— James Gleick The Authors Guild

Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress and author

Photograph by Beowulf by Sheehan Photograph Jane Alexander was the Mistress of Ceremonies.

Spring–Summer 2018 5 FROM THE HOME OFFICE

Local Guild Chapters working on the legislation with We are very excited about our the Songwriters Guild of America, new local Guild chapters. (See p. 23.) several photographer groups and We are off to a great start, with the Copyright Alliance. In April, inaugural events already planned we held our first-ever joint lobbying in several cities. If you reside in day with the songwriters’ and or near any of the cities where these photographers’ groups, sending a chapters have formed, look out strong message to Congress that for e-mails explaining how to connect. creators are united. We will be working The Guild will be launching chapters with our new policy coalition on in other regions in the coming year. other legislative initiatives down the Let us know if you are interested road. Many thanks to our lobbyist, in seeing one in your town in the next Marla Grossman, for all her work chapter rollout. on the bill. Welcome to the new look of the Authors Guild Bulletin! After 24 years, Online Communities Trademark Litigation: we thought it was time for a change. Our online community platform, Preventing Monopolized We hope you like it. As always, supported by Higher Logic, is Words in Book Titles we appreciate your feedback and launching this summer. It will allow The Authors Guild’s legal team, thoughts on the types of articles you to interact with other members, in cooperation with the Romance you would like to read. ask questions, and debate in private, Writers of America, defended It was a fruitful spring here secure forums. You can e-mail, an author who used the word “cocky” at the home office. Several projects post threads and connect with other in book titles. We won a court that have been in the works for some members instantly. Your discussion ruling that allows writers to continue time are coming to fruition, and threads will flow seamlessly among to sell books with titles that use we report on them in these pages. e-mail, mobile devices and the online the word “cocky,” despite a trademark community, and most importantly, registration owned by a single Author Income Survey conversations will be forwarded to romance author. (See p. 30.) The Guild You should have received our your e-mail if you choose. That way opposes registration of trademark Author Income Survey by now. you do not have to remember to applications for commonly used words Thanks to all of you who completed visit the forums. If a subject you are and is meeting with the Trademark it. We know it was long, but the interested in appears in your inbox, Office to help improve the registration information we obtained was crucial you can click on a link in the e-mail policies for series titles so that to a comprehensive understanding and jump right into the conversation. no one can monopolize a commonly of the economics of authorship Each local chapter or used word. today. The survey went to almost interest group (such as translators 200,000 U.S. authors, with 15 author and children’s book authors) New Group Copyright groups and platforms participating. will have its own forum to facilitate Registration for The results of the survey will communication among group Freelance Articles help us better advocate for you by members. In May, we organized a meeting giving us data to support our with the Copyright Office to press demands for improvements in Small Claims the case for new regulations that the law and in publishing agreements. The CASE Act, the bill to create a would allow freelance writers to We have begun culling the data new small copyright claims tribunal, register up to 100 of their articles at and will issue a report on its findings is still in process to go to the House one time, including online articles. early this fall. for a vote. (See p. 18.) We have been Current group registration rules allow

6 Authors Guild Bulletin for registering only “contributions close to completing our new to periodicals,” with “periodicals” Model Contract, which will serve as interpreted narrowly to exclude most the basis for future conversations online works. Registering articles with publishers. Authors Guild on a one-by-one basis is impractical, One of the issues we Principles and for most authors, economically need to address with publishers unfeasible. But should your work be is transparency in calculations of Adopted by the Council used without your permission, whether royalties, which includes accounting on March 1, 2018 by a third-party website, a commercial for deep discounts, and for that, pirate or any other infringer, you will we would like to hear from you need to have registered it in order to about what information your royalty enforce your rights in court (and in statements provide (or fail to provide), Fair Payment: the new small claims tribunal once it is and whether the price at which Authors should not enacted). Having your work registered various units were sold is provided, 1 be required to write helps significantly when trying to along with the number of units or speak without settle a claim, and it helps potential and the rate. There appears to be compensation. licensees find you as well. The new more deep-discounting than ever— Writers, like all group registration, together with where the publisher sells books professionals, should the small claims court, will make it at approximately 55 percent or receive fair payment more affordable for freelance writers more off the list price and is therefore for their work. to enforce their rights. contractually allowed to pay the author one-half to one-third Principles of the normal royalty rate. We want Right to At the March 1 Guild Council meeting, to better understand the extent Distribute: the Council adopted its first set of of deep-discounting since it 2 Authors may choose “principles.” These are formal positions can greatly reduce authors’ royalties. how and by whom or statements to which members As freelancers, writers have their works are can refer when asking to be respected few or no workplace protections copied, distributed, and treated fairly as professionals. and no collective bargaining. or otherwise (See far right column.) We aim to start changing that in made available to Unlike other workers— the coming years, but to succeed, the public. your plumber, say, or your doctor— we need your collective support. authors are frequently asked and It is more important than ever that even expected to write or speak authors stand together in solidarity. Attribution: for free. It can be uncomfortable to That is what your Guild is for. Authors should turn people down or ask to be paid. You can help by encouraging your 3 receive proper credit These principles will allow you to say, writer friends to join. The more and attribution “As a Guild member, I do not write of us there are, the stronger we are. for their work. for free,” or “I cannot allow my work Onwards! to be used without compensation.” Ownership: The principles are posted on our — Mary Rasenberger Executive Director Authors should website with an explanation of why 4 be able to retain they are important. We hope you will ownership of their find them useful and will link to the P.S. Apologies for the lateness of this issue. We were held up getting copyrights and to website on social media whenever you recover those rights see the principles being violated. the new design completed. The fall issue should not be far behind. if a publisher is unwilling or unable Amazon Complaints Channel to exploit them. Last but not least, the Guild has opened a new channel to resolve authors’ complaints to Amazon, in direct cooperation with the retailer. (See p. 30.)

Coming Soon! Lest you fear we have forgotten the Fair Contract Initiative, we are

Spring–Summer 2018 7 As you’ve probably heard, sales of audiobooks AUDIOBOOKS are booming. According to the Audio Publishers Association (APA), audio sales totaled more than $2.5 billion in 2017, up from $2.1 billion in 2016 ASCENDING (and from $900 million in 2009). Almost half of the Americans who bought an audiobook last year More than were under the age of 35, and the APA reports that they tend to listen quite a bit—an average of 15 50,000 audiobooks books a year. Publishers have responded accord- ingly: more than 50,000 audiobooks were released were released in 2016, compared to just over 3,000 in 2007. In addition, through companies such as Amazon’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), Scribl, and in 2016, compared ListenUp Audiobooks, some authors are now pro- ducing and distributing their own audiobooks. to just over What’s driving this boom? Quite simply, technology. As Troy Juliar of Recorded Books notes, 3,000 in 2007 “The audience ceiling at one time was consumers listening to audiobooks in cars. That ceiling is much higher now, as Bluetooth allows people to listen By Jonathan Lyons anywhere, including the home.” According to Vikki and Jesseca Salky Warner of Blackstone Audio, over the past 10 years “we’ve witnessed the rise of the smartphone—and our culture’s obsession with the smartphone— and along with that the enthusiasm of consumers who have adapted seamlessly to podcast listening.” Warner went on to add, “Having these devices glued to our hands most of the day means that we’re always looking for new entertainment, new ways to make the most of our time and brainpower. Audiobooks are a deeper dive than podcasts, a next natural step for those who really want to delve into a topic or story.” At the same time, Juliar cites anecdotal evidence that the increased popularity of audiobooks is attributable in part to screen fatigue, since they provide the reader with an opportunity to “consume media without being tied to a screen.” Screen fatigue may also (at least partially) explain a drop- off in growth in the e-book market—which in turn seems to have prompted some traditional publishers to push even more aggressively for audio rights to be included along with licenses of print and electronic rights.

8 Authors Guild Bulletin Agents and authors are aggressively pushing back against publishers’ desire for audiobook rights, for several good reasons. Some authors have long-standing relationships with dedicated HAVING THESE DEVICES audio publishers and don’t wish to make a change. GLUED TO OUR HANDS Publishers often do not provide an additional advance for audio rights, whereas audio publishers MOST OF THE DAY MEANS will. In addition, some of the traditional publishers THAT WE’RE ALWAYS who are pushing for audio rights refuse to guaran- LOOKING FOR NEW tee that they will actually release an audio edition. Moreover, in some cases, traditional publishers ENTERTAINMENT, NEW WAYS will include audio sales when making the determi- TO MAKE THE MOST OF nation that a work is still “in print,” making it even more difficult for authors to reclaim the rights to OUR TIME AND BRAINPOWER. underexploited titles. AUDIOBOOKS ARE... In light of traditional publishers’ increased A NEXT NATURAL STEP. desire for audio rights, authors and agents should consider testing the market for the audio rights of the work with independent audio publishers at the same time that they submit a work to larger traditional publishers. At a minimum, this will provide context for the value of the audio rights in a nego- tiation, and may open the door to a better opportu- Royalty percentages don’t tell the whole pic- nity to exploit the work’s audio rights. ture, though. Juliar explains: “A more important From a contract perspective, there are sev- metric than royalty percentage is RPU [revenue per eral issues to consider when granting audio rights. unit]. In every case, a company that sells directly to The advance-against-royalties model still applies consumers, libraries, or both will provide authors here, but the term of license for an audio-only with a higher revenue per unit than the audio divi- agreement is typically between 7 to 10 years; this sions of the trade houses, despite identical royalty is in contrast to the standard print license for the percentages.” This is because many trade houses “term of copyright,” or life plus 75 years (unless the use a distributor for some channels and do not author opts to terminate early, which is permitted sell directly. When negotiating, it is thus advisable after 35 to 40 years). Royalties for physical audio to look not just at the royalty offered, but at such editions (e.g., CDs) are usually around 10 percent factors as whether a distribution fee is or is not of amounts received by the publisher (i.e., net) charged, and whether the audio publisher will be or 5 percent of the list price (though rates some- primarily making direct sales to consumers; any of times start at 8 percent of the publisher’s net and these factors can affect how much the author will can escalate to 12 percent and higher). In addition, actually receive. some publishers will pay an additional royalty of Narration of an audio work is often a source of about 2 percent of net when the author is also the contention. Many authors would like the opportu- narrator of the work—either in addition to or in nity to narrate their work, but the publisher may lieu of a fee for the author’s services in reading the choose a professional actor or narrator instead— work. For audio downloads, the royalty rate is typi- unless the author is a public ﬁgure or has a per- cally 25 percent of the publisher’s net, although formance background. Sometimes authors will be many publishers dedicated to audio works alone given the opportunity to audition as readers for the will offer a higher rate. work (usually at the author’s request); if the author

Spring–Summer 2018 9 contract expires or is terminated for any reason, the author won’t have the right to take the nar - ration to anyone else. The new audio publisher A MORE IMPORTANT will have to create a new recording or license or METRIC THAN ROYALTY purchase the master recording from the original publisher. Exceptions to this arise most often for PERCENTAGE IS RPU major public figures, and/or where authors record [REVENUE PER UNIT]. the work at their own expense (usually such costs IN EVERY CASE, A COMPANY are assumed by the publisher). It’s standard in most agreements to give the THAT SELLS DIRECTLY author approval rights over condensations and TO CONSUMERS, LIBRARIES, abridgements of the script; it’s likewise standard to give an approval right over the pronunciation of OR BOTH WILL PROVIDE author-invented words (for example, the name of AUTHORS WITH A HIGHER a new species in a science fiction novel). Authors REVENUE PER UNIT THAN should also be aware that if they agree to the addition of dramatic elements to the audio recording, THE AUDIO DIVISIONS such as sound effects, it could hamper the license of OF THE TRADE HOUSES, film or television rights in the work; TV/film rights holders often require exclusivity in any dramatic DESPITE IDENTICAL adaptation of the work. In addition to the concerns ROYALTY PERCENTAGES. set out above, an audio licensing agreement will usually contain many of the same terms that appear in a traditional print/e-book grant, such as cover consultation/approval, time frame for publication, accounting, out of print status, and the right to audit. The good news for authors is that it appears that the boom in audio sales is not likely to dissi- is not selected, the contract can still provide either pate soon. As Warner notes, “With their resulting consultation or approval rights over the publish- higher profile in the publishing marketplace, audio er’s choice of a reader, depending on the author’s publishers have been able to do more advertising bargaining power. For works that require a par- and marketing, and every little bit of that has gone ticular accent or dialect, the author’s input can a long way toward increasing awareness of the prove invaluable for the recording. In cases where audiobook among readers and consumers in gen- authors read their own work, publishers will usu- eral.” At a time when print and e-book readership ally pay a flat fee or an hourly fee of $100 to $600 levels remain relatively stagnant, this rising tide for each hour in the final recording (depending on could lead to increased income for authors. the publisher and the author’s experience/profile). Regardless of who is selected as a reader, Jonathan Lyons and Jesseca Salky are founding authors should be aware that the publisher will partners of Lyons & Salky Law, LLP, a boutique law expect to retain ownership of the master record- firm that provides counsel in all areas of the enter- ing and of the copyright in the recording (i.e., the tainment industry, with an emphasis on publish- recorded narration). Narration is generally pro- ing matters. Separately, Jonathan is also a literary vided on a work made-for-hire basis. That means agent and oversees the translation rights depart- that while the author might have the right to sell ment at Curtis Brown, Ltd. Jesseca is a literary the audio rights to another publisher, when the agent and co-owner at HSG Agency.

10 Audiobooks Ascending I HAD AN OLD TYPEWRITER AND Tap, Tap, Click A BIG IDEA. —J. K. ROWLING

By Barbara DeMarco-Barrett It began the way most addictions begin. You tell yourself you’re going to smoke just one cigarette a day and pretty soon you’re up to a pack. You’re just going to buy a couple of lottery tickets and before you know it you’re betting on horses. That’s how it was with typewriters and me.

Authors Guild Bulletin 11 I had one typewriter—a 1950s Hermes 2000, reaction to how tech-mad the world has become. green with pillowy keys—that I acquired on Like yoga, meditation or contemplative chewing, Freecycle.org. The next was a Smith Corona typewriters slow you down and help you focus. Coronet electric from the late ’60s found at a If I hit a snag while I’m writing on the computer, flea market for $75. Now my collection hovers it’s all too easy to jump on the internet. Writing on around 20 (I peaked at 28, sold seven, and gave the typewriter, I’m less likely to become distracted. one to Dorland Mountain Arts Colony). That Tom Furrier, a typewriter repairman for may sound like a lot of typewriters, but com- 38 years and for 28 of them the owner of Cambridge pared to some of my collector friends who have Typewriter Co. in Arlington, Massachusetts, says, 50 and up, it’s nothing. Tom Hanks has 250 “Younger people claim the number one reason typewriters, as does Richard Polt, the author of they like typewriters is that they can type with The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion no distractions. Many baby boomers come in and for the 21st Century. Herman Smith, who holds a say that after using a computer for 25 years, they yearly get-together for typewriter enthusiasts at are sick of it and want a typewriter again. This his home outside of Morgantown, West Virginia, past Christmas we sold more typewriters than has 800. any other year.” You either love using typewriters or you think Author David McCullough, who’s written all of people who use them are certiﬁable. But over the his books on an old standard Royal, said it’s been past 15 years there’s been a steady resurgence of suggested he’d get more done if he moved to a com- typewriter love among writers, which may be a puter, but if anything, he’d rather go slower. Illustration by Ariel Davis by Illustration

12 Tap, Tap, Click J. K. Rowling wrote the first two of her Harry Potter books by hand and typed them on a 10-year- old typewriter. One can’t help but wonder how different those novels might be if they had been J. K. ROWLING WROTE written on a computer. THE FIRST TWO OF HER In 2009, Cormac McCarthy’s well-used Olivetti Lettera 32 manual typewriter, which he HARRY POTTER BOOKS bought in 1963 and on which he has typed all his BY HAND AND TYPED novels, sold at a Christie’s auction for $245,500. THEM ON A 10-YEAR-OLD Rather than transition to digital, McCarthy found a replacement: the same typewriter for less TYPEWRITER. ONE CAN’T than $20. HELP BUT WONDER I understand the Olivetti love: I have two. If one breaks, I have a backup. The Olivetti is snappy, HOW DIFFERENT THOSE responsive, and it’s Italian, like me. NOVELS MIGHT BE IF But deals on typewriters like the Olivetti have THEY HAD BEEN WRITTEN been getting harder to find since the documentary California Typewriter, released last year and ON A COMPUTER. a must-see for anyone even remotely interested in the typewriter. In it, Tom Hanks, Sam Shepard, John Mayer, David McCullough and others praise the typewriter. Prices have risen in response, especially for the Smith Corona Silent manual that Hanks said is his all-round favorite typewriter. Another factor in the typewriter revival is typewriters because of the machine’s physical- surely tech’s relentless assault on privacy. Every ity. You hit the keys, make a percussive sound, ink keystroke we make on the computer can be cap - flies onto the page, and at the end of your writing tured. The typewriter lets us create documents time, you’ve not only created a document but your without a digital footprint. Russia’s Federal hands feel it. Your shoulders feel it. You’ve used Guard Services is on it, having spent 486,000 your brain and your body. rubles, or $9,000 U.S. dollars, on electric type - And there’s no delete key. You can always X writers a few years back. over your prose—though this can quickly seem “I am not going to make a prediction about ridiculous to a computer-oriented brain. The typewriters as a fashion trend, which will ebb bonus of not having a delete key is you learn to and flow,” says Richard Polt, “but the fundamen- withhold judgment until you have a first draft— tals for appreciating non-digital tools are going a hard thing for writers to do, though that’s how to be in place as long as our digital civilization I wrote the article you’re reading: I typed a draft continues on its course...The need for privacy, on my green, red and white 1960 Smith Corona self-sufficiency, focus and durability will be felt Electra 12, transcribed it word-for-word onto my even more acutely by those who are unwilling to MacBook Air and began to edit. comply with what the dominant culture dictates. Few typewriter-obsessed writers are fall- Typewriters and other ‘analog’ devices speak to ing for the new typewriters, both manuals and that need. So there will be typewriter users in electrics, made in China. Instead we prowl 2100, I’m sure.” eBay, Craigslist, ShopGoodwill.com, flea mar- Beyond privacy concerns and rebellion kets, Facebook Marketplace and estate sales for against the digital regime, writers are taking to models from the ’30s through the late ’60s and

Authors Guild Bulletin 13 thought I was crazy, but when I gave her a Smith Corona electric to try out, she understood. “Writing on this machine,” she says, “draws WRITING ON THIS words from me in a way that feels like an almost MACHINE DRAWS WORDS out-of-body experience. The sound reminds me that I’m snapping out letters that create words that FROM ME IN A WAY might tell a story. The physical effort alone vali- THAT FEELS LIKE AN dates for me that I am writing, come what may.” ALMOST OUT-OF-BODY A friend I met online in the Antique Typewriter Collectors Facebook group, Shanyn EXPERIENCE. THE SOUND Fiske, PhD, the author of Heretical Hellenism REMINDS ME THAT and an associate professor of English at Rutgers University, said in the midst of a personal crisis I’M SNAPPING OUT and a dry spell writing, a friend gave her a type - LETTERS THAT CREATE writer. She stayed up all night writing. “The tac- WORDS THAT MIGHT tility of the machine gives me an intimacy with my words and thoughts. It helps me duck past the TELL A STORY. THE inner critic.” She’s since accumulated more than PHYSICAL EFFORT ALONE 200 typewriters. Two years ago, Glen Crookston of Houston, VALIDATES FOR ME a writer and a bank executive, had medical issues THAT I AM WRITING, and needed a 10-week stretch to convalesce. He COME WHAT MAY. started writing again—on typewriters—and began collecting machines from the mid ’30s to the early ’60s. His collection now hovers around 100. “I use an Olympia SG1 every day,” he says. “It’s the pinnacle of standard typewriter perfec- tion. As for portables, I believe the late 1950s Torpedo 18b is perfect. I’ve never encountered a early ’70s. Manual typewriters tend to be much faster, more precise or tactually pleasant machine.” more popular than electrics and have the added During his recovery, Crookston also expand- benefit that all you hear is the sound of keys hit - ed his fountain pen collection. Whereas he uses ting the paper. Electrics come with a humming typewriters for his creative writing, he uses a soundtrack, which bothers some writers, though fountain pen to write in his journal. Every day I’m fond of my old electric, which sounds like a after his radiation treatment or a checkup, he’d loud purring cat. stop by Dromgoole’s Fine Writing in Houston to A good many writers, notable and obscure, pick out another pen for himself. He collected 39, never stopped using typewriters, including costing from just under $100 to $1,000. Don DeLillo; Larry McMurtry, who thanked his “I have a fondness for Parkers and Sheaffers Hermes 3000 at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards; from the ’30s to the ’50s,” he says, “and I also like and Paul Auster, who wrote a book about his modern European and Japanese brands.” For Olympia SM9, The Story of My Typewriter. paper, it has to be “smoothly laid with dense fiber Writers who are blocked credit typewrit - that doesn’t blotch, but not so dense that the ink ers for unblocking them. When Toby Goode, can’t find purchase.” a former Disney copywriter, saw me post photos I love writing on a yellow legal pad or Apica of my typewriter acquisitions on Instagram she notebook with my Waterman fountain pen filled

14 Tap, Tap, Click with turquoise ink, and you might reasonably computers, he wrote his first novel, Laguna expect that the average typewriter devotee would Heat, on a typewriter, and the entire first draft share a soft spot for a fountain pen, or a freshly of Summer of Fear longhand. “It was a personal sharpened no. 2 pencil. book that dealt with the death of my wife, Cat, Jennifer Egan writes full ﬁrst drafts of her so writing it longhand with pencils on paper novels and short stories on legal pads, then types seemed more personal than using a computer. It them onto the computer. also slows your mind down a little and makes you Memoirist Abigail Thomas loves writing write more deliberately.” by hand in an unlined Moleskine notebook with The fountain pen industry and its fans aren’t “a pen with black ink and a point like a hypoder - going anywhere. But the typewriter-obsessed mic needle, because I love the physical sensa - worry about who will repair the machines when tion of it dragging words across the thick paper. those who fix typewriters—many are older When I have something, I type it on the com- men—close shop. There is hope: since California puter.” She then prints everything out and edits Typewriter came out, shops around the coun - on hard copy. try have seen record sales—including California Lynell George, a Los Angeles–based journal- Typewriter (the Berkeley store featured in ist formerly with the Los Angeles Times, won a the documentary) and Cambridge Typewriter 2018 Grammy for Best Album Notes for Live at shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts—and sev - the Whiskey A Go Go: The Complete Recordings by eral new shops have opened, including Philly Otis Redding. The project began, as all her proj- Typewriter, the only showroom and repair shop ects begin, with plain sketch pads and Rhodia in Philadelphia. top-bound spiral notebooks—“the surface of the As for antique parts, thanks to 3-D printing by paper is smooth to the touch”—and fountain pens, New Jersey–based Pete Volz, just about any plas- namely Lamys, a Scheaffer, and a Noodler ﬂex nib. tic or rubber part can be recreated. Customers “The pens and paper slow me down, in a good find him on the Antique Typewriter Collectors way,” she says. “They force me to engage with the group on Facebook. thought and go deeper. When the piece feels sol- For those who would rather not buy a type - idly like a piece—tone and a sense of structure— writer but want to simulate the sound, check out I’ll go to the computer.” Tom Hanks’s typewriter app: Hanx Writer. There Memoirist Erika Schickel says everything are QWERTY keyboards that attach to your iPad begins with a spiral notebook from the supermar- that simulate the typing experience. There’s also ket. “I have passionate dogma concerning cheap a USB device you can install in your typewriter notebooks. And I simply adore Uniball Air. I also that will record keystrokes and save your writing love those smooth Rhodia surfaces.” electronically. But don’t delude yourself. As Polt Costa Rica–based nonfiction writer Sarah says in The Typewriter Revolution, “the soul of Corbett Morgan says a case of writer’s block a typewriter is housed in its very physical body, caused her to start writing longhand. She likes to which leaves physical marks on physical paper.” start out in a Top Flight Composition Notebook, Amen to that. handwriting with a fountain pen and black ink. When she uses pencils, they have to be Twist Barbara DeMarco-Barrett is a writer in Southern erase mechanical pencils by Pentel and a box of California. She is the host of Writers on Writing replaceable erasers. on KUCI-FM and teaches at Gotham Writer’s “Writing longhand opens up areas of the Workshop. Her work appears in USA Noir: Best of brain that a keyboard just doesn’t,” she says. the Akashic Noir Series and her book, Pen on Fire: While suspense writer T. Jefferson Parker A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer has written most of his dozen-plus novels on Within is in its 11th printing.

Authors Guild Bulletin 15 Early this year, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Q&A: the lead sponsor (and one of six co-sponsors) of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act (CASE), sat for an interview with REP. HAKEEM Marla Grossman, the Authors Guild’s lobbyist in Washington, D.C. JEFFRIES A three-term congressman representing New York City’s 8th district (most of Brooklyn, with a slice of Queens), Rep. Jeffries has a master’s degree Creators essentially in public policy from Georgetown University and is have rights they a graduate of New York University Law School. MG: In your time in Congress you have been a par- cannot afford to ticularly active legislator on copyright issues. Has protecting and strengthening copyright been a enforce, and this lifelong passion or something you became interested in after being elected to Congress? has the potential HJ: Before my time in public office, I served as counsel in the litigation departments of Viacom Inc. and to erode their CBS Corp., where I worked on high-proﬁle entertainment cases. I learned a great deal about the tre- economic incentive mendous work that goes into creating and delivering content, and I have since sought ways to help protect to invest in creating the copyright economy and rights of creators. MG: Many people do not realize that copyright pro- new works tections are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Why do you think the Founders made the decision to include these protections? HJ: Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Interview by Marla Grossman Constitution grants Congress the power “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The Founders did this to ensure America would always be a place that inspires and fosters intellectual and artistic progress. As a result, the United States is the world’s strongest economy, with pat- ented products and content that are consumed all over the globe. We owe this great success to our Constitutionally based intellectual property system. MG: What do you think is the importance of books and reading to a democratic society? HJ: Reading is fundamental to the progress of humanity. Reading helps us obtain the knowledge

16 Authors Guild Bulletin needed to grow in our understanding of the world. And we cannot change our world for the better, unless we better understand it. MG: Do you see legislation to strengthen copyright as an area where bipartisan consensus can be found? HJ: Absolutely. I’m leading the Copyright Alter- native in Small-Claims Enforcement Act with my good friend Doug Collins, a Republican from Geor- gia, and he is leading the Music Modernization Act, for which I am the lead coauthor. When it comes to copyright issues, progressives and conservatives see beyond partisan politics. We are united in a shared goal of protecting creative rights and helping creators continue to make the works we all love. MG: Can you talk a little bit about why you introduced the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforce- ment (CASE) Act and how it will help creators? HJ: In cases where individual creators want to stop infringements that are causing relatively small economic damages, the prospect of a small recovery dissuades them from hiring a lawyer and Park. Spending time with those amazing artists, filing a costly federal lawsuit. Small creators es- seeing their exhibits, and learning about how they sentially have rights they cannot afford to enforce, dedicate themselves to their craft was sublime. and this has the potential to erode their economic Whenever I meet with creators I feel their passion incentive to invest in creating new works. and it inspires me to fight to protect their works. The CASE Act would help address this issue MG: Since the advent of the “Internet Age,” the by creating a Copyright Claims Board (CCB) in the world around copyright law has changed dramati- Copyright Office that would adjudicate and settle cally and yet copyright law itself has remained claims involving damages of $30,000 or less. The largely unchanged since the mid-to-late ’90s. CCB would provide cost-effective alternative dis- Other than the CASE Act, what changes would you pute resolutions, so that copyright owners could like to see made to the law to bring it up to speed? vindicate their rights without having to pay for a HJ: We have to do a better job of ensuring that in- lawyer. I think establishing the CCB will help the fringing works are removed from the Web. Notice- creative middle class that relies upon commercial- and-Takedown under the DMCA is good policy but izing creative works but cannot afford costly com- I think Congress needs to do a better job of collab- plex federal litigation. orating with the copyright ecosystem on updating MG: You represent an extremely diverse, creative the best practices that help fulfill the purpose of district in one the world’s biggest cities. How have the DMCA and protect creators. your interactions with your constituents and fellow New Yorkers informed your legislating on Marla Grossman, a partner in American Continental copyright issues? Group (ACG), represents the Authors Guild’s inter- HJ: Creativity flourishes in Brooklyn, where we ests in Washington, D.C. Named one of Washington’s have incredible music creators, writers and visual “Most Influential Business Women” by the artists. Recently, I had the privilege of joining pho- Washington Business Journal, Ms. Grossman has tographers from my district at Photoville, an in- been selected to the Washington D.C. Super Lawyer teractive photography festival in Brooklyn Bridge List every year since 2013.

Spring–Summer 2018 17 Have you ever spent hours, weeks, months, or even MAKING THE years working on an article, book or screenplay only to discover it, post publication, posted online or reprinted somewhere without your permission? COPYRIGHT Authors across the United States and around the world confront the online pilfering of their SYSTEM work on a regular basis. The number of e-book piracy alerts received by the Authors Guild has WORK FOR increased dramatically—by 300 percent between 2009 and 2013, when e-books ﬁrst appeared on the market, and by another 76 percent between 2013 CREATORS and 2017. Indiscriminate copying of pieces published online has become so commonplace that no one thinks twice about it anymore. Authors of Indiscriminate every kind—from journalists and renowned book authors to aspiring playwrights and bloggers— copying of pieces are economically affected by this. Sarina Bowen, an Authors Guild member and published online best-selling romance author, is a classic target. In her case, as in many others’, the takedown notic- has become so es she has submitted under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) have been only partially commonplace that successful. Many infringing sites do not have DMCA compliant takedown procedures; oth- no one thinks twice ers simply ignore takedown requests. Even when such sites do comply, her books quickly pop up on about it anymore other websites, and the infringement continues with impunity. “I play whack-a-mole all day long,” Bowen told us. “You can take down a book on one By Johannes Munter site and it will pop up on another site or even on the same site the very next day because someone else has uploaded it.” The current U.S. copyright regime leaves creators with few remedies, in large part because of the exorbitant cost of copyright litigation. Copyright protection is based on federal law and claims can only be brought in federal courts, where the ﬁling fee alone costs $400. Bringing a federal case is an immensely complex process and requires hiring a lawyer. The median cost of litigating an infringement of copyright case in 2015 was $250,000— a price tag beyond the reach of most authors. So what can you do when someone has copied your work and refuses to stop? You can ask your

18 Authors Guild Bulletin agent to take some kind of action, or, for a few thou- hassle; if she is the one accused of infringement, sand dollars you can have a lawyer send a scary she could ask the small-claims court to declare cease and desist letter. If you are a Guild member, that a short paragraph quoted in her book does not we might be able to help shame the infringer and infringe another author’s copyright. get them to the table. But if the infringer choos- One of the main advantages of the proposed es not to respond, as is the case for most foreign law might be that, in addition to bringing infring- pirate sites, you may have no recourse at all. ers to the table, innocent actors who have been To address this problem, Congress is cur- charged with infringement would have a chance to rently considering a bill, H.R. 3945, the Copyright defend themselves. For example, an author whose Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of film review has been taken down by an internet 2017 (“CASE Act”), that would create a small- service provider because of a questionable DMCA claims court authorized to solve copyright dis- takedown notice could seek a ruling that his review putes with minimal hassle and cost. The filing fee was in fact not an infringement. And because the would be determined by the Register of Copyrights proceedings would take place electronically, an and set lower than that of the federal court. The author would not have to travel to a federal court proceedings would take place electronically, mak- (hundreds of miles away). A copyright litigation ing it unnecessary for the parties to travel to a conducted in this manner would be a relatively court; they would be simple enough that no lawyer low-risk way for an author to ensure receiving fair would be required, although the claimant is free to pay for their work. hire one. Defendants would have the ability to opt-out While using the small-claims court would of the small claims process (a requirement to make be voluntary for both parties, defendants would the proposed law constitutionally compliant). be incentivized to stay in that court by the cap While some defendants will opt-out, limiting the on damages: $15,000 for each work infringed usefulness of the process, we believe that most and a $30,000 cap on total damages. Also, unlike defendants will be motivated to stay in for the federal court, where judges without expertise in same reason authors will choose to make use of it— copyright law often rule on these cases, the small- because it’s a better bet economically than litigat- claims court would be composed of judges with ing in federal court. specific knowledge of copyright law. Abuse of the The CASE Act arguably presents the first small-claims court procedure would be checked recent opportunity to change the Copyright Act by awarding attorney’s fees in response to bad for the better for creators. It is specifically intend- faith conduct and harassment, and by barring bad ed for individual creators and small businesses actors from the court for a period of time. that cannot afford to enforce their rights through Under the proposed new law, authors would federal litigation. The approach is similar to the have a fairer shot at protecting their rights. They small-claims track of the Intellectual Property could use the small-claims court to seek damages Enterprise Court in the UK, which was estab- for unauthorized online or print copying and/or lished in 2012 and has successfully helped small distribution of their work, as well as for unauthor- copyright owners ever since. It creates safety and ized “borrowing” of their work as the foundation certainty for authors and other creators by allow- for someone else’s creative efforts—such as that TV ing them to protect their rights without exhausting show that credits your book or is built on its con- their resources. Most importantly, it allows authors tent, that just never cut you a check. Or the news to focus on what they do best—advancing the prog- site that republishes your work and refuses to pay. ress and knowledge of society by creating new In the small claims system, an author whose literary works. We urge all Guild members to con- book was turned into a podcast without authori- tact their representatives and make their support zation would be able to file a claim with minimal for the Small Claims Copyright Law clear.

Spring–Summer 2018 19 THERE CAN BE NO STORY WITHOUT Empathy EMPATHY. OUR STORIES BEGIN BECAUSE WE ARE as Craft ABLE TO ENTER THE LIVES OF OTHER PEOPLE

By Brandon Taylor Stories have many functions: entertainment, healing, education, illustration, explanation, misdirection, persuasion. Stories have the power to shape worlds and to change lives, and so there is a lot at stake when an author sits down to write. Many people fold stories like delicate paper ships and launch them from obscure corners of the world, hoping that their ships land on distant shores and spread some of the truth of their lives to strangers. It is an act of communion, an act of humanity, the sharing of your story with another person. We each contain within us a private cosmos, and when we write of ourselves, we make visible the constellations that constitute our experience and identity.

20 Authors Guild Bulletin However, there are many ways that a story can harm. When an author writes a black woman who shows up only to be angry in two scenes full of sass and pilfered vernacular, divorcing the anger from its cause and playing to the worst of tropes, he is performing a violence. When an author conjures up a Latina cleaning woman who is old and slow and barely speaks English but leaves her home, the people who love her, and the dignity of her life on the cutting room floor, he is performing a violence. When an author rests a book on the thinly drawn metaphor of black bodies being torn asunder by some mysterious force that ends their lives just before adulthood, they are engaging in the ugliest male or able-bodied authors through the tricky and exploitation of black trauma in America. frightening process of writing “the other.” We get angry at the above and more. Because I do not mean to be cynical in my appraisal of stories have power, and we know that there are rules these services. Stopping the spread of harmful nar- about who gets to use power and who does not. It is ratives while simultaneously opening up the range of a rule of polite society to accept the reality that pub- stories available about a group of people should be a lishing is too white with a grim resignation and a nod. priority for anyone currently involved in publishing. The trade-off for not changing anything seems to be However, I can’t help but wonder about the relation- to let people get angry when the publishing’s lack of ship between the financial realities of publishing diversity takes the shape of harmful stories. And we and the profitability of our anger. When a firestorm do get angry. We form hashtags on Twitter. Discussion descends upon a literary figure, we turn, invari- rages on Facebook. Online magazines run polls, col- ably, toward familiar framing. How did they not see lect data, and assemble a host of think-pieces trotted this? They’re blinded by their privilege. Publishing out on the daily to explore the causes of the problem. is myopic. This is a moral failing. We need diverse Yet, despite our anger, it happens again and books/authors/agents/editors/publishers. again, with such regularity that our anger and out- But I am not sure that problematic stories are rage have given rise to a cottage industry of minor always the result of a moral failing. I think that the fixes. Take that remarkable innovation: the sensitiv- trauma that marginalized people feel when they ity reader. For a price, an author can have someone read problematic stories about themselves is real. else read their work and point out all of the problem- I think watching an author strip away your human- atic aspects from the standpoint of that person’s ity or flatten the complexities of your life and your unique experience. There are also a host of blogs experience into a couple of sentences meant to scattered across the internet (Writing with Color prop a secondary character is an awful thing. But being perhaps the best) to aid writers by answering I do not think that the author sets out to do that. their (often offensive) questions about how to write I think that we must be able to hold two things in our characters of various ethnicities, races, cultures, and mind at the same time. We must be able to honor religions. There is also the much dreaded “diversity the trauma that marginalized people feel when a panel” to be found at almost any writing conference, story does violence to them and we must also be the point of which is ostensibly to inform a largely able to discern the cause of the story’s failure. white audience what they are doing wrong. But also, There can be no story without empathy. Our there is a great proliferation of workshops, writing stories begin because we are able to enter the lives groups, and services offered by “diverse” editors. of other people. We are able to imagine how a per-

Illustration by Ariel Davis by Illustration There is money to be made by coaching white or son might move through the world, how their family

Spring–Summer 2018 21 beautiful, and as alive as your own. It means gra- ciously and generously allowing for the existence of other minds as bright as quiet as loud as sullen as IF THE AUTHOR CANNOT vivacious as your own might be, or more so. It means ENTER INTO THE LIVES OF seeing the humanity of your characters. If you’re having a difficult time accessing the lives of people THOSE UNLIKE HIMSELF, who are unlike you, then your work is not yet done. THEN HE MUST...HOLD THE When a story does harm by presenting a limited WORK ABOUT HIMSELF view of a group of people, then the author’s craft has failed them in some crucial way. It isn’t that every UP FOR CLOSER SCRUTINY. character belonging to every marginalized group must be perfect and without conﬂict. It isn’t that an author must present an example of every kind of person. Rather, it’s because you present only one side to that person’s life, a side that has often been fabricated and perpetuated by the larger public. It’s because your character doesn’t ring true, has none might operate, what their favorite foods might be, of the mess that makes a person real on the page. how their nation works, how their town works, and A writer’s work begins and ends with empathy. the smallest, most inconsequential aspects of their Without it, there can be no writing, at least not good lives rise up to meet us at our desks. You can’t write writing, and if the author cannot enter into the lives if you can’t empathize. Solipsism is anathema to of those unlike himself, then he must, I think, hold good writing. the work about himself up for closer scrutiny. The Harmful writing happens when an author’s distance between the self and the other is never empathy becomes limited in scope. When the as great as we imagine it to be—the two are often depth of a person’s humanity is correlated with twinned, and it’s this relationship that empathy that person’s proximity to the author. This is where reveals. The best writing, the writing most alive we get the dreadful phrase writing the other. There with possibilities, is the writing that at once famil- are classes, panels, workshops, blog posts, editors, iarizes and estranges; it’s writing that divorces us anthologies, writing series, reading series, and from our same-old contexts and shifts our thinking seminars about how to write the other, which is about ourselves and the world around us. often taken to mean people of color. I admit that The solution to problematic stories, both at I am perplexed by the absence of classes meant to the level of craft and at the level of human experi- instruct us in writing white middle-class ennui. No ence, is empathy. special roundtables to discuss how best to write about straight people or cis people or able-bodied Brandon Taylor is the associate editor of Electric people. There is no special secret to writing about Literature’s Recommended Reading and a staff writer people who do not look like you. There is no tech- at Literary Hub. His writing has received fellowships nique that you need that is different from writing from Lambda Literary, Kimbilio Fiction, and the about self. If you can write self, you can write other. Tin House Summer Writer’s workshop. He currently If you cannot write other without the assistance lives in Iowa City, where he is a student at the Iowa of a dedicated team of marginalized people to check Writers’ Workshop in ﬁction. His debut novel Real your every sentence, then you should likely interro- Life is forthcoming from Riverhead Books. gate the writing that is about self. Writing requires This article originally appeared on the Literary you to enter into the lives of other people, to imagine Hub website in August 2016. We reprint it with the circumstances as varied, as mundane, as painful, as permission of the author.

22 Empathy as Craft programs, aims to connect writers In the end, we selected Connecting with one another through events 14 U.S. sites to launch our first Members: and networking opportunities across round of chapters, in areas where the country. we knew there was already a The Guild Our goal of creating more strong concentration of members Launches opportunities for members to and where we saw the potential Chapters meet in person, at the local level, for outreach to surrounding has several cumulative benefits. areas. We identified at least two in 14 Cities To be among one’s peers or in ambassadors to lead each chapter— Around the the company of other writers who all members in good standing, are at similar stages in their careers, whether longtime supporters of the Country can be an enormous boost to Guild’s work or more recent allies. the writing life. Being able to share They will lead their respective Writers already spend a good information in an organic and portion of their day staring at their regional chapters for a two-year term. unscripted conversation can also In the coming months, computers. What we are aiming for be invaluable to writers. The list we will be working with these new is sustained face-to-face engagement of reasons goes on. ambassadors to begin planning with and among members. Our call for submissions a variety of events specific to their asked members to explain why respective strengths and interests, For some time, the Guild has they were interested in heading from social gatherings to book clubs, been exploring ways of providing a regional chapter; to provide educational panels, how-to sessions community at the local level for details for the types of programs our members around the country. they envisioned hosting; to tell us and workshops. Be on the lookout This has never been as easy to what they valued most about being for notices on how to get involved. achieve as we’d like, given that our a Guild member; and to list any We expect to add more cities in the members—nearly 10,000 strong professional affiliations that might coming years. now—can be found in nearly all help them expand the network of We look forward to updating 50 states, in major urban centers, writers in their area. you all on the progress of this small towns and rural counties. The response was new initiative and hope you will Over the last decade, overwhelmingly positive, and get involved in the chapter nearest we have been able to reach over the course of several months, you. This is and has always been members with whom we otherwise we received a steady flow of your Guild. And now, these regional would not have connected by way submissions from engaged and chapters are yours as well. Please use of our online webinars and event- enthusiastic members. In reviewing them to help connect to our work: streaming services. Our ambition, the resulting applications, we however, is not just to connect with focused on ones where the vision * Boston, MA writers via the internet. Writers was clearly communicated and Chicago, IL already spend a good portion of * aligned with the Guild’s mission. Cleveland, OH their day staring at their computers. We looked for a sense of vitality * Detroit, MI What we are aiming for is sustained as well as a firm commitment * face-to-face engagement with to the Guild’s core principles. * Las Vegas, NV and among members, along with a We took into account affiliations * Los Angeles, CA viable networking system to extend with other writing organizations * New York, NY opportunities for engagement at the national level. But more * Philadelphia, PA around the country. importantly, our selection process Raleigh-Durham, NC Last fall we began by was influenced by regional and * St. Petersburg/Tampa, FL putting out a call to members who local affiliations, which we felt * San Diego, CA might be interested in serving as would help expand the community * “ambassadors” for the Authors Guild. of writers in each specific area. * San Francisco/Oakland, CA We invited them to submit ideas Finally, given the diverse nature * Seattle, WA for events and programs that they of the Guild’s membership, * Washington, D.C. could design and execute themselves we wanted to be as inclusive as in their local communities. This possible and welcome writers — Paul W. Morris new initiative, which will provide across a range of ethnicities, genres, Vice President, Membership & some funding for preapproved and geographical areas. Outreach, The Authors Guild

Authors Guild Bulletin 23 The many changes to the federal tax law passed by AN AUTHOR’S Congress last fall took effect on January 1, 2018. These changes will apply to your 2018 earnings; they do not affect your taxes payable for 2017. GUIDE TO While the IRS is still working on implementing rules to provide guidance on how to interpret cer- THE REVISED tain provisions, this is what we know so far. Self-employed authors may continue to deduct TAX CODE business expenses, so for many authors, it will probably continue to make sense to itemize deductions. If you decide not to itemize (because Cuts, deductions, your total allowable deductions under the new law add up to less than the new standard deduc- write offs and rates tion), you may benefit from the slightly higher effective standard deduction and slightly lower tax rate, at least until 2025, when the new lower By Cheryl L. Davis rates expire. If you do itemize, and you live in a state with high property and real estate taxes, you Authors Guild General Counsel may actually see your taxes go up. If your total state and local taxes are less than $10,000, your taxes may be slightly lower until 2025. The IRS has not yet provided any direction as to whether authors might be eligible for the deductions for pass-through entities (details below), and so we cannot yet advise on whether it would make sense from a tax perspective for an author to set up a pass-through entity. Tax Rates

A major change in the tax law is the reduction in tax rates. The largest reduction is at the corporate level; the tax rate for corporations has been cut from a maximum rate of 35 percent to 21 percent. Individual tax rates will go down slightly for most people, with the greatest cuts being felt at the top tier, and minor reductions being made for other brackets. The top tax rate (which applies to single individuals with earned income over $500,000 and married couples filing joint - ly with earned income over $600,000) has been reduced from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. These cuts, along with many others, will expire after 2025; the corporate tax cuts are permanent.

24 Authors Guild Bulletin Standard Deductions and As such, the overall impact for homeowners Personal Exemptions in these areas will be a significant tax increase. It is also predicted that home values are likely to The standard deduction is being raised for most decrease in the short run as a result of the reduc- taxpayers, but few will see much of a real benefit tion in SALT deductions. since the personal exemptions have been completely eliminated, as have many other itemized Medical Expenses deductions. As a result, the effect of the increase in the standard deduction is actually quite slight. Under previous tax law, taxpayers could deduct For those filing as single individuals, the standard out-of-pocket medical expenses that exceeded deduction will be increased from $6,350 ($10,400 10 percent of their adjusted gross income. This de- if you include the now-eliminated personal ex- duction was adjusted to make expenses that exceed emption) to $12,000. It will be raised to $24,000 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income deductible— for married couples filing jointly, up from $12,700 until 2019, when the figure will go back to 10 percent. ($20,700 if you consider the personal exemptions). As we have previously noted in our blog For those filing as married couples with two chil- posts on this topic, the individual mandate of the dren, however, the new standard deduction will Affordable Care Act (ACA)—the requirement that amount to a decrease, even with the child tax credit individuals must buy a qualifying health insurance increasing from $1,000 to $2,000—if you count the plan or pay a penalty—has been effectively elimi- loss in personal exemptions from $28,700 (the nated, with the penalty being reduced to zero in previous standard deduction plus exemptions 2019. It is clear that this was intentional on the part amount for married couples with two children). of the current administration, as part of its ongoing All bets are off in 2025, however, when these efforts to repeal the ACA. This is expected to lead deductions and exemptions revert back to their to higher health insurance premiums for those who prior levels. don’t qualify for premium subsidies (because the One change that will increase taxes for home- point of the individual mandate was to widen the owners in high tax states is that all but $10,000 of risk pool and lower premiums for all); it has been state and local tax (including property tax) deduc- predicted that the change will lead to 13 million tions (commonly referred to as “SALT”) will no fewer people having health insurance in 10 years. longer be deductible. Residents of states with high taxes, such as New York, New Jersey, and Pass-Through Businesses California, will feel the squeeze, and their taxes will likely increase. This is somewhat ironic, since Starting in 2019, certain individuals will be able state, local, and property taxes have been deduct- to deduct 20 percent of their qualified business ible since the inception of the federal tax law (to income from a partnership, S corporation, 1 and prevent “double taxation”). sole proprietorship. (These types of entities are Taxpayers will still be able to deduct the not subject to income tax, because the entity’s in- interest on mortgage debt up to $750,000 for come “passes through” to the employee-owners, their primary home and one other “qualified resi- who are then taxed as individuals.) Under the new dence.” Homeowners in areas with high property law, 20 percent of the income that such an entity values, such as the New York metropolitan area, as well as many counties in California and some 1 According to the IRS, “S corporations are corporations that elect to Philadelphia suburbs—all generally areas with pass corporate income, losses, deductions, and credits through to their shareholders for federal tax purposes. Shareholders of S corporations report the high local taxes—will feel the rub here, too, as the flow-through of income and losses on their personal tax returns and are as- mortgages of many properties in these locales sessed tax at their individual income tax rates. This allows S corporations to avoid double taxation on the corporate income” (www.irs.gov/businesses/ exceed the limit. small-businesses-self-employed/s-corporations).

Spring–Summer 2018 25 FEDERAL INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX RATES FOR 2018 UNDER THE CONFERENCE AGREEMENT

IF TAXABLE INCOME IS: THEN INCOME TAX EQUALS:

Single Individuals Not over $9,525 10% of taxable income Over $9,525 but not over $38,700 $952.50 plus 12% of the excess over $9,525 Over $38,700 but not over $82,500 $4,453.50 plus 22% of the excess over $38,700 Over $82,500 but not over $157,500 $14,089.50 plus 24% of the excess over $82,500 Over $157,500 but not over $200,000 $32,089.50 plus 32% of the excess over $157,500 Over $200,000 but not over $500,000 $45,689.50 plus 35% of the excess over $200,000 Over $500,000 $150,689.50 plus 37% of the excess over $500,000

Heads of Households Not over $13,600 10% of taxable income Over $13,600 but not over $51,800 $1,360 plus 12% of the excess over $13,600 Over $51,800 but not over $82,500 $5,944 plus 22% of the excess over $51,800 Over $82,500 but not over $157,500 $12,698 plus 24% of the excess over $82,500 Over $157,500 but not over $200,000 $30,698 plus 32% of the excess over $157,500 Over $200,000 but not over $500,000 $44,298 plus 35% of the excess over $200,000 Over $500,000 $149,298 plus 37% of the excess over $500,000

Married Individuals Filing Joint Returns and Surviving Spouses Not over $19,050 10% of the taxable income Over $19,050 but not over $77,400 $1,905 plus 12% of the excess over $19,050 Over $77,400 but not over $165,000 $8,907 plus 22% of the excess over $77,400 Over $165,000 but not over $315,000 $28,179 plus 24% of the excess over $165,000 Over $315,000 but not over $400,000 $64,179 plus 32% of the excess over $315,000 Over $400,000 but not over $600,000 $91,379 plus 35% of the excess over $400,000 Over $600,000 $161,379 plus 37% of the excess over $600,000

Married Individuals Filing Separate Returns Not over $9,525 10% of the taxable income Over $9,525 but not over $38,700 $952.50 plus 12% of the excess over $9,525 Over $38,700 but not over $82,500 $4,453.50 plus 22% of the excess over $38,700 Over $82,500 but not over $157,500 $14,089.50 plus 24% of the excess over $82,500 Over $157,500 but not over $200,000 $32,089.50 plus 32% of the excess over $157,500 Over $200,000 but not over $300,000 $45,689.50 plus 35% of the excess over $200,000 Over $300,000 $80,689.50 plus 37% of the excess over $300,000

Estates and Trusts Not over $2,550 10% of the taxable income Over $2,550 but not over $9,150 $255 plus 24% of the excess over $2,550 Over $9,150 but not over $12,500 $1,839 plus 35% of the excess over $9,150 Over $12,500 $3,011.50 plus 37% of the excess over $12,500 From the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Conference Report. and Jobs Act Conference Cuts the Tax From

26 An Author’s Guide to the Revised Tax Code passes through could be deducted, substantially reducing the income on which the owners would ultimately be taxed. This could be of real benefit to sole proprietorships. THE IRS HAS FINALLY Authors and other creators were eager to find MADE IT CLEAR THAT out whether they can benefit from this change in the law by establishing a pass-through entity such as an SELF-EMPLOYED WRITERS S corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship. ARE PERMITTED TO The hitch is that the law limits the types of pass- DEDUCT 20 PERCENT OF through entities that are eligible to take this 20 percent deduction, and as stated in Section 1202(e)(3) THEIR ANNUAL NET INCOME (A) of the Internal Revenue Code, expressly carves FROM WRITING PROVIDED out “any trade or business where the principal asset of such trade or business is the reputation or skill of THE TOTAL TAXABLE one or more employees [i.e., owners].” This restric- INCOME IS NOT MORE tion is meant to prevent employees from becoming THAN $315,000 (IF MARRIED) contractors and using pass-throughs to take advantage of the tax break. OR $157,500 (IF SINGLE). We have been advised by Robert M. Pesce, CPA, of Marcum LLP that the IRS has finally made it clear that self-employed writers are permitted to deduct 20 percent of their annual net income from writing provided the total taxable income is not more than $315,000 (if married) or $157,500 (if single); this applies to a writer acting not consider the reduction in their tuition as tax- through a pass-through entity or as a sole propri- able income). Teachers can continue to take a etor. However, for writers with taxable income in limited deduction for certain job-related and excess of these amounts, their ability to deduct the classroom expenses. 20 percent is still uncertain. Alimony Business Expenses Alimony and separation payments are not deduct- Authors who work as independent contractors ible for divorce or separation documents signed should still be able to deduct business expenses, after December 31, 2017. including home office expenses and commissions paid to agents. If an author is treated as an em - According to a CNBC poll, conducted between ployee for any particular project (for which you March 17 and 20, 2018, only “32 percent of the receive a W-2 instead of a 1099), however, the public reports having more take home pay be - commission and other business expenses will no cause of the tax cuts, including only 48 percent longer be deductible. of Trump supporters and 35 percent of the middle class. More than half say they see no change Higher Education in their paychecks and 16 percent are unsure. It could be that more time is needed for people Student loan interest is still deductible, and grad- to notice the change. It could also be that the tax uate student tuition waivers are still alive and cut provided too small a break to be meaningful to kicking (meaning that graduate students need many Americans.”

Authors Guild Bulletin 27 THE FUTURE In Signature Management Team been established.) The Court denied v. John Doe, the U.S. Court of Appeals Signature’s request to provide Doe’s OF ANONYMOUS for the Sixth Circuit went against identity at that time, concluding that BLOGGING this usual practice and looked to “unmasking an anonymous speaker whether a party’s anonymity can still is a significant and irreversible harm.” Many writers rely on the protection be maintained even after a judgment The district court subsequently found of a pseudonym when they are writing, has been entered against him. that Doe had infringed Signature’s be it for political or purely personal On January 18, 2013, John Doe copyright and ordered Doe to destroy reasons. The right to do so is a part posted a hyperlink on his blog that all copies of the manuscript in of the author’s freedom of speech, allowed users to download an entire his possession, but refused to release and courts have found that it is copyrighted manual authored by Doe’s identity to Signature, saying protected by the First Amendment. plaintiff Signature Management Team. that it “was unnecessary to ensure However, the U.S. judicial system Doe’s blog, “Amthrax,” focused on that defendant would not engage favors parties using their real names criticizing multi-level management in future infringement of the Work.” in court proceedings. The question companies in general, and Signature Signature insisted on learning Doe’s of whether the author’s true identity in particular. Although Doe quickly true identity and appealed the lower should be revealed in the course removed the hyperlink after receiving court’s decision. of a lawsuit usually arises in the earlier a take-down notice, Signature While Doe complied with stages of a case and calls for the still brought a copyright infringement the district court’s order by destroying court to balance the potential harm lawsuit and asked that Doe be the infringing materials, he argued a defendant might suffer by having identified. (When a plaintiff has been that he had a First Amendment right their identity revealed against the wronged but doesn’t know precisely to speak anonymously, and that forcing harm a plaintiff might suffer by not who’s responsible, they may use a anonymous bloggers to reveal their knowing the true name of the person name like “John Doe” as a placeholder identities would chill their speech and who allegedly violated their rights. until the defendant’s identity has discourage them from speaking out

LEGAL SERVICES SCORECARD From December 1, 140 27 20 2017 through May 1, Book contracts Agency contract Reversion of 2018, the Authors reviews rights inquiries Guild Legal Services Department handled 629 legal inquiries. Included were:

28 Authors Guild Bulletin in fear of economic or social One judge dissented from the retaliation. Doe also argued that forcing rest of the Court of Appeals, arguing speakers to reveal their identities that not only is copyright infringement might unfairly render their speech less not “protected speech” (comparing Stay Current persuasive than it would be if they it to the equally unprotected “fighting on Guild News had remained anonymous. words” or obscenity), there is no legal The Court of Appeals reasoned authority allowing a copyright infringer Don’t miss industry news, that while there is an interest in to remain anonymous after they have updates on our advocacy promoting free speech by preserving been found guilty. This judge also efforts and valuable resources Doe’s ability to blog anonymously argued that ordering injunctive relief for your writing business. (the infringing speech took place against Doe without revealing his or in the context of Doe’s other blogging her identity minimized the injunction’s * Follow us on Twitter: activities), there is also a presumption effect, encouraged future misconduct, twitter.com/authorsguild in favor of open judicial records and hindered Signature’s ability to (especially after a judgment has already monitor compliance, saying that while * Like us on Facebook: been issued)—and where there both the district court and Signature’s facebook.com/authorsguild is a greater public interest in a attorneys were aware of Doe’s true * Subscribe to our litigation’s subject matter, a greater identity, “monitoring blog sites on the email newsletter: showing is needed to overcome the internet is not a proper task for the bit.ly/AGMemberEmail presumption of open access to judicial judiciary,” nor should plaintiff have to records. The Signature decision keep paying its attorneys to monitor To ensure that your Authors to send the case back to the District Doe’s compliance. Guild email messages always Court suggests that the decision on Here, both sides obtained make it to your inbox, add whether an anonymous party’s identity partial victories: Signature was granted [email protected] and should be revealed should be based an injunction preventing Doe from [email protected] to your on an evaluation of factors such as posting its content on his blog, and Doe email address book. If you are the reach of the copyrighted material, was not required to reveal his identity. a gmail user, simply move one of the economic losses suffered by the It remains for the district court (to which our emails from your promotions copyright holder, the reach of the the case has been returned) to apply tab to your primary tab. infringed version of the copyrighted a balancing test to determine whether it material, and the intent of the infringer. is truly in the public interest to unmask But, while these are all factors for Doe in order to further the presumption the court to consider, the burden of judicial openness. remains on the defendant to provide a compelling reason for not disclosing — Courtney Kaplar his or her identity. Legal Intern

67 15 +360 Inquiries on Inquiries regarding Other inquires, including electronic rights, copyright law securing permissions literary estates, contract disputes, contract including infringement, and privacy releases questions, periodical and multimedia contracts, registration, duration movie and television options, internet piracy, and fair use liability insurance, ﬁnding an agent, and attorney referrals

Spring–Summer 2018 29 COCKY MOVE title “The Cocker Brothers” and not Judge Hellerstein agreed “The Cocky Series.” When Hopkins’ and found that Hopkins was not likely CLOCKED trademark registration was issued in to succeed on the merits because April, Hopkins sent notices to multiple the word “cocky” is a common and On June 1, The Authors Guild won authors telling them to change the weak trademark, there was no evidence a court ruling that allows writers titles of their books and asked Amazon of actual confusion, and romance to continue selling books whose titles to take down all other cocky-titled readers are sophisticated consumers— include the word “cocky,” despite romance books (not just series). meaning that they are not likely to a trademark registration owned by That is when the Authors Guild confuse Hopkins’ and Crescent’s books. a single romance author. stepped in to defend the authors The Authors Guild seldom The Authors Guild and the whose books were targeted. The Guild litigates on behalf of individual Romance Writers of America (RWA) and the RWA separately requested authors, but this is an important issue joined forces to defend the principle that Amazon put the books back for authors generally. Authors should that no one should be able to own up, since the trademark claims were be able to express themselves in the exclusive right to use a common disputed, and it promptly complied. their choice of titles. A single word word in book or book series titles. The two groups then jointly hired the commonly used in book titles cannot In ruling against the author Faleena Authors Guild’s outside counsel, Cowan be “owned” by one author. This is Hopkins, who claimed exclusive Debaets Abrahams & Sheppard, to write especially true when, as here, the rights to “cocky” for romance titles, a letter to Hopkins on behalf of Tara word has already been in use by other Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern Crescent, author of another “Cocky” book authors in titles for years. District of New York, stated that he series (and an Authors Guild member). did not believe that Hopkins was likely In response, Hopkins filed AUTHORS GUILD to succeed on the merits. a lawsuit in the Southern District of OPENS CHANNEL Despite the popularity of using New York against three people: the word “cocky” in Romance book Crescent, author and lawyer Kevin FOR AUTHORS’ titles, this spring Hopkins obtained Kneupper (who challenged Hopkins’ COMPLAINTS WITH the trademark registration for “cocky” trademark registration), and book AMAZON in connection with her series of publicist Jennifer Watson. In doing self-published romance novels, each so, Hopkins asked for a temporary The Authors Guild has arranged featuring one of her “Cocker Brothers” restraining order to prevent the May 26 a procedure with Amazon for resolving characters. She then tried to block the publication of a collection of stories by authors’ complaints with their Amazon sale of books by other romance writers different authors, entitled Cocktales: book listings. with titles that included the word. The Cocky Collective (Hopkins incorrectly Guild members have raised a The Authors Guild believes named Watson as the publisher). variety of concerns about their Amazon strongly that no one author should The Guild’s attorneys prevailed in court listings. Members have reported be able to prevent others from on May 25 to block the temporary instances where the “buy box” for their using a commonly-used word or restraining order and again June 1, books pointed customers to non-“new,” phrase in their book titles. The law in a hearing on Hopkins’ motion for non-royalty bearing copies sold by is clear that individual titles cannot a preliminary injunction. Amazon resellers—an issue we have be trademarked, only series titles, We opposed the attempt to written about previously as well as and that common words cannot be block publication of a book, arguing instances of infringing copies of their trademarked at all unless they develop that “Any order that restricts creative books sold by Amazon resellers. In an association in the minds of the expression in favor of promoting the addition, some authors have discovered public with a particular source (in tenuous (at best) purported rights of a customer reviews of their books that this case a single author). Moreover, single author is simply contrary to the clearly violate Amazon’s own guidelines. Hopkins initially used the series public interest in freedom of expression.” In many of these cases, members have

30 Authors Guild Bulletin reported frustration or confusion authors’ issues and helps Amazon about Amazon’s complaint procedures, address issues as they arise. and we would like to offer some help and an alternative. Ways to Communicate with Background: For the past year, we have Amazon Directly Problems with had a direct dialogue with Amazon Abusive or Incorrect Reviews: and have been reporting these types The Guild has also discussed with the Buy Box of incidents to them on an informal Amazon problems related to members’ About a year ago, Amazon basis. We have learned which issues Amazon ratings being lowered by reviews decided to allow third-party represent cases of legitimate use which are clearly incorrect (about a sellers offering “new” copies and which do not, and we have been different book or author), or which are the ability to win the buy box. able to get these issues resolved. based on factors not relating to the The buy box policy is one that After discussions with Amazon, quality of the book itself (for example, Amazon has long had in place we have agreed to an additional about the physical condition of the for all other types of products, procedure, a direct flagging of issues in book). There have also been situations but when they extended the cases where Authors Guild members feel when the review process is unfairly policy to books, non-royalty- they are being harmed as authors (not as skewed by biased individuals—such bearing copies (sold by third- customers), but online communications as by blatantly homophobic reviews or party sellers) were able to win with Amazon have not borne fruit in a reviews attacking an individual author the “buy box.” In such cases, timely manner. Authors Guild members for personal reasons. Amazon has the authors affected reported may now file complaints directly with expressed appreciation for our feedback a sharp drop in the sales of the Guild. The Guild will review all author and is committed to reviewing these royalty-bearing copies, resulting complaints to determine whether they issues and exploring solutions. in lost income. raise issues that Amazon can or should Meanwhile, if you have problems We received a rash of address. We ask that members attempt with fake or incorrect reviews, or reviews complaints from authors who to resolve these problems directly that otherwise violate guidelines for saw their sales go to re-sold with Amazon first through their normal Amazon.com community participation, and non-royalty-bearing copies complaint procedures (see below). Amazon tells us that you should click of their books. While the The Guild will not be able on the “Report Abuse” link adjoining Guild (along with others) failed to resolve every issue successfully, the review to let Amazon know about to convince Amazon to reverse of course; but in cases where an incident fake, incorrect, or abusive reviews. their policy on book sales, has been in violation of Amazon’s Infringement: Any infringement they did agree to work with policies, the company has worked with of your copyrights or trademarks should us when third-party sellers us to resolve them. In other cases, first be reported through your publisher claimed the buy box in violation Amazon has heard us out and been or using Amazon’s Contact Us page. of Amazon’s policies—such as willing to review policies that work Customer Complaints: If you have when a book labeled as “new” to the detriment of authors. any complaints as a customer rather than is in fact not new. Resellers as an author—such as receiving a book sometimes mislabel copies of How to Let Us Know About labelled as “new” that is not new—you books they are selling as “new” Your Issues with Amazon should communicate directly with Amazon when they look new but are Authors Guild members may contact through customer service. Information not—such as advance review us at [email protected] if 1) they can be found on Amazon’s Help page. copies, remainders, and returns have an issue with their books’ Amazon Importance of Reporting from bookstores. listings, such as when a third-party seller Complaints and Marking ARCs and occupies the “buy box” even though Remainders: It is especially important publisher copies are readily available; that you let Amazon know when 2) infringing copies of their books are resellers are marking books as new that being sold, or 3) fake or abusive reviews do not qualify as new under Amazon’s of their books remain in view on their definition or when you see infringing books’ pages. The Guild will review all or counterfeit copies of books being complaints for accuracy, and where sold on Amazon. Amazon relies heavily we find problems that are in violation on customer complaints to police of Amazon policies or are potentially bad actors and to keep resellers honest. harmful to authors generally, we will Authors should also ensure that send them on to Amazon. Members’ publishers are marking promotional input is valuable to us since it helps us and remainder copies clearly, so they gather important information about cannot be resold as new.

Spring–Summer 2018 31 The American Writers Museum (AWM) turned THE one year old this May, and it’s reaching out to its natural constituency: writers. The museum celebrates writers from all AMERICAN genres—fiction, poetry, nonfiction, journalism, screenwriting and songwriting—and has drawn WRITERS thousands of readers, students and writers in its first year. Housed on the second floor of a grand, MUSEUM old North Michigan Avenue building in Chicago’s Cultural Corridor, AWM has been recognized by Fodor’s as one of the “hottest” museums in WANTS YOU! both museum-rich Chicago and the U.S., as well as one of the 10 best new museums in the world. USA Today readers voted it the best Illinois attrac- Elvis has one, tion, and Condé Nast Traveler lists it among the top 15 museums in Chicago. baseball has Celebrating writers and American literature in a lively interactive space, the museum honors several, dead both with multiple displays and glimpses into the creative process. With 13 permanent exhibits and presidents six galleries, the museum celebrates great literary voices of the past and provides meeting and event have them by space for contemporary authors. Recent speakers include prize-winning authors Viet Thanh the dozens. Nguyen, Alice McDermott and David McCullough; celebrated poets Nikki Giovanni and Natasha Now American Trethewey; and emerging writers published by small presses, most recently a group of first-time writers have authors from the Rust Belt. As you enter the museum, you are greeted by a one too large screen on which an introductory film plays, tracing the emergence of the “American style” across a map of the United States. An adjacent By Joanne Leedom-Ackerman room featuring cozy chairs and murals is dedicated to children’s literature. If it’s “Little Squirrels Storytime,” the room will be filled with preschool- ers looking at books or listening to a story read by a visiting writer or volunteer. Teachers have praised the museum for bringing literature to life for their students, and AWM plans to partner with literary and educational institutions nationwide. Down the corridor, the Gallery of 100 American Voices celebrates a wide range of writers, including early Native American storytellers,

32 Authors Guild Bulletin Thomas Jefferson, Sojourner Truth, Walt A digital map, Hometown Authors, allows Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather, Edith visitors to enter a zip code to locate writers past Wharton, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and present, including more than 70 historic Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison and many others. houses or small museums dedicated to individual It displays quotes from their work and provides authors that are now affiliated with the American short bios and photographs. On the facing wall, the Writers Museum. Surprise Bookshelf showcases excerpts from great Chicago was chosen to host the museum American literature, such as Maya Angelou’s poem because of the city’s support for the project, its “Phenomenal Woman.” central location and its rich literary heritage, One of the most popular ﬁxed exhibits is the which includes writers such as Carl Sandburg, Word Waterfall, where a stream of words is back- Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks and Richard lit to reveal famous writers’ quotes to the sound of Wright, who share a windowed alcove with other rushing water. Around the corner is Readers Hall, Chicago scribblers. with kiosks that let readers explore and compare The museum is the brainchild of Malcolm their favorite books. This past spring, one of the O’Hagan, a passionate reader and businessman changing exhibit spaces featured photographs of from Washington, D.C. O’Hagan, who was born in writers by the photographer Art Shay. Another Ireland, took a trip home seven years ago and vis- temporary exhibit is Laura Ingalls Wilder: From ited the Dublin Writers Museum. After learning Prairie to Page. that there was no comparable museum in the U.S., A table of typewriters encourages visitors to he set out to create one. His search for allies, funds add a sentence or two to the day’s ongoing story. and ideas took him all over the country as he met In the nearby Writers Room, a visitor can glimpse with writers, scholars and publishers who helped the creative process in the Mind of a Writer exhib- develop the idea and curate the selection of writers. it, where two 8-foot-long touch-screen tables “We hope American writers and Authors Guild display book titles and authors’ edits on manu- members will consider this their museum and visit scripts, among them Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall and promote it and be proud that there is ﬁnally a of the House of Usher” and Tennessee Williams’s museum that celebrates the great accomplish- A Streetcar Named Desire. The display Anatomy of ments and contributions of writers to America’s a Masterpiece includes quotes from writers about history and culture,” O’Hagan says. the creative process. Though not everyone is able to get to Chicago, the museum’s website offers a preview, and membership in the museum supports its activities. The American Writers Museum is offering a 15 percent discount on its basic $40 membership for Authors Guild members if they use the discount code AG when signing up online: www.americanwritersmuseum.org/join-give/ membership.

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, novelist and journalist, is vice president emeritus of PEN International and sits on the boards of Poets & Writers, the PEN/ Faulkner Foundation, the International Center for Journalists, Words Without Borders and the American Writers Museum. Joanne is also a longtime

Photograph courtesy of the American Writers Museum of the American Writers courtesy Photograph In the house of writers. member and supporter of the Authors Guild.

Spring–Summer 2018 33 AUTHORS GUILD ANNUAL MEETING REPORT

The Authors Guild held its annual them about contract terms and about community, we provide connection, meeting on March 1, 2018, at the royalties they pay. But we have we provide mutual aid. These have Scandinavia House in New York City. new sets of enemies, adversaries of the always been our fundamental purposes. Guild President James Gleick called writing life, and of the ability of authors “Community is something the meeting to order. and other creators to make a living. we’ve been working especially hard These adversaries include the most on and you will be seeing the fruits powerful tech corporations in America, of that work this coming year. We have PRESIDENT’S with whom we also have to negotiate, some exciting programs to announce REPORT lobby against, and press up against and we’ve also been working hard on with all the force that we can muster how we can best serve our membership. Mr. Gleick opened the meeting by as a still small, and I hope, feisty With the Google Books suit finally noting that it was World Book Day and organization. So that’s where we are. over, we’ve sought to refocus our efforts then called for a motion to approve That’s the context for all the things on our members and what you need. last year’s minutes. A unanimous vote that Mary’s going to tell you.” Several months ago, we sent out of approval was received. Mr. Gleick concluded his a survey and we learned a lot from “The state of the Authors Guild introduction by naming the members your responses. is strong,” Mr. Gleick announced. appointed to serve as tellers and “One of the things we heard “We have had a good year after a period inspectors, Cheryl Davis and Michael from you is that you want more when our finances were not so great. Gross; and holders of members’ opportunities for connecting and Executive Director Mary Rasenberger, proxies for today’s vote, Miriam Berkely, sharing information. Among other the Guild staff and our treasurer, Martha Fay and Eugene Linden. new initiatives, we are finally Peter Petre, have turned things around. He then yielded the podium to Executive launching our Ambassador’s Initiative. We’re not completely out of the woods, Director Mary Rasenberger. We’re also creating online forums, but we’re doing well. We recently passed with discussions that will be forwarded the 10,000-member mark, which is directly to you by e-mail. You’ll see a milestone for us—an all-time high. EXECUTIVE when there’s a conversation underway, Membership is on the way up and it’s DIRECTOR’S REPORT and you can join different groups. the members that make us strong. All of the new local groups will have “The need for the Authors Guild, Ms. Rasenberger began by thanking their own forums. The more people I firmly believe, is stronger now than the Guild’s Council and asking any use it, the more useful it will be, it has ever been. This is an organization Council members and Foundation so we hope you will use it.” with a distinguished and long history Board members who were present to Ms. Rasenberger mentioned that began when the publishing stand. She also welcomed members some of the many challenges that industry of America was essentially who were attending the meeting online, contemporary writers face, from located within a half mile of this place. via a live video stream, expressing new technologies and pressures on The Authors Guild was created to delight that “this meeting is not just traditional markets to the slew of new protect the rights of writers at a time for those who can travel to midtown platforms and services for authors, when those rights weren’t controversial. Manhattan on a Thursday evening.” which the Guild staff tries to keep And the most formidable and powerful ”We all know that authors face up with so they can alert members enemies authors had—the people more challenges than ever,“ she said. to which are trustworthy and useful with whom the Guild negotiated on “And the work of the Guild—which is your and which are not. their members’ behalf—were the union—is more important than ever. “And then there are the Goliaths. gentlemanly publishers of Manhattan. “The dictionary definition To protect authors, we have to “Now all of that has changed. of a guild is: ‘An association of people take on internet giants like Google We still find publishers to be our for mutual aid or the pursuit of a and Facebook, which make millions antagonists, sometimes. We fight with common goal.’ As a guild, we provide by delivering content they never

34 Authors Guild Bulletin paid for, while we simultaneously “With limited resources it makes Conference participations deal with Amazon, which dominates sense to do what we do best and included the American Literary every side of the retail industry and partner with other organizations on Translators Conference, the Association gets to dictate terms as a result. issues we share.” Among those we of Writers and Writing Conference “Defending free speech has are partnering with currently are the (AWP), BookExpo, Digital Book World, always been a significant part of our National Coalition Against Censorship, Killer Nashville, the Romance Writers mission,” Ms. Rasenberger said, PEN America, One Story, Electric of America Conference and the “but it has taken on special urgency Literature, The Literary Hub and Brooklyn Book Festival. in the last year. We’ve also spent a Slice Literary. Collaborations included great amount of time and energy this Ms. Rasenberger next introduced business-skills panels with Electric year simply making sure authors get the Ambassadors Initiative, which Literature/Center for Fiction; a six- paid in this ‘information wants to be she described as “a sea change” for session webinar by author/consultant free’ world—shorthand for an ‘internet the Guild. “We’ve been struggling Jane Friedman called Digital Age platforms want to get rich’ world. to figure out how to more fully engage Author: Best Practices in Marketing, “We are aiming to get a members throughout the country. Promotion, and Reader Engagement; balanced, breakeven budget for the The Ambassadors Initiative creates a 10-part webinar series in partnership first time in years while also trying a way for authors to get together in with the Copyright Clearance Center; to grow our way out of financial person in different locations. The Guild and our Indies Introduce series, difficulties. We’re doing that without sent out a call to members to apply in partnership with the American adding new staff. Our staff has for “ambassador” positions to help lead Booksellers Association. performed phenomenally this year, a local group. Applicants were asked Ms. Rasenberger reported full of ideas and energy, always ready to tell us why they wanted to serve next on the Guild’s website and content. and willing to do more and to take on and to provide ideas for events. “75 percent of our members have several jobs at once.” Ms. Rasenberger “The applications were amazing; online accounts set up on the website. asked all staff members present the energy and the ideas in all of them If you don’t have one yet, you are to stand and receive the members’ were inspiring. We had thought we missing out on a lot.” With an online applause. She also introduced the were going to launch with just six local account, members have exclusive Guild’s new general counsel, Cheryl chapters but there were so many access to video and audio recordings Davis, who joined us last November great applications that we are starting of seminars, webinars and panels; and has proved invaluable. with 14 cities. We’re going to keep exclusive member discounts to travel Ms. Rasenberger moved adding local groups as we go, but websites, literary magazines and trade on to the numerous activities and decided to start with major metropolitan journals; digital access to the Bulletin, accomplishments of the Guild over the areas where we have our greatest including back issues; as well as last year, beginning with the significant concentration of members.” our Model Trade Contract, the Writers’ increase in membership. “This increase The 14 inaugural chapters are: Resource Library and the Authors in membership did not happen by Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Cleveland, OH; Guild Guide to E-Publishing. accident. The staff has worked hard Detroit, MI; Las Vegas, NV; Los Angeles, Ms. Rasenberger urged members and long to achieve it. In just two years, CA; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; who have not yet signed up to e-mail we’ve had a nearly 50 percent increase Raleigh-Durham, NC; St. Petersburg/ [email protected]. “We’re adding in the rate of new members joining. Clear water, FL; San Diego, CA; new items all the time, and the site is In 2017, the number of new members San Francisco/Oakland, CA; Seattle, WA, becoming a robust and useful resource across all five categories of membership and Washington, D.C. for writers.” exceeded that of 2016. It’s a very good Ms. Rasenberger expressed her Ms. Rasenberger also spoke trend and we hope to increase this thanks to everyone who applied to be briefly about the Guild’s weekly exponentially. Prior annual increases an Ambassador. “Thank you for your newsletter, which includes industry were around 3 to 5 percent.” time and your willingness to serve. news, Guild advocacy efforts, member Ms. Rasenberger reminded And if we’re not launching in your area news, discounts and a roundup of members that they can help with right now, we will be getting to you articles of interest. She urged members recruitment by inviting friends to sign eventually.” (See p. 23.) who have not yet signed up for it to on as “Friends of the Foundation.” Ms. Rasenberger reported do so. “Let us know if you have any The first “Friends” tier starts at $60, that the Guild participated in more suggestions on how we can improve it.” which includes the newsletter, access than 45 events last year, including On a related theme, Ms. Rasenberger to the members’ website and an educational events at conferences, noted that the Guild now has 20,000 invitation to the Gala. webinar series, conference sponsorships Twitter followers and 2,000 Facebook Ms. Rasenberger noted the and collaborations with other followers. She reminded the audience increase in partnerships the Guild has organizations, a list of which was that social media reach is exponential: formed with other organizations. distributed at the meeting. “So please help us get our messages

Spring–Summer 2018 35 out there by following and reposting the Authors Guild on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.” Pennies from Heaven Add Up: $33,000,000 and Counting LEGAL ADVOCACY Two images shared the cover of the Winter 1996 Bulletin: one was playful, celebrating the official launch of the Authors Registry; Ms. Rasenberger turned next to a cheekier one referenced the rush to squeeze every possible penny the Guild’s crucial legal advocacy out of previously published work. It was the infancy of electronic efforts and encouraged any members publishing, a time when writers’ works were being recycled without with questions to talk directly to compensation and publishers were complaining that it was just too Cheryl Davis, our general counsel, much trouble to track down individual authors and calculate the tiny or Michael Gross, our director of legal sums of money each might be owed for a photocopy, an electronic services, following the meeting. sharing of their work or a CD-ROM. Issues of significance to the Guild The Guild’s then-executive director Robin Miller and then- in the last year included the following: general counsel Paul Aiken (later executive director) had a better idea. In May 1995, in concert with the Dramatists Society, the 1. CASE Act for a Small American Society of Journalists and Authors and the Association of Claims Copyright Court Authors Representatives, the Guild founded the Authors Registry, This past October, Rep. Hakeem a clearing house and reference base for authors. “It’s an idea whose Jeffries reintroduced (with bipartisan time has come,” said Mary Pope Osborne, the Guild’s president at the support) a bill to create a small time. “If the Information Age is to live up to its potential, then we claims copyright court in the U.S. have to provide a means to simply and accurately reward authors for Copyright Office. Currently, authors the use of their works, no matter what the medium.” and other creators have no practical The billing on the cover of the Summer 1995 Bulletin was way to enforce their rights, even in “An ASCAP of Our Own,” and it was true. By early 1996, the Automated cases of clear infringement, because Rights Payment System, built by Terry King, the Registry’s manager bringing a litigation in federal court to this day, was up and running, and the first payments were made is so expensive. The bill, which has to authors in February 1996. Harper’s was the first magazine to sign wide support in the House Judiciary on to use the Registry as its clearinghouse for paying writers for Committee, is expected to go to the electronic reuse of their work. The database’s value was equally clear full House this spring. (See p. 18.) to the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) in London, which transferred its distribution of photocopy license fees for 2. Internet Archive/ U.S. authors to the Registry in 1996, with a kickoff of $35,000 to be Open Library paid to 300 American writers. Since then, the ALCS has been the The Internet Archive’s Open primary source of royalties disbursed through the Registry. Library is e-lending full-text scans In 2006, the Registry began distributing library lending rights of copyrighted books without payments from the Netherlands to American authors. The Netherlands authorization, in violation of copyright is unique in that it makes these payments to American authors despite law. We advised members and the lack of any reciprocal library lending payments from the U.S. other organizations about the project These payments have added significantly to the Registry’s payouts. and instructed them on how to Now in its 23rd year, the Registry has distributed a total find out if their books are available of $33,000,000 to writers, less a 7.5 percent administrative fee for e-lending on the site and how (the lowest in the business). to send a takedown notice. We are That’s a lot of pennies. 33,000,000,000 of them. continuing to monitor the situation and will keep members apprised. * Not everyone is aware of the Registry’s connection to the Guild. If you have received letters from the Registry and 3. Amazon have not responded, what are you waiting for? We have been active in monitoring Amazon’s growing impact on the publishing marketplace and have spoken out against its monopsonic power, a power that can so easily be abused. We have written about the problem of improper assignments of the Buy Box to third-party resellers.

36 Authors Guild Annual Meeting Report Recently, we commenced a formal economy in 2015, employed 5.5 million we see it. We have signed on relationship with Amazon to refer workers and generally grew at a rate to multiple statements and letters member complaints to their publishing over double that of the U.S. economy. organized by NCAC protesting the division on mis-assignments of the censorship of books in schools and Buy Box and improper reviews, and 7. Proposed Elimination libraries, including one against the other matters that merit Amazon’s of NEA and NEH Funding removal of To Kill a Mockingbird from attention. We lobbied again this year to protect a junior high school. These letters the Na tional Endowment for the remind school districts of the free 4. Net Neutrality Arts (NEA), National Endowment speech violations implicit in such When the Federal Communications for the Humanities (NEH) and the censorship and often result in books Commission (FCC) announced its Institute of Museum and Library being reinstated. We have also signed plans to repeal its net neutrality rules, Service (IMLS) from being defunded on to statements and amicus briefs we sent a letter voicing our objections per the administration’s proposed 2018 with the Media Coalition and PEN. to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai; the letter and 2019 budget proposals. Among We also signed on to an was signed by 1,838 Guild members. the works written with NEA support amicus brief with the Media Coalition We continue to monitor the growing include Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed and seven other groups in a right senatorial push to garner votes to Earth and two books by Council of publicity case, Take Two v. Lohan. overrule the FCC’s repeal, as well as members: Tayari Jones’s Silver Sparrow The brief argued against Lindsay the lawsuit filed by 22 state attorneys and Alexander Chee’s The Queen Lohan’s claim that her right of publicity general. Depending on how matters of the Night. Fortunately, Congress had been violated by a creative video progress, we may sign on to an retained and even slightly increased game that included a character with amicus brief in support of maintaining the funding for each agency. some similar physical features. A right an open internet. of publicity that could be interpreted 8. American Law that broadly could also impede free 5. Free Speech/ Institute Restatement speech by limiting the ability to write Freedom of the Press In the course of creating a biographies or mention real people in Throughout the year, we monitored Restatement of Copy right Law for the books, undermining the State’s strong this issue and made our voice heard American Law Institute (to be used, interest in free speech. when the free speech of writers was as most Restatements are, by courts Finally, as we have in the past, we compromised. When President Trump in ruling on cases), the drafters of supported Banned Books Week this year. attempted to suppress publication that Restatement have demonstrated We announce all our various efforts of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside a distinct anti-copyright bias. and post them on our website, as well the Trump White House, we issued Since Judges rely heavily on these as in the newsletter and the Bulletin. a statement that same day and stood Restatements of Law in deciding cases, ready to lend support if there were there is a real risk that future cases 10. New York State Right a suit. As our president, James Gleick, may be decided in a way that reflects of Publicity Bill said: “This isn’t a country where this bias. In response to objections In Spring 2017, a bill to greatly we quash books that the leader finds from the Copyright Community and broaden the right of publicity in New unpleasant. That’s what tyrants do, to ensure that the interests of writers York State was negotiated between not American presidents.” and other creators are protected, SAG-AFTRA and MPAA. As soon ALI enlisted a team of legal advisors as the bill was made public, the Guild 6. NAFTA that includes Executive Director lobbied against it and provided a In connection with the ongoing Mary Rasenberger to review the markup of the bill that would make renegotiation of the North American drafts of the proposed Restatement. clear that books and journalism would Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Given that many observers have not be protected by the new law. While we have joined with other creative expressed concerns—including the the primary purpose of the bill is to industry organizations to send Copyright Office, which called the project protect performers from having their letters to the Office of the United “misguided”—the Restatement may images and voices used in video games States Trade Representative Robert be issued in a “new format.” We will and movies without their consent, the Lighthizer to urge him to maintain continue to monitor the situation. bill’s poor drafting could cover many pro-intellectual property protections more uses, even arguably barring “that promote American creators 9. Collaborative Free authors from writing books about real and innovators and U.S. economic Speech Efforts people for up to 50 years after their strength.” The copyright industries are We continue to work with other death. We continue to work with other a key component of the U.S. economy. organizations—such as the National organizations to ensure that writers Copyright-intensive industries Coalition Against Censor ship (NCAC)— will not be exposed to liability when contributed $1.2 trillion to the U.S. to push back on censorship wherever writing about real people.

Authors Guild Bulletin 37 11. Translators’ Income Partnership with the is undertaking. The first is an online Survey and Model Contract International Foundation member community, where you We conducted a survey of U.S. of Journalists can share resources, information and literary translators, in collaboration So that Guild members who are discussions in a variety of forums, with the American Literary Translators journalists may obtain press cards and and which will be launched in June. Association, the American Translators enjoy IFJ benefits. Thanks to an anonymous Association’s Literary Division and the Foundation gift, we are launching PEN America Translation Committee. a comprehensive national author The survey collected information AUTHORS GUILD income survey, and we are working from 205 translators on issues such PRINCIPLES with about 20 other organizations that as payment, royalties, copyright and have also agreed to send the survey various other aspects of the literary Ms. Rasenberger reported that to their members. You will be receiving translation profession. The results at the Council meeting that directly your survey in May. Please help us can be viewed on our website at preceded the member meeting, by completing it. www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/ the Guild’s Council had voted in favor Our third initiative is the glimpse-world-u-s-translator/. of adopting a set of Authors Guild relaunch of Back in Print. We’ve We are also working with the Principles. “These are statements expanded our partnerships to same translator associations to create that may seem obvious to everyone include the Independent Publishers a model translator’s agreement for gathered here,” Ms. Rasenberger Group (IPG), which will be handling the membership. It will be posted on said, “but not to the world at large. file creation and distribution. our website once finalized. We need to shout them out.” We are in the process of opening Each principle will have its own up enrollment, and anyone now in page on our website, with appropriate the program with Open Road LEGAL SERVICES explanation and context. When will have the opportunity to move someone’s rights have been violated, their books over. The next portion of Ms. Rasenberger’s we hope you will tweet a link to the report focused on the Guild Legal relevant page in support. We also hope Services department. In the last fiscal these new “principles” will be a useful FUNDRAISING year we handled more than 1,164 legal tool for members and we will keep matters, a 15 percent increase over Ms. Rasenberger concluded her adding to them as new issues come up. the previous year, when we handled presentation with a brief summary (See p. 7.) a total of 1,012. Legal initiatives for the of a successful year on the fundraising coming year include: front. “Fundraising is what is allowing WEB SERVICES us to do more. Our fundraising has Model trade book contract been done through the Foundation We expect to have a draft completed Ms. Rasenberger reported that and we have a new, expanded board and circulated to agents for the Guild now hosts websites for more that has been amazing at helping us feedback by the end of spring 2018. than 2,300 members. We continue raise money, through our gala, newly General Counsel Cheryl Davis is to upgrade our Site Builder platform, launched trips and in other ways.” helping us make it both more user- which offers a range of new, more Ms. Rasenberger expressed friendly and realistic. contemporary themes, larger type, thanks to all who contributed so far. the capacity to integrate blogs and With that, she concluded her Model translator newsletter pages, a mobile-friendly presentation by thanking all Guild agreement system and easy editing tools, so members: “Thank you for your Our translator survey was very you don’t need to hire an expensive attention today. Thanks to all of you productive, and we are using that web designer. If you’re an existing for being a part of this community. information to create a model subscriber, we will be in touch soon This is your Guild—our Guild. translator agreement. We expect to move your site to the new platform. We want to hear from all of you.” to complete and circulate this If you want to move over right now, President Gleick thanked draft for translator feedback within please email us at webservices@ Ms. Rasenberger for a “fantastic the next couple of months. authorsguild.org. presentation,” and introduced Nick Taylor, president of the Foundation. Legal FAQs We are developing a list of legal NEW INITIATIVES Foundation President’s Report FAQs for the website; it will include Nick Taylor reported that the such basic questions as “What is Ms. Rasenberger spoke briefly Foundation board has grown to a copyright?” about three new initiatives the Guild 18 members, the newest of them

38 Authors Guild Annual Meeting Report being Lee Childs, Buff Kavelman, Mary already gave you the headline: Weinstock—were also voted in, Laura Pedersen, Diana Rowan We are aiming to hit a balanced and joined by our newest Council Rockefeller and Roxana Robinson, budget after several years of losses. member, D.T. Max. former president of the Guild, who It’s not real yet, but it’s our target, Ms. Truong’s national bestselling is also chair of the upcoming gala. and we’re working very hard to do it. first novel, The Book of Salt, was Our 2017 Foundation Benefit “The good news is that the recipient of the New York Public Gala, which honored Toni Morrison, last year we narrowed our losses Library Young Lions Fiction Award, James Patterson and IngramSpark, from more than a million dollars the Bard Fiction Prize, and was raised $433,000. This year’s gala, the year before to about three honored as a New York Times Notable on May 16, 2018, is honoring Mary hundred some-odd thousand dollars. Fiction Book. Her second novel, Higgins Clark, Bob and Charlotte That puts us $700,000 closer to the Bitter in the Mouth, received the Baron of Fulcrum Publishing and black and we think this is the year American Academy of Arts and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts; and we can get to breakeven. The way Letters’ Rosenthal Family Foundation is on track to raise approximately that’s happened is with the help Award and was a Barnes and Noble $450,000. So far this year, our Annual of contributions like Nick is talking 25 Best Fiction Books of 2010 pick. Appeal to members and supporters about, and with the help of a couple A PEN/Robert Bingham Fellow, has raised $105,000. of hundred thousand dollars from Princeton University Hodder Fellow, Mr. Taylor reported briefly the Authors Coalition—more than we Guggenheim Fellow, Visiting Writer on the recent trips the Foundation expected. This coming year we are at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced has organized, including three trips looking to see a revenue increase Studies, and U.S.-Japan Creative to Cuba and a fourth scheduled for of almost $800,000. Part of that is Artists Fellow, Ms. Truong was May. A trip to Iceland is scheduled from the growth in membership, most recently the Harman Writer-infor summer, one to Jordan (with a stop part of that is from contributions and Residence at Baruch College. in Petra) is planned for November, part of that is from trip revenue. She serves on the Creative Advisory and board member Laura Petersen “Expenses are being kept Council for Hedgebrook, Advisory is working on additional possibilities. ruthlessly steady, even dropping Committee of the Diasporic Mr. Taylor reported that the board a little bit. That’s the plan for breaking Vietnamese Artists Network, and is also considering anthologies as even. In connection with that, I want Advisory Council for PEN American a potential fundraising venture and to compliment the staff for putting Center and is also the chair of its invited suggestions for potential up with this squeeze and working doubly Literary Awards Committee. Born in themes. He concluded his report hard in spite of it. They understand South Vietnam in 1968, Ms. Truong with news of a fundraising and how important it is for us to get to came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1975. outreach effort coming this summer. a balanced budget and their efforts She is a graduate of Columbia Law An anonymous donor and the NEA really count. Thanks from the treasury School and Yale University, and lives have given us funds to start a series to the staff.”1 in Brooklyn, New York. of publishing boot camps with the Mr. Gleick then announced Mr. Max is a staff writer at aim of increasing diversity in the that the proposed slates of Officers The New Yorker. His book, Every Love publishing world. Penguin Random and Council Members were returned, Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of House’s Foundation has signed on with 879 ballots cast. David Foster Wallace, published in as well and will be providing faculty The result is that Jim Gleick 2012, was a New York Times bestseller. and financial assistance. was re-elected president of the Guild, He is also the author of The Family President Gleick announced Monique Truong was elected and That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery it was time to collect the ballots, Richard Russo re-elected as Vice- and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014. after which he would declare the Presidents, Peter Petre was re-elected He lives in New Jersey with his family voting closed. treasurer and Daniel Okrent was and a cocker-dachshund rescue re-elected secretary. named Nemo. All seven Council members up for re-election to a three-year There being no additional business, TREASURER’S term—Amy Bloom, Alexander Chee, Mr. Gleick adjourned the meeting, Tayari Jones, Hampton Sides, which was followed by a cocktail REPORT Peg Tyre, Rachel Vail and Nicholas reception. Treasurer Peter Petre followed with a brief and upbeat financial report. “For those interested in the numbers, the financial reports for the past two years and budget for 1 Affidavits on the notice of meeting, the proxies sent to all active members and details of the tallying this year have been made available. are available for inspection by members at the Guild’s office.

Authors Guild Bulletin 39 Illustration by Ariel Davis by Illustration

40 Authors Guild Bulletin FOUR OF THE LARGEST COMPANIES Our IN THE WORLD ARE GOOGLE, APPLE, AMAZON, Cornered AND FACEBOOK. AND THEY’VE ACQUIRED MASSIVE WEALTH BY Culture RIDING ON THE COATTAILS OF CREATORS’ WORK

Last fall, as part of its LIVE from the NYPL series, the New York Public Library hosted a timely and riveting conversation between Franklin Foer, the author of World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, and Jonathan Taplin, the author of Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, on the subject their respective books explore: the unprecedented power and influence that the major internet platforms Google, Facebook, and Amazon exert on our political, economic, and cultural lives.

Spring–Summer 2018 41 Mr. Foer, a long standing member of the FRANKLIN FOER: It was a plea for mercy. Authors Guild, is the author of How Soccer PH: You know it’s interesting, because the way Explains the World, co-author of Jewish Jocks, a I’m going to begin tonight is by saying, first of all, former editor of New Republic and currently a staff that both of your books seemed to me to be like writer at The Atlantic. autobiographies. You’ve written intellectual auto- Mr. Taplin, a Guild Council member since biographies. You’ve brought in your own body in 2017 and Director Emeritus at the Annenberg writing these stories about technology and how Innovation Lab at USC, is a former tour and con- they have affected you, how you have loved them cert manager (Janis Joplin and the Band, Judy and how they have disappointed you. But I want Collins, The Concert for Bangladesh), and a film to begin with anger. Sweetness might be hard to and television producer (Mean Streets, The Last sustain here. In the first pages of World Without Waltz, To Die For). Mind, Frank, you say, “I hope this book doesn’t The discussion was moderated by Paul Hol- come across as fueled by anger, but I don’t want to den gräber, the Director of NYPL’s Public Planning, deny my anger either.” So, tell us about that anger. host of LIVE from the NYPL and a singular inter- Sweetly, if you wish. It’s real anger. locutor, who welcomed the audience and set the FF: It is, and actually the genesis of this book stage for the evening’s conversation. extends back to the Authors Guild. In 2014, The transcript has been edited for length and Amazon was in the middle of renegotiating its accuracy and appears here with the permission of e-book contract with Hachette, the French pub- all participants and NYPL. lishing giant, and I had written a book with Hachette. Authors, and I don’t need to tell you this, PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: I’m the director of pub- but we can be a bit narcissistic. lic programs here at the New York Public Library, PH: Never. known as LIVE from the NYPL, and I’m delighted FF: Never. It’s why every cab ride is ripe with pos- to announce tonight a new partnership with the sibilities for a column. Authors Guild to conduct a series of public forums So, Amazon kept asking more and more out entitled Who Owns the Word? of Hachette. They wanted to set the price for the I would like to thank Paul Morris, vice presi- e-book and extract all these concessions from dent of membership and outreach at the Guild, them, and Hachette, at some point, said, “Enough. Roxana Robinson and James Gleick, former We refuse to give anymore.” At that point, Amazon and current presidents of the Guild, and Mary said, “You know what? We’re going to strip the buy Rasenberger, the Guild’s executive director. button from Hachette books on our site. If you This evening, I’m thrilled to be welcoming want to search for a Hachette book, we’re going to Jonathan Taplin and Franklin Foer, who have both redirect you to a Simon & Schuster book.” written fierce, timely books. To me this became very personal. And this Many of you know that for the last seven, eight, book was written not just as a critique of these nine, perhaps 10, years I’ve asked my guests to give companies and what they’re doing to the world; me a biography of themselves in seven words. it was written as a defense of the type of profes- A haiku of sorts that might define them, or if you’re sion that I’ve chosen to pursue, but also a defense very modern, a tweet. So Jonathan submitted of reading, contemplation, and thinking, which these seven words to me: “Teacher, swimmer, writ- I view as under assault right now by these compa- er, traveler, producer, poetry fan.” And Frank sub- nies and the war that they’re raging on our atten- mitted these seven words to me: “Jeremiad is an tion. Ah, I’m not angry. Sorry. exterior. I’m quite sweet.” Please welcome them. [The audience laughs.] Really a great pleasure to have you both. PH: You know we did an event during that time Let’s see how sweet you are. with [literary agent] Tina Bennett and all kinds of

42 Our Cornered Culture other people, and what was very interesting is that PH: No, no, no. You’ll see. You’ll see. What I will nobody from Amazon came. Nobody. read from Jon is pretty damn angry. FF: Part of what was maddening to me was that we FF: The swimming takes the edge off. went to the Justice Department and the Federal PH: He needs it. But...that cover story cost you Trade Commission, and we said, “You know what? a job. This kind of looks like a monopoly that’s bullying FF: Perhaps. I had been the editor of The New the producers who are dependent on the monopo- Republic, and this is the other part of the autobi- ly.” And the regulators just didn’t get it. It was like ography you’re probably referring to, which is that we were met with blank stares. I had been associated with this magazine since I That was part of the frustration that made me was 25 years old. It was a magazine that my father think, “You know what? We need to start articulating grew up reading, and I have a tremendous senti- what the problem is in a much more coherent way, to mental attachment to the magazine. Really, very start to guide people to solutions.” So, I wrote an arti- important for me in my intellectual development. cle for The New Republic that was called “Amazon I had been the editor once, and I was kind of off writ- Must Be Stopped.” I guess the article had some fists ing a book, and this guy, Chris Hughes, walked into in its headlines. Two weeks later, we received a let- our lives. Chris was Mark Zuckerberg’s roommate ter from Amazon that said, “Dear New Republic: at Harvard, and he was a cofounder of Facebook. Because of your cover story about Amazon, we’ve He arrived at The New Republic, and he said, “Look decided that we’re no longer going to advertise with I’m committed to serious things. I have deep pock- you, and we’re pulling the campaign that we’re run- ets that I’m willing to spend as evidence of my ning next week. Sincerely, Team Amazon. Please commitment, and I will help you navigate your confirm receipt of this email.” way through this digital age with dignity because And I thought, “You know what? You just I founded social media.” proved my point. Thank you.” This is the problem That seemed to me an incredible opportunity, with having these tremendous concentrations of and it was initially. It really was an exhilarating power where everybody becomes dependent on experience, and there was a lot that I loved about the platform, and there is the potential for stifling. working with him. But, in the end, he quite rightly When you come to depend on the platform, you said I own this magazine as a profit-making vehi- become more reluctant to criticize the platform. cle, and we need to produce more revenue, and These companies occupy such an outsized role in the way we can produce more revenue is by pro- our own individual lives, in our public sphere, in ducing journalism that flourishes on Facebook. our democracy, in the future of our species, really, In that, he was just reflecting the zeitgeist, the in the way in which their technologies are actually realities of the news business today, which has now merging with us in a very physical sort of way, grown highly dependent on Facebook for its as well as in a mental sort of way. So, we need to financial viability. be able to have an open and honest conversation I tried to do my best work within those confines about the role that these companies will settle into because we all need to make compromises, right? in our lives, and we should be having a very deliber- It seems to me most of media has made a compro- ate debate about what it is as a species, about what mise that’s not too dissimilar from a Hollywood stu- it is as a democracy, and about what as individu- dio, where you sometimes have to produce popcorn als that we feel is important for us to preserve and flicks to be able to fund the actual Oscar contenders. protect as we go through this process of merging And so, I did my best to try to adjust to this world with these machines and merging really with the and, in fact, kind of became addicted to data and companies that operate these machines. analytics and watching pieces become more popu- PH: Before I get to Jon’s anger, and I’ll get to it— lar, and I desperately wanted to win in this game. FF: He’s reserved. He’s not— But in the end, it didn’t work out for me—

Authors Guild Bulletin 43 PH: You took a flight and then you found out when folk in Woodstock kind of rallied around him, you came off the plane that it was too late. and he began having some house shows called the FF: There was a morning that I got a phone call Midnight Ramble, where he would play his drums from a colleague of mine, and he said, “You know, but not really sing because he couldn’t really sing. there’s some other guy walking around New York By 2005, 2006, he was just barely surviving. And City right now who says he’s about to become the yet, I could go on YouTube and see that there were editor of The New Republic, and he’s talking to peo- streams of the Band’s music, like “The Weight,” ple about jobs.” that had two or three million streams, and none of At that point I thought, “You know what? that money was coming to musicians. So, I began This is probably a good moment to quit.” And so, to think, “Why is this happening? Why had all this I resigned, and a surprising thing happened to me, money been reallocated from people who made which is that quite a few other people on the staff content to people who own the platform through of the magazine ended up resigning. It became kind which you got the content?” So I went back to kind of an object lesson in media. All these stories are of the early roots of the internet. Paul took us up to always inherently complicated, and they can’t be see some collections with Timothy Leary writing simplified into a straight morality tale. But I think about the early ideas of communication networks a lot of media was grappling with the same ques- and quite frankly, it was a hippy project. tions that we were grappling with, which are these PH: Both Leary and Stewart Brand write about that. bigger questions, about dependence on Facebook JT: Yeah, Stewart Brand and Ken Kesey were and Google and the ways in which journalism was throwing acid trips at night and making networks making sacrifices in order to adapt to the reali- called The Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link during the ties of this new world. And so, we became a small daytime. The whole idea was to create a decentral- object lesson in a much bigger story. ized network, because in 1968 there were three PH: Jonathan...Jon...I want to come to your television networks and one newspaper, so it was moment of anger. And maybe you want to, before a really good idea. But what happened was, by the I read it, contextualize the angry letter you wrote late ’80s, a bunch of kids came out of Stanford to the founder of Reddit. and other universities, like Peter Thiel and JONATHAN TAPLIN: So, when I got out of Larry Page, who had a complete libertarian point of Princeton, I went to work for Bob Dylan and the view on life. And that was, government was always Band as a tour manager and moved to Woodstock. the problem. You know, they were schooled on The Band was what I called middle-class musi- Ayn Rand, so there’s always this great entrepre- cians, and the lead singer was a guy named Levon neur who’s always weighed down by the mob, Helm. He was a great singer. So they recorded a by the demos, by us. lot of music that, in the late ’60s, early ’70s, that So, Thiel said, “I no longer believe that democ- really lasted. We made The Last Waltz with Marty racy and capitalism are compatible,” and started Scorsese, I produced that, in the late ’70s. And then this company called PayPal. Out of PayPal grew in the ’80s, the CD came out, and so everybody a thing called the PayPal mafia, which are a lot of renewed their record collection and the Band was people that now run most of the big companies in able to keep making money. And all of those royal- Silicon Valley. And he had four basic rules. One was ties from records continued up until the year 2000, that there should be no regulation on this new form. when Napster arrived, which was the first pirate There should be no taxes, so Amazon was able service. to sell books with no sales tax and put four thou- It just so happened that Levon got throat sand independent bookstores out of business. cancer that same year, and literally, the record There should be no copyright, so YouTube is a royalties came to a halt. He didn’t have enough business that goes to the music business and says money to pay for his health care, and a bunch of your content is going to be on YouTube whether

44 Our Cornered Culture you want it to or not, and you have to just decide whether you want a little bit of advertising money, and I mean a little, or not. And finally, he said competition is for losers. That the only good form in a business is winner takes all, which is what they understood—that you would only need one search engine. That you would only need one e-commerce giant that sells you everything. And eventually, that you would only need one social network that had two billion people. You wouldn’t need a second one. That if you were going to have a winner-takes-all business, that these four things would make for a gigan- tic gravy train for a few people. And so, instead of the kind of decentralized network that Stewart WE NEED TO BE ABLE Brand and Tim Berners-Lee and all the people TO HAVE AN OPEN AND who we’ve been talking about imagined, it became this incredibly centralized system, in which three HONEST CONVERSATION companies, Amazon, Google, and Facebook, domi- ABOUT THE ROLE THAT nate everything. Last year, Facebook and Google THESE COMPANIES WILL took 88 percent of all advertising revenues online. Google has 91 percent market share. SETTLE INTO IN OUR LIVES, PH: Before we get to that, do you mind if I read the AND WE SHOULD BE letter? JT: The context of this is that I was in a debate HAVING A VERY DELIBERATE with a guy who ran Reddit [Alexis Ohanian]. DEBATE ABOUT WHAT IT He basically said, I love free music, and every - IS AS A SPECIES. body should have free music, and musicians have no right to make a living off of recorded stuff. —FRANKLIN FOER They just have to go out and tour. PH: And you said: “Dear Alexis: Last week at our debate I talked about the essential unfairness that my friend and colleague Levon Helm had to continue to tour at the age of 70 with throat cancer in order to pay his medical bills. On Thursday, Levon died and I’m filled with music and free movies. But isn’t it just your self- unbelievable sadness. I’m sad not just for Levon’s ish decision that those tunes were free? It wasn’t wife and daughter, but sad that you could be so con- Levon’s decision. In fact, for many years after the descending to offer to make right what the music Band stopped recording, Levon made a good liv- industry did to the members of the Band. It wasn’t ing off the record royalties of the Band’s catalog. the music industry that created Levon’s plight. But no more. So what is your solution? Charity? It was people like you, celebrating Pirate Bay and You want to give every artist a virtual begging bowl Kim Dotcom, bloodsuckers who’ve made millions with Kickstarter? But Levon never wanted the off the hard work of musicians and filmmakers. charity of the Reddit community or the Kickstarter “You were so proud during the debate to raise community. He just wanted to earn an honest living

Authors Guild Bulletin 45 as to offer to get the Band back together for a charity the kind of thing that a hacker like myself concert, unaware that three of the five members are would come up with because you’re exploit- dead. Take your charity and shove it. Just let us get ing a vulnerability in human psychology. paid for our work and stop deciding that you can The inventors, creators—it’s me, it’s Mark, unilaterally make it free.” it’s Kevin Systrom at Instagram, it’s all of You know that brought to mind a line that I these people—understood this, consciously. love of Albert Camus, where he says, “Too many And we did it anyway. people have decided to do without generosity in order to practice charity.” JT: So this is...I don’t know if everybody knows JT: I think we’re in a terrible situation right now. who this is— I think that these platforms have basically built PH: I didn’t want to identify. themselves off of free riding on the work of other JT: So this is Sean Parker, who not only invented people. If that continues, I think it’s going to be Napster, but was copresident of Facebook at the very hard for artists to make a living. beginning. This is like the classic alcoholic now PH: Very few. having seen the light and hates for anybody to have JT: A few. If you think about what happened to the a drink. music business last year, 80 percent of the revenue PH: This was just a few days ago. went to 1 percent of the music. So Jay-Z, Taylor JT: A few weeks ago. The great irony of this is that I Swift, and Adele are doing fine. But, a guy today at think in some ways Facebook is like a Frankenstein a conference that I was at said that 18 percent of all monster. In other words, they created this plat- the music on Spotify has never been listened to by form, but they had no idea what could happen. anybody, and nobody is making any money on most Three weeks ago Sheryl Sandberg said to a report- of these catalogs. If Google and YouTube basically er, “Oh, I was shocked that someone would use our think that you can’t stop us from taking your music advertising platform to target anti-Semitic users.” and putting it on for free, musicians have no right FF: Duh. or no way to prevent them from doing that. We’ve JT: Duh. made some big mistakes legislatively, but I do want PH: How shocked was she? to say that a lot of this could be fixed. JT: She pretended to be shocked. PH: We’ll get to the fixing. What I’d like to do now PH: Is he pretending? is show you something and have you react to it, and FF: Kind of tasted pretty good— any question or query that I might ask from now on PH: Kind of convenient— is for both of you. If you start talking to each other FF: Then we woke up many decades later and said, and not to me, that’s fine, too. So let’s look at a video. “Holy cow, these foods have been stuffed full of fats, sugar, salt.” They were designed to addict us, [A video clip of an interview begins playing.] and by addicting us, they transformed the entire economy of food production. It came at a terrible That thought process was all about how we price for our waistlines and for our planet. The consume as much of your time and conscious danger is really that the same thing that happened attention as possible. And that means that with the things that we ingest through our mouths we need to sort of give you a little dopamine is happening now with things that we ingest hit every once and awhile, because someone through our heads. And it’s going to have precisely “liked” or commented on a photo or a post the same sort of terrible consequences, but not just or whatever. And that’s going to get you to making us physically obese. It’s going to make us in contribute more content, and that’s going some way mentally obese as well. to get you more “likes” and comments. It’s a JT: There’s a very popular book in Silicon Valley social validation feedback loop. It’s exactly called Hooked: How to Build Addictive Apps .

46 Our Cornered Culture Essentially the idea is the Skinner box that we that type of concession—that that’s what they’re all probably saw in Psych 101, where you’ve got doing—because then we’d have to slap a warn - a mouse in there and it clicks on a bar and some- ing label on Facebook that says that this product times it gets a reward, a food pellet, and sometimes is addictive and that teenagers should stay away it doesn’t. If it got a reward every time it clicked on from it and that it’s going to cause problems to your the bar, then it would only click on the bar when health. It’s not a bad idea. I kind of like this idea. it was hungry. But it doesn’t get it, and so it gets PH: Like you have in Europe, and in America I addicted to clicking on the bar incessantly. The assume as well, that cigarettes kill. What I ﬁnd so pellet is the “like.” You don’t get the “like” every amazing in the world of cigarettes is that the cam- time you post something. But because the average paign against them really, really worked. teenager checks their phone two hundred times a FF: After a lot of people died of emphysema and day to see how many “likes” they got— lung cancer, but yes. PH: What did you say? PH: But it really worked. JT: Two hundred times a day. FF: It’s true, but what you’re describing is a cul- PH: But you had one every six seconds— tural transformation that was guided by elites JT: Well, it’s some astonishing thing, but the point is— and by government. And really, I think that’s kind PH: Not only teenagers, by the way. of the realm that we’re talking about here. But in JT: No, no, it’s not just teenagers. one way, it’s not similar. Right? One thing that we PH: Let me just take a moment. [He pretends to both would say is that Google is actually an incred- take his phone out from his jacket pocket. The audi- ible invention. Like, I don’t want to do away with ence laughs.] Google. I don’t want Google to be banned, or for JT: Essentially, we’re creating addiction habits. googlers to have to go outside our offices and sur- It’s pretty clear. What’s fascinating to me, and reptitiously google. I think Frank shared something with me too, is PH: And it helped me greatly prepare to talk to you, there’s beginning to be a dissident group in Silicon to be able to go on tonight. Valley who are saying this is wrong. There is a FF: Of course. And the iPhone, as much as it’s engi- wonderful guy named Tristan Harris, who was an neered in the way that he’s saying, to create this engineer at Google and watched how they worked Pavlovian reaction in us, it is really a monument to addict you to everything, and he pulled out. of human creativity and engineering and design, PH: But Sean Parker seems to at least, in that short so let’s not throw them into the sea. But let’s think period, at least seems to be atoning. about them in a different sort of way, where when JT: But Paul, the people that built this library were it comes to food and drink we’ve learned modera- probably robber barons, too. I mean quite honestly. tion. Right? We know that food and drink have the PH: Carnegie didn’t treat his workers very well possibility to addict us and to do terrible things to during the day . . . us, but we also can enjoy it. JT: If you think about the history of Andrew We teach our kids moderation, and we learn Carnegie, he did some pretty bad things to labor. how to practice it ourselves, for the most part. And then he said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m going to Or, to take another analogy, the automobile. build my library.” That’s what Sean Parker is try- Incredible invention, right? It can get you from ing to do now. He’s trying to get all the bad karma point A to point B faster. It actually allows us to swept away. have freedoms that we wouldn’t otherwise have FF: Sean Parker is kind of an irrelevance. He’s to move around. But, when the automobile was being kind of charmingly honest here in describing invented it mowed down people. There were no something, and maybe for the self-interested rea- rules. So, if you were crossing the street, you were sons, but he’s not the power of Facebook. The prob- risking your life. But eventually we decided to cre- lem is that the people at Facebook will not make ate speed limits and stop signs and seat belts and

Authors Guild Bulletin 47 fuel efficiency standards. We took this technology, and we tried to harness it in a way that respected us as human beings. JT: Paul, let me take one other stab at this tobacco analogy. The thing that amazes me about Google, Facebook, and even Twitter, is last week, or two weeks ago, Congress had a set of hearings on whether Facebook, Google, and Twitter undermined our democracy. To give you an idea of how far we’ve come, when my book ﬁrst came out and was sold to an English publisher, they said, “Oh, we have to take this stuff about undermining democracy off the title.” Because they didn’t believe that that was real. But here’s the deal. When the tobacco compa- THERE’S A VERY POPULAR nies were called in front of Congress, they made the BOOK IN SILICON VALLEY CEOs come and raise their right hands and stand in front of Congress, and it was a classic moment. CALLED HOOKED: HOW When Facebook, Google, and Twitter were called TO BUILD ADDICTIVE APPS. to come in front of Congress, they refused to send any senior executive, and they sent a bunch of law- ESSENTIALLY THE IDEA yers who’ve been trained at Harvard Law in how to IS THE SKINNER BOX say nothing and dodge and weave out of anything. THAT WE ALL PROBABLY It gives you a sense of how much they think this is just going to go away. These people don’t believe SAW IN PSYCH 101... that they will ever be called to account for this, and YOU’VE GOT A MOUSE IN that they have too much power. FF: Let’s beat this analogy to death. Google has also THERE AND IT CLICKS ON invested, as tobacco did, tremendous sums of money A BAR...SOMETIMES IT in Washington. Google spends more money in GETS A REWARD, A FOOD Washington than any other public company, which allowed them to visit the Obama White House more PELLET, AND SOMETIMES often than any other company. They invest tremen- IT DOESN’T....SO IT GETS dous sums of money in our universities. There are several big universities that you’d have to say are ADDICTED TO CLICKING bought and paid for in some essential way by Google. ON THE BAR INCESSANTLY. And then, when it comes to the world of intelligen- THE PELLET IS THE “LIKE”.... tsia and think tanks and the like, the same is true. If you go to many think tanks in Washington, there THE AVERAGE TEENAGER are Google “fellows.” We experience this in D.C. I was CHECKS THEIR PHONE affiliated with the New America Foundation, where Barry Lynn, who is a prominent critic of Google, TWO HUNDRED TIMES got booted from the institution. A DAY TO SEE HOW MANY It was an incredibly important moment, and I think it’s one of the reasons why we’ve arrived so “LIKES” THEY GOT. quickly at the backlash that we’re talking about —JONATHAN TAPLIN right now, which is that Barry was a very lonely

48 Our Cornered Culture activist who was pushing the cause of antitrust JT: I want to make one other point. It’s essen - when it wasn’t such a hip issue, and Google had tially unfair to people who are making stuff. invested a lot of money in developing New America Let’s just take two big companies that are adver- as an institution. There is, in fact, an Eric Schmidt tising-supported. There’s Google and CBS. Ideas Lab, which is one of their conference rooms. So Google makes a net margin of about 30 percent. And they’ve spent money over the years, and Eric CBS makes a net margin of about 11 percent. Schmidt [chairman of Alphabet, Google’s par - But they both are advertising companies. So what’s ent company] was chairman of the board [of New the difference between them? Google pays nothing America]. As long as Barry was a gadfly who wasn’t for the content, and CBS invests billions in mak- influential in Washington, they were happy to sus- ing stuff. And yet Google is a much bigger company tain his work. But then suddenly his work starts advertising-wise. to get traction in the centers of public policy, and What essentially has happened is that these they start to put pressure on New America to try companies have become the largest companies to at least give them a way of navigating, to give in the world. The five largest companies in the them a heads-up, at least let us know what this guy world are Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and is working on. We don’t want to be blindsided by Microsoft. And they’ve become the largest com- this guy again. panies in the world, especially the big three, by JT: Barry just did one simple thing. He wrote a riding off the work of other people. In the case post, online, that applauded the European Union of Amazon, as you pointed out and Frank point - for fining Google $2.7 billion in an antitrust action, ed out, they did it by being a monopsony, which and he was gone within three days. means I’m going to suppress the price that I FF: There’s a quotation on the wall here from would pay to a producer for anything because Thomas Jefferson, and I think it’s important— I control the platform. And you can’t not sell on PH: Do you want to read it? Amazon. You have no choice. You have to sell. But FF: I’ll read it, but it’s going to digress from my point. if they tell you that you have to price your book at PH: Digression is the sunshine of narrative. I don’t this price, you have to do it. So it’s not only rob - mind. [Laughter from audience.] bing our attention, it’s robbing the creativity of FF: Okay. “I look to the diffusion of light and edu- America. I pointed out in my book that revenues cation as the resource most to be relied on for ame- in the music business fell 71 percent from when liorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and YouTube started. Revenues at newspapers have advancing the happiness of man.” Which gets us to fallen by 80 percent. There’s half the number of kind of the nub of the problem, which is that these people working as journalists today as there were platforms have democratic possibility. We have to just 10 years ago. say that the internet could be a vehicle for eman- FF: Can I just finish the Thomas Jefferson point? cipation and for democratization. That it allows PH: Yes, of course, please. anybody in the world to access information very, FF: It’s definitely channeling off the point that very quickly. It allows for people to potentially Jonathan was just making here, which is that voice things without having to go through elites Thomas Jefferson was profoundly concerned with or bureaucrats. I concede that possibility. That several things that are so spot on in this discus- happens now, but it’s only part of the story. The sion. The first is what’s here, which is— other part of the story is the one that we’re telling, PH: I didn’t plant this, but it’s so good. [Laugher which is that these devices have commandeered from audience.] our attention. That they are reverse-engineered. FF: No, no, but it’d be pretty incredible if you’d They’re designed, they’re designed to make us taken out the chisel and etched it in the fireplace addicted to feeds. The whole metaphor of a feed is, for the sake of this conversation. Yeah, no, but he I think, one that’s kind of offensive. Like pigs . . . does that for all the guests...

Authors Guild Bulletin 49 And so, Thomas Jefferson was concerned 20 years. Because if you go and you talk to the about the dissemination of knowledge. He was people at Google, what they’ll tell you is that if also profoundly concerned about concentrations Microsoft had gone along its trajectory, its bullying of power and about the problem of monopoly— path, then they would have strangled Google and also the problem of copyright, of intellectual in its crib. property. He insisted on writing copyright into the JT: Because there would have been no way to Constitution as a founding principle of the United do search on Google. You would have been stuck States. So the Founders, as you know, were espe- on Internet Explorer with Microsoft’s search cially concerned with the concentrations of power capability. to be found in monarchs, and they worried about There’s one other thing that we haven’t power getting concentrated in the Executive, and touched on, which is that the democracy aspect they created this hydraulic system where every- that we’ve seen in the last few months is an ongo- thing is checked and balanced. There were no ing problem. This is not just a problem of the last terribly big corporations at the founding of the election—that these platforms were used as pro- Republic, but Thomas Jefferson spent a lot of time paganda platforms for all sorts of nefarious things. having agita about the prospect that you would This is an ongoing problem. have private monopolies that would exert— I was in Las Vegas four weeks ago, literally JT: He wanted to put it in the Bill of Rights! four days after the shootings in Las Vegas, and the FF: He wanted to put it in the Bill of Rights. kids at the University of Nevada who came to my He was concerned about outsized concentrations lecture said that the level of fake news that was on of power in the private sector. He said that they their platforms within an hour of the shooting... needed to be checked and balanced in exactly on the top of their Facebook feeds, on the top of the same sort of way that our constitutional sys- Google search...You know, that Hillary Clinton’s tem deals with the separation of powers in the protégé had shot all these country music fans, she federal government. hated conservatives. Just total Alex Jones non- This is one of the core American concerns. sense. But it wasn’t just nonsense. It was at the top And all the way up through, essentially, the 1990s, of the feed, because somebody had been hitting we did a pretty decent job of trying to regulate them with bots and manipulating the thing. So these private concentrations of powers, especially these platforms are open places where this manip- in the realm of communications. The last time we ulation can continue. actually did this was when the government set out FF: I think it’s maybe even worse than that. to dismember Microsoft. Because you remember PH: Oh good! [Laughter from the audience.] that Microsoft had an operating system, and it lev- FF: Yeah, let’s get even darker. Jonathan is a rosy eraged its operating system in order to try to con- optimist. trol the internet browser, and it used that to crush PH: I told you that this would be uplifting. Netscape, and the government said that your tac- FF: To me, part of the core problem is that good tics were bullying and wrong and not consistent actors are doing the same thing. That if you’re in with our traditions. journalism, you’re exploiting people’s emotions The Clinton administration got to the brink through Facebook, because that’s what you’re of dismembering Microsoft, but that case got meant to do in order to get Facebook revenue. settled when the Bush administration came in, I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time there very quietly, in the shadow of September 11, and was a lion called Cecil, who was beloved, kind of we didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. But the case like the Kim Kardashian of lions, and he was killed that the government brought against Microsoft by a Minnesota hunter, who posted a photo on is maybe one of the most important things that’s Facebook, gloating over the fact that he killed Cecil happened in our political economy in the last the lion. Let’s concede that killing an endangered

50 Our Cornered Culture species is a terrible thing, and it’s worth getting to lead us to better movies, to better music—I mean outraged over. When Cecil was killed, Facebook I always see it in the music business. That’s why erupted in anger, and every media organization everyone always sounds the same. can see this anger emerging because every media PH: You know I came across, a couple of days ago, organization has access to data and analytics, and a fantastic quotation from Martin Scorsese that every media organization is constantly studying I want to read to you. It was in The Hollywood Facebook to see what’s on the ascent to popularity Reporter. He says: “There is a change that, I so that they can latch on to it. So every media orga- believe, has no upside whatsoever. It began back in nization from Buzzfeed and Huffington Post to The the ’80s when the box office started to mushroom New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times into the obsession that it is today. When I was wrote stories about the death of Cecil the lion and young, box office reports were confined to indus- tried to find their own unique angle. And at the end try journals like The Hollywood Reporter. Now, of the day, there were 3.2 million stories written I’m afraid that they’ve become everything. Box about the death of Cecil the lion. office is the undercurrent in almost all discussions What I’m trying to say is that part of the prob- of cinema, and frequently it’s more than just an lem with Facebook is this rampant exploitation undercurrent. The brutal judgmentalism that has of people’s emotions, and the filter bubble that made opening-weekend grosses into a bloodthirsty Facebook ultimately ends up creating, where polit- spectator sport seems to have encouraged an even ically, if you’re constantly getting the things that more brutal approach to film reviewing. I’m talk- you want to hear, your biases are constantly being ing about market research firms like CinemaScore, confirmed. What happens is that you become intel- which started in the late 1970s, and online aggre- lectually incapacitated. You become weak in the gators like Rotten Tomatoes, which have abso- face of fake news, propaganda, demagoguery, and lutely nothing to do with real film criticism. They the manipulation of bad actors. rate a picture the way you’d rate a horse at a race- JT: It’s going to get worse though, Paul. Let me just track, a restaurant in a Zagat guide, or a household say— appliance in Consumer Reports. They have every- FF: No, no, it’s going to get even worse than that. thing to do with the movie business and absolutely [Laughter from the audience.] nothing to do either with creation or the intelligent JT: Let me just say one thing, because I’ve made viewing of the film. The filmmaker is reduced to a movies most of my life— content manufacturer, and the viewer to an unad- PH: It’s funny that we’re laughing, but it’s really, venturous consumer.” really terrible— FF: In journalism, we have something almost JT: A lot of my life was spent in the movie busi- analogous to this, which is that if you walk into ness. Now Amazon, Netflix, all sorts of big data any newsroom, say The Washington Post, there are people are moving into the movie business, and these giant screens that hover above the newsroom their assumption is, because they have all this that flash essentially the journalistic equivalent of data, they will make much better content because the box office numbers, where they’re showing you they’ll have the heart of the viewer in mind, and what’s popular at any given moment. It’s called they’ll know what people really want even before Chartbeat. So Chartbeat is a device, and I had it on they know it. Data always looks backwards. And my phone when I was an editor— any artist that we care about, or that you talk about, PH: And you looked at it all the time— is not trying to figure out what was a hit a year ago FF: It was crack cocaine. It was obsessive. There and I’m going to make it just like that. I mean—you was this flickering needle that showed how popu- know that Bob Dylan would never do something lar you were at any given moment, and everybody that he already did before. He’s got to go forward, wants to win if you’re presented with that sort and so this idea that somehow all this data is going of game. And it’s presented to you for a reason,

Authors Guild Bulletin 51 because it’s meant to implant itself into your brain everyday life and it has increasingly become more in that sort of way. It’s almost the equivalent of that of an esoteric thing, where it requires a devotion dopamine shot that Sean Parker was talking about. to text that we’re simply not trained for as readers So, when I reached for my phone in the morn- anymore. I worry, as we’re given all these dopa- ing, I would check first thing to see how we were mine hits, as our phones are constantly buzzing doing with Chartbeat, and I would do it again and calling us away from whatever it is that we when I got coffee and again all through the day. It have in our hand, that we simply mentally won’t be was distorting, and it was distorting in the ways equipped as a country to consume fiction. that he described, and the way that you described. PH: There’s that wonderful line of T. S. Eliot where As soon as you find out what’s popular, you aim to he says that we’re “distracted from distraction by repeat that formula. That’s just the natural human distraction.” And it’s a place we’ve arrived at. tendency, to rely on boilerplate and template—it’s JT: Anybody who teaches a college course today not good. and looks out into the lecture hall and sees all the JT: But let’s remember that this notion didn’t computer screens open realizes that they’re not always exist. When I first started making movies, really paying attention; they’re on their Facebook The Godfather was both the most popular movie feed while you’re trying to impart some knowledge and won the Oscar. Right? It was the best movie on them. One year I told everyone that they had to and the most popular movie. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely close their laptops during the lectures. No phones Hearts Club Band was the best album and the in the class. And on Rate My Professor I got rated most popular album. Something has happened as a mean professor. where we’ve lost the ability to discern that quality FF: Well, mean and apocalyptic-minded. So and popularity don’t necessarily go in two differ- Tristan Harris, who Jon mentioned earlier, ent directions. In other words, today every movie described to me this phenomenon known as the studio wants to make another Marvel comic book “phantom buzz,” which as soon as he described it movie, right? But that becomes a self-fulfilling to me, I knew it was something that happened to prophecy. You know—I’ve got to make a sequel me constantly. Your phone...One of the ways your because the last Marvel comic book movie did phone commandeers your attention so constantly really well, and I’ve got to make another one. And is that it buzzes. You’re being notified. Everyone is another one. trying to seize your attention. And you’re so con- So all the money gets sucked into making ditioned to expect that your phone is buzzing and sequels, and I suspect, although I don’t follow it notifying you that you begin to feel your phone that closely, that the novel business, in some ways, buzzing, even when you pick it up and realize that gets dragged down that rat hole, too. If you have a no one is notifying you— very big–selling pop author, you’ve got to do more of PH: It’s like the phantom limb. that. Luckily, the book business has a lot of room for FF: It is the phantom limb. It’s the way in which other players, but certainly the movie business— this kind of Pavlovian response—nobody’s ringing FF: Just to digress in terms of fiction, here’s what the bell, but you’re sitting there, expecting the bell concerns me, which is just that we do see, from to ring. I feel it. what I understand, that nonfiction sales are actu- PH: But also, having fairly young children, you ally quite strong. Thank you, people. But fiction realize to what extent, if you don’t get the mes - sales are struggling. You know, we should do bet- sage...if you don’t get invited...if you find out ter. But the reason fiction sales are struggling has through Instagram or Snapchat that everybody fundamentally to do with our attention span. My else is there. You feel utterly— concern, and I think that this is a fairly rampant FF: They’re portals into anxiety. concern, is that the novel becomes fairly akin to JT: One of the fascinating things I found while at poetry, where poetry was once embedded in our this conference of engineers and technology guys

52 Our Cornered Culture two weeks ago in San Francisco was that, to a per- companies is that the internet is everything. When son, the major engineers who had children said you had a department store, you had constraints “We do not ever allow our kids to take their smart- about what you were. You had counters. You had phones into their rooms at night.” They have to cash registers. You had limited space to display have a break from this dopamine hit. Because most items and inventory. If you’re Google— of them understood from looking at the usage pat- PH: You had eye contact. terns on the board at Facebook that there is a huge FF: You had eye contact. But if you’re Google, amount of activity going on in the 11 to 14, 15 set what is Google really as a company? I mean Google from eight o’clock at night to one in the morning in is kind of everything. Its mission initially was to any given time zone. They’re in their room texting, organize knowledge. Again, maybe that’s too mod- whatever. est. They’ve branched into building self-driving PH: Then the parents were rated. Then the chil- cars and building phones, and they’re a life scienc- dren rated their parents. es company that wants to end death. And so, these JT: Yeah, they’re willing to take that. They’re will- companies challenge our conception of the cor- ing to take that just to say that there are limits poration as we’ve known it since the corporation to this thing. I think it’s important before we get first emerged. everybody too depressed to say—I think we both This is why they really do challenge antitrust believe that there are solutions to this problem. laws as they exist now. Our conceptions of antitrust PH: Before we get to the solutions, let’s talk more come from a law review article that Robert Bork— about the problems. he of the aborted confirmation hearing and the big I want to talk about something that I found beard—wrote in the 1960s, that argued we should very interesting, about how ruthless these com- only care about the problem of monopoly when panies are, which is Amazon’s gazelle project. monopolies are bad for the consumer welfare. Which Jonathan wrote that at one point, Amazon lumped meant that we should only care about monopolies its contracts with small publishers in an initiative when they used their size to jack up prices, which called the gazelle project, a label conceived after meant that, in fact, there were very few instances Bezos quipped that his team should approach where companies were pernicious monopolies as these small publishers the way a cheetah would defined by the very narrow definition. pursue a gazelle. Or was that you who wrote that? When it comes to these companies, they give FF: Oh yeah, that was me. Wow. I was like wow, their products away for free. Or, if they’re Amazon, John. That’s the damnedest thing. It sounds so they sell it at a lower price than their competitors. similar to me. And so, by the standards of our antitrust laws, PH: I got you confused. there really is nothing inherently wrong with these FF: Yeah, we care about intellectual property here, monopolies. But, I think we’re at a moment where Paul. we have to return to some of Thomas Jefferson’s PH: What does it say about this wonderful man, first principles—which is that, what he was con- Bezos? cerned about was the ways in which monopolies FF: Let’s think about Amazon as a company, were actually dangerous for democracy. And if you which began as a bookstore. Then it expanded into have a company like Amazon—it’s now approach- becoming the everything store. Being the every- ing 50 percent of online retail. Fifty percent of all thing store is kind of a modest ambition, I suppose, online retail will take place through Amazon. And and so they became a movie studio. They bought do we really expect that number to stop there? Whole Foods. Bezos bought The Washington PH: Retail, and then these companies own the press. Post. They power the cloud. Etcetera, etcetera. FF: Right. The point is that they own everything. And there’s really no end to the etceteras. One of There’s really no limit. Where is the right place to the things that’s just so fascinating about these draw the limit on how big a corporation can become?

Authors Guild Bulletin 53 JT: We don’t really have to go all the way back to project, which is fairly all-consuming. When it Jefferson to understand that there was another comes to Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post, I antitrust standard, which Louis Brandeis put for- agree that it’s ultimately probably good for The ward at the turn of the century, when we took on Washington Post in the short term and good for the Standard Oil and all sorts of others, which is that country that The Washington Post has been rein- antitrust is to preserve competition so the smaller vigorated by his ownership. player can exist alongside the bigger player. And But I still harbor the same abstract concerns that was the rule for most of our lives. about what happens when you have so much power FF: Exactly. that’s concentrated in a few hands. The question PH: I want to talk about the Koch brothers. It was then becomes to what extent will The Washington announced yesterday that Charles and David Koch Post cover Amazon fairly as it becomes so power- together were worth $80 billion and contributing ful. To what extent does owning The Washington $500 million dollars towards the purchase of Time Post become the equivalent of building a build - Inc., which publishes the magazines Time, People, ing like the New York Public Library in real time, and Sports Illustrated, among dozens of others. where you’re trying to kind of launder your repu- Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, tation by doing good at the same time as you’re and Peter Thiel secretly funded a court case whose doing all these other things. We should be able result was the shuttering of Gawker and its affiliate to applaud him for doing something noble in one websites. Do you see these events as meaningfully sphere; at the same time, we should be able to criti- connected? Why are these three men so interested cize him for the things that he’s doing to the rest of in buying or controlling the media? Where do you the economy. see that heading? JT: Yeah. I totally agree. JT: Quite frankly, the Koch brothers’ deciding PH: How do each of you deﬁne fake news? to buy Time makes no sense to me. I mean who JT: My definition of fake news is news that is cares? Time is not a meaningful organ compared obviously false. The classic example that I use to Facebook or Google today. I’m more concerned is “The Pope endorsed Donald Trump.” Okay, so about people putting money into Sinclair and that’s fake news. That was a very specific post controlling about 80 percent of the local news put out on Facebook, probably with the help of business on television, from a political point of Cambridge Analytica and Steve Bannon. The view. Honestly, I’m not positive that even Jeff whole point about that was that, up until May Bezos—quite frankly, I think The Washington 2016, Facebook had human curators monitor - Post has done some really good work recently. Roy ing the trending topics. Steve Bannon and Fox Moore wouldn’t be in trouble if it wasn’t for The News worked very hard in February and March Washington Post. So I’m not sure that we can draw of last year to say that these human curators were the analogy that these libertarians are all— prejudiced against conservative news, and so FF: But, but, but...I spent time in Ukraine this eventually Mark Zuckerberg gave in and took the summer where I was working on an investiga - human curators out of the trending topics algo - tive story, and you see there, as in many parts of rithm and just let the computer do it. Once that the world, powerful economic players attempt happened—you can see the chart where fake news to purchase media because they view it in their literally just takes off that day, and the reason self-interest ultimately. There’s a sense that if you was, of course, the computer didn’t know that the have access to media platforms, then somehow it Pope had not endorsed Donald Trump. Or, that helps extend your inﬂuence and also protects you. Hillary didn’t hire someone to kill an FBI agent. Certainly, when it comes to the Koch brothers, It’s stuff that you obviously know is not true, that it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t try to use you’re using for propaganda purposes. It’s the Time magazine to further extend their ideological Goebbels playbook.

54 Our Cornered Culture FF: What you’re getting at is the slipperiness of the idea that there could be real news and fake news— PH: Absolutely. FF: Donald Trump tried to define real news as fake news to obfuscate and create confusion. I do think there are epistemological problems with the concept of fake news. Who will decide what is fake news? I get nervous about this concept when I hear people clamoring for the platforms to regulate what’s real news and what’s fake news. Furthermore, when we’re clamoring for government to possibly play some sort of role in regulating Facebook as if it were a utility, where it would insist that Facebook enforce some standards about what’s real news and what’s fake news—and THERE’S THAT WONDERFUL I’ve got to say, I actually have problems with that. LINE OF T. S. ELIOT Because you can see the ways in which political pressure can get brought to bear, and if you have a WHERE HE SAYS THAT president like Donald Trump, who’s going to insist WE’RE “DISTRACTED that something be expunged as fake news when FROM DISTRACTION BY it’s actually real news or a legitimate opinion... We’ve had a public sphere, to take Habermas’s DISTRACTION.” AND IT’S A term, that’s developed over centuries. Right? And PLACE WE’VE ARRIVED AT. nobody designed it. Nobody designed newspapers. Nobody designed universities. Nobody designed —PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER coffeehouses. Nobody designed political debate as it evolved over the centuries in our societies. But that public sphere has been replaced by this other public sphere that emerged for the purpose of making money. And tremendous amounts of debate now take place on these platforms, and they but it’s a public good. They also know that they become the portals for news and information— have a public responsibility to try to publish stuff PH: Hannah Arendt had something to say about that’s true. The trick that Facebook and Google this, and what she said is: “The ideal subject of have played on us as a public is that they insist that totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the they’re not publishers. They insist that they are convinced Communist, but people for whom the just a neutral platform in which everybody has a distinction between fact and fiction...true and chance to speak— false, no longer exist[s].” PH: And anything goes. FF: The banality of clickbait. JT: And anything goes. Right? But, that’s patent- JT: Okay, here’s the deal— ly false. First off, the feed you get on Facebook is PH: You don’t want to address that? quite different from the feed I get on Facebook. It JT: I do want to address it. I’m going to address it is curated in a way that’s far deeper than any New this way. The people who publish The New York York Times feed I get from The New York Times. Times have what Frank was describing as a public Right? It’s personalized just to you. Now the fact role. Right? It’s a public good. They may make a lot that the “editor” is a computer algorithm is irrel-

Authors Guild Bulletin 55 Sean Parker, said that the whole idea is to keep you but we accepted that concentration of power. Are excited. And as Frank mentioned earlier, some- we going to accept these companies as utilities times getting you all riled up is just as effective and as concentrations of power, and are we going for Facebook to keep you engaged as to make you to force them to behave in ways that respect com- happy. And they know how to do both things. munal standards? The point is, as long as we allow them to say PH: They’re concentrations of power, but they’re “we’re not publishers, so we have no responsibility also eliminating competition. I’ll pull up an image. whatsoever for what goes on our platform,” we’re If we can have image 1 put up. Since April, this going to have a problem. They live under what’s has happened. AlterNet fell 63 percent. Global called a “safe harbor” law. In other words, I cannot Research fell 62 percent. Consortium News fell sue Google for anything. It is totally immune from 47 percent. We can go on and on and on like that. any lawsuit for anything. They went so far in the All these websites, which offered alternative news, last seven weeks as to fight a law that simply said if have— they linked to childhood sex trafficking sites they FF: Did you read the op-ed yesterday in The New could be liable. They said no. We don’t want that. York Times by a Serbian journalist who was a We want to be able to link to childhood sex traffick- brave opposition journalist in Serbia? Facebook ing, and it’s fine. Eventually they realized that was decided that they were going to run an experi - a bridge too far, and they pulled their opposition to ment in Serbia, where they would eliminate news it. But that’s how far they’re willing to go to say “we from their central feed and make the central feed have no responsibility for anything.” kind of all-friends-sharing-photos and the like, FF: I agree with everything that you said and yet and then they would create a second feed called there’s something that concerns me about the tra- the “explorer feed,” where the news would appear. jectory of that line of argument, which is that the That Facebook decision, that policy collapsed traf- problem with these platforms is that they have too fic to the journalist’s site instantaneously, destroy- much power, and I’m reluctant to say that the solu- ing his business model. tion is to give them more power. In response to the outcry over the election, I agree with you about copyright and that Facebook and Google have decided that they’re they’re deeply negligent and should have to take going to behave more responsibly, to elevate responsibility for what they do. I agree that they “authoritative content.” Presumably, that means should have to take responsibility for child sex traf- giving better billing to news that comes from The ficking that happens on their platforms because New York Times and The Washington Post; it would they could do that. I agree that they should have to be given privileged treatment because that’s what disclose ads that are bought for by foreign entities. the world needs now. But there’s a consequence But I can see that there’s a trajectory here, to a decision like that, which is that it hurts these where we’re basically saying that the platforms other sites, a lot of which are earnest and promot- have to do more and more regulating of speech. ing things they sincerely believe in and not neces- But what if the platforms broker a truce with gov- sarily trafficking fake news. Their business models ernment? It would be reminiscent of AT&T, which will have collapsed because they were dependent became the telephone monopoly in the early twen- on the platform, and when you’re dependent on tieth century and basically had a handshake deal the platform, the whims of the platform govern with the government, where they said, “You know everything. what? We’ll accept whatever regulation that you PH: That is disastrous, no? throw at us. We’ll be a utility more or less, as long JT: Paul, it seems to me that we’re dancing around as you protect our monopoly,” and that existed for what I’ve been trying to push us to. Are there some about 70 years. It was pretty damaging to innova- solutions? I don’t want to pretend for a second that tion and to parts of the economy in a lot of ways, I think that Facebook or Google should become the

56 Our Cornered Culture thought police. It seems to me the best ideas I’ve intelligence and all these other things happen heard in the last few months have come from peo- they’ve got all the data. They’re going to get stron- ple like Al Franken and others, who basically said, ger. They’re not going to get weaker. Amazon’s We have this notion of net neutrality. Net neutral- going to get bigger. It’s going to extend itself into ity in the cable television business meant that the many other businesses. So what we’re saying is person who owned the pipe had to be very care- there is not a market solution. If I asked this audi- ful to be a neutral purveyor of all the people who ence, “Would you invest in a start-up to challenge owned content. Google in the search advertising business?” every- So here’s the problem right now. Google essen- body would run for the exit. Right? tially owns the pipe—that is, the search engine in PH: Don’t. Don’t do that. We’re slowly winding which you find stuff. But Google also owns Zagat. down, but I don’t want them to leave yet. Right? So, if you want reviews of a restaurant and JT: All I’m saying is that this is going to require Google pushes Zagat up above Yelp or any other regulation— company that’s trying to compete, they can’t play FF: Of what nature? on both sides of the game. If Amazon wants to be JT: Net neutrality regulation is one possibility. in the movie business, and there’s one hundred The second one is what Frank mentioned earlier. other movie producers who think they’re getting When AT&T was the monopoly phone company in their content out on Amazon’s platform in a neu- 1956, the government said, “Look. You can main- tral way, a fair way, but Amazon constantly pushes tain your monopoly, but guess what? You have to its content ahead of everybody else’s, you can’t play license every patent you own, for free, to every both sides of that game. And this is going to happen other company in America.” And out of that came more and more. Facebook offered to pay $700 mil- the transistor, the laser, the semiconductor, the lion a month ago to rights to Indian cricket. Seven satellite system, the cellular system, the solar cell. hundred million dollars for rights on a handset to And out of that came Texas Instruments, Motorola, Indian cricket. If Facebook is willing to make those Fairchild Semiconductor, Hewlett Packard, even- kinds of investments that means Facebook is going tually Intel, COMSEC. In other words, a huge to be in the content business, just like Amazon, just explosion— like Google, YouTube, and everything else. PH: Of creativity. PH: So where’s the good news there? JT: What we now call Silicon Valley came out of JT: The good news is, if we had a net neutrality an antitrust decision. standard, these companies would have to decide FF: The problems of surveillance and monopoly which business they want to be in. Do you want to are very much intertwined. One of the reasons be an Amazon? I’m a neutral platform and I’m not is that these companies, as Jon described, have in the book business, or I’m not in the movie busi- amassed their advantage on the basis of all of the ness. Google? I want to be a search engine that sells surveillance that they’ve done of all of the infor- advertising, but I’m not in the content business. mation that they’ve collected. And they have every PH: But why? Why would they be humble that incentive to keep pushing the envelope of surveil- way? Don’t they have this incredible voracious lance in order to protect their advantage. There’s appetite? no law in this country protecting your online data. JT: No, we’d have regulation. Here’s the deal. I Your health records are protected. Your financial think we both feel that there is not a market solu- records are protected. But there’s no law protect- tion to this problem. People have said to me, “Well, ing your data. Your data is owned by these compa- remember when Yahoo was the great search nies, even though it’s this very intimate portrait of engine? So that could happen again in a heartbeat.” the inside of your head. I think that step 1 is that we But that’s not true. These companies will main- need to have a comprehensive data protection law tain their power and grow it, because as artificial of the sort that the Europeans are—

Authors Guild Bulletin 57 realization. I mentioned this conference that I was at two weeks ago in Silicon Valley. These were tech people, and the vast majority of them felt that WHO WILL DECIDE these companies had to be told that they can make WHAT IS FAKE NEWS? no more acquisitions. Period. FF: One really significant thing is what’s hap - I GET NERVOUS ABOUT pened in London with Uber, and I think also the THIS CONCEPT WHEN hearings in Congress last week, is that these com- I HEAR PEOPLE CLAMORING panies have existed in a world where there’s been very little pressure put on them. So if you’re Uber, FOR THE PLATFORMS you’ve actually existed in a lot of jurisdictions TO REGULATE WHAT’S as a lawless company, where you’ve just ignored whatever regulations are on the books. You’ve just REAL NEWS AND assumed that your business model exempts you WHAT’S FAKE NEWS. from it, and you’ve been able to get away with it. — FRANKLIN FOER So when you have a jurisdiction like London say, “You know what? We’re going to boot you unless you start to behave like a better citizen,” that actually has an important effect. It’s public power being applied in a way that will probably improve the private power. I think the same is true with Facebook. The JT: Have already passed. culture of Facebook is one where there’s a cult of FF: Right, exactly. personality within the company based around PH: Why are we to believe that at this moment in one guy, and it’s never really been challenged. The this country with this administration this is at all people who work for that company are largely lib- in the cards? eral Democrats, and when they see themselves JT: Paul, you would be shocked— getting ripped for abetting the election of Donald PH: I want to be shocked. Trump, that begins to implant itself in the minds JT: There is support for this kind of regulation from of the engineers, executives of that company, and both right and left. I mean from Elizabeth Warren maybe they’ll behave a little bit more responsibly on one side to Bill Kristol, Steve Bannon, Tucker the next time. I’m not saying that I’m putting all my Carlson, and all sorts of people on the right as well. hopes in that basket. I dream of the backlash that And certainly Orrin Hatch is beginning to make a Jonathan is talking about, of having a regulatory lot of noise in the Senate about this. I mean an attor- regime that gets put in place really quickly. But in ney general in Missouri sued Google last week. An the meantime, changing the dynamic of the con- attorney general in Mississippi sued them. This is versation actually is important. going to happen. Both were Republicans, and both PH: We’ll end on the dream in a few minutes. I have of them sued them for antitrust. So, I believe that a few questions from some people who couldn’t the tide has shifted. Six months ago when Frank make it tonight, and one has to do with the role of and I had a conversation at the New America libraries. The chief digital officer of this library, Foundation with the Open Markets people, we felt Tony Ageh, wonders, “Can libraries be the solu- like we were just talking to ourselves— tion? And if so, how?” I’d like to show you another PH: So things are getting better? short video. JT: Yeah, I think the realization that these companies have to be brought to heel is a general [Short video clip begins playing.]

58 Our Cornered Culture Well, you mentioned libraries there, and I will decide that they need to somehow morph their think that’s actually a critical role that we character into something fundamentally different haven’t thought about that much. Library than what they are. systems in many countries around the PH: Become cool. world have been searching for purpose, FF: That they become cool. when information has become much more JT: I totally agree with that. You took us up to see easily shareable, much more easily trad- some incredibly rare manuscripts, and they were able. But we can think of librarians as a analog in the best sense of that word. Right? If you professional class that are dedicated to just said that you were going to digitize all this the ascertainment of facts, the familiarity stuff and put it out there, something would have of facts. And, it would be helpful if we had been lost. Something deep would have been lost in more public voices, more public institu- the same way that my friend, T Bone Burnett, says tions, that could weigh in in a nonparti- about vinyl records from the 1960s—once they san, apolitical way but help us understand were compressed into CDs or MP3 files, some - where the resources are and what the facts thing deep was lost so that they could be digitized. are that allow us to resolve these controver- So I agree with Frank. sies in a fair way. PH: That’s a whole subject that I’d like to talk about. JT: I think the fact that there are actual real things PH: That was Edward Snowden. there that you could touch— FF: Oh, that was Snowden? PH: Tactile inebriation— PH: He couldn’t be here. FF: Human beings live in the face of all this dis- FF: I wonder why? So, I actually have an anxiety traction and of our attention being hijacked con- about the way we end up shaping the future of stantly, and the fact that we’re always surveilled libraries, because, for me, it’s very important going when we’re online and that someone is looking into a reading room that it actually be a reading over our shoulder and that we’re umbilically con- room. And one of the things that the library sym- nected to these companies’ stores. In this world, bolizes to me is the veneration of scholarship. the library represents a space that is fundamental- The idea that knowledge should be accessible but ly an anecdote to that world of distraction, where not necessarily easy. To attain true knowledge you’re meant to be quiet and you’re meant to be requires dedication— in a place where you can actually read in a way in PH: Effort. That there’s value in difficulty. which your attention can be sustained over a peri- FF: The library symbolizes to me the idea that the od of time. They’re temples of contemplation. mind is something to always be cultivated. Louis PH: So that’s your hope? Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, would talk FF: Well my hope is...yeah. I actually look at about the development of the faculties, which the books on the shelf, and when the Kindle was means that every individual needs to be dedicated unveiled in 2008, people wrote the obituary for the to a program of self-improvement of the mind. It’s paper book. Nicholas Negroponte, who heads the a democratic necessity that individuals commit MIT Media Lab, said there will be no paper books themselves to that task, because of the choices published after the year 2015. that citizens have to confront every couple of PH: He was quite wrong. years, which are so important, so complicated. FF: Lo and behold. And why did that happen? Well, That if they’re given poor-quality information, first publishers defended the economic value of they’re going to be ill-equipped to fulﬁll their civic their product. They resisted the pressure to con- obligation. And so, I worry that libraries panic in stantly deﬂate the value of the product. Secondly, the face of all of the cultural, technological trans- I think it’s us. When the Kindle came out, I was formations that we’re subjected to. That libraries enthusiastic about it, and I carried it with me

Authors Guild Bulletin 59 everywhere. I thought that this was pretty incred- protect spaces of contemplation, if we want to pro- ible that I had access to every book ever published, tect a certain integrity of the human body, then we and I thought it was going to change my life. But can find ways as a society to harness the power of over time, I found myself beckoned by the paper government but also to act as individuals in ways book, because I live my life on a screen all day long. where we just don’t accede to the efficient and the We looked at some of the earliest printed books in convenient. this library. And, the history of the book is one that JT: I use a term in my book called “technodeter- moved from reading being a public activity, where minism,” which is the sense that technologists you had a priest reading the word of God to an illit- think they know where they’re going and where we erate public, to one that became the most private should go, and think they don’t really need to ask activity of them all. We read in bathtubs, in bed, anybody’s permission to go there. Frank and I, nei- and in chairs— ther of us are Luddites. We both use technology in PH: I know you love reading in bathtubs. You men- deep ways. All we’re saying is, let’s have a general tioned that. discussion as a society about where this is taking FF: We don’t need to dwell on that. But it’s true. us, because quite frankly, these same companies In some ways, reading on paper is a way of kind of are pushing really hard to integrate artificial intel- breaking the system. ligence into everything they do, and the implica- PH: And you need no electricity for it. tions of that are shocking if you think about just a FF: It’s an act of resistance. simple thing that I’ve been studying. PH: William Gibson had a question for both of There is a service in China called Sesame you. He says, “Do you agree with me that the most Credit. Basically what it does is that it takes your significant impacts of new technology are seldom credit score and overlays your social media his- anticipated by that technology’s developers?” tory navigated by an artificial intelligence bot JT: Yeah, that’s probably the subject that we’ve that was built by Alibaba. Essentially, if you, Paul, been talking about all night. When I said that I wrote something on WeChat that was critical of thought Facebook was kind of a Frankenstein the Chinese government, your social credit score monster—I don’t think anybody who created it would go down. If Frank played video games for had any idea of what would happen with it or how four hours in an afternoon, his social credit score it could be used for dark purposes. And I still don’t would go down as a slacker. If I jaywalked in think we’re very clear about that. Shanghai and got caught on a camera with facial FF: Right. But I also want to resist one of the impli- recognition, my social credit score would go down. cations in that quote, which is the idea that if you Now you say, “Why would anybody want to be on can’t see the trajectory it doesn’t mean that you that?” There are 200 million Chinese on that sys- can’t try to tame and regulate and harness it for tem, and young people use their social credit score human purposes. There’s a sense that we all have on their dating apps to prove they’re good, patri- of inevitable drift. That one thing leads to another. otic citizens. Three weeks ago, Xi Jinping said that That technology will proceed at pace. And, the truth every Chinese citizen should be on this service. is that it’s a culture that births technology. It grows That’s the end place where we can end up. out of some broad assumptions that we have. That PH: So someone like Jaron Lanier says, “I abso- we as human beings can ask really deliberate ques- lutely won’t join Facebook. I absolutely won’t join tions about what we want these things to become. any agency that can collect data about me.” We need to have a conversation about wheth- JT: That’s almost impossible to do. I can’t give up er we’re willing to part with certain things as we Google. I’m sorry. I need to use a search engine in a move forward, because, if we decide that we don’t lot of my work. want to part with them, if we want to protect PH: I sometimes wonder, before Google, how books, if we want to protect privacy, if we want to would I have prepared to talk to you?

60 Our Cornered Culture JT: You would have gone to the library. Instagram, and WhatsApp competing with each PH: It would have been a very different approach. other for your loyalty, one of them might off er a A very, very different way of research. The notion service that doesn’t steal all of your data all the that we call it the search engine is different from time, and maybe it’d be a better service. If Google research. It’s so different. had to compete with DoubleClick and YouTube, FF: Exactly. It’s as if the human being doesn’t partic- if Google were broken up into three pieces, then ipate in the process of using a search engine because maybe some better service would come out of it’s a machine. It’s a metaphor. The metaphor is quite it. It certainly wouldn’t be as easy for some - literal. But people always ask this question: Can you one in Russia to hack the election if this was all imagine life without Google? Can you imagine life spread out over a bunch of different platforms. without Amazon? And I can say, yeah, actually, in You know? fact I can. I lived that life until I was probably in my FF: I agree with that as a solution, but I also have late 20s. And you know what? We actually managed a little more hope about the possibility for there to entertain ourselves and to know things. Maybe being a nongovernmental solution along with a things didn’t arrive the next day when you ordered governmental solution. them. You would go to these incredible things called PH: Which would look how? stores, and when you went to stores, you actually had FF: I described this metaphor to food, which interactions with other human beings. And some- is kind of terrible to imagine—that we could go times you saw your neighbor and you would ﬁnd out through 60 years of stuffing ourselves full of what was happening to the person— Doritos and getting really obese. But there was PH: Are you waxing lyric and nostalgic now? also a backlash that emerged that was a nongov- FF: I do a little bit, yeah. ernmental one, where we decided that we were PH: And so do I. I feel the same way. I feel that actually going to start to care about the things that we need to see each other. We need to touch each we ingest through our mouths, and that we made other. We need to be next to each other. We need certain sacriﬁces of efficiency and price in order to to interact with each other. But I also know that get food that we felt more virtuous about. people choose convenience over— So, since the election of Donald Trump, FF: But we shouldn’t go backwards. I don’t think there has been a surge of people subscribing to we need to say that we need to live in a world with- The Washington Post and The New York Times, out next-day shipping or a world without search because they’ve marketed themselves explic - engines or all these things. They’re advances for itly as being more virtuous than the junk you human society, even as we’ve lost certain things, get through Facebook and Google. They’ve but I do think that we need to create a world that’s recommitted—“democracy dies in the dark - more pluralistic and competitive and that there are ness.” The Washington Post committed itself to options. If I wanted a search engine that protected a certain ideal of investigative rigor. The New my privacy better than Google, I could go to Bing York Times markets itself as the antidote to fake or maybe DuckDuckGo. But have you used those news. And you know what? People want that. search engines? There’s really no competition. I People want to be the benefactors of something want people competing to protect my privacy bet- better. People understand that you get what ter. I want there to be people competing to provide you pay for in the realm of information. And me with higher-quality information. if they didn’t play the role of the Medici, that PH: Do you think that’s going to happen in some this whole system would collapse. Everything year? You were saying before that there’s a whole would collapse. group out there. A counterculture group— PH: On that note, thank you very much. JT: The way it’ll happen, quite honestly, is we FF: Thank you. break up these companies. If you had Facebook, JT: Thank you.

Authors Guild Bulletin 61 BOOKS BY Fred Bowen: Lucky Enough; Mary Higgins Clark (and Alafair MEMBERS Carol Brendler (and Lisa Brown, Illus.): Burke): Every Breath You Take; The Two Mutch Sisters; Barbara Leslie Cohen: This Love Story Will Secret Agenda: Who’s Self-Destruct; David A. Adler (and Sam Ricks, Illus.): Brett: Michael Connelly: Castrating the Wolves of Wall Street?; Two Kinds of Truth; Pass the Ball, Mo!; Rumaan Alam: Anne Coon Growing with the That Kind of Mother; Laurie Halse Cynthia Brian: (and Ann Feuerherm): Thriving Anderson (and Emily Carroll, Illus.): Goddess Gardener; Larry Dane in Retirement: Lessons from Baby Speak: A Graphic Novel; Mary Kay Brimmer: Twelve Days in May: Boomer Women; Susan Cooper: Andrews: The High Tide Club; Freedom Ride 1961; Joseph Bruchac The Boggart Fights Back; Nina Crews Jacob M. Appel: Millard Salter’s Last (and Liz Amini-Holmes, Illus.): (and Richard Wright): Seeing into Day and The Amazing Mr. Morality: Chester Nez and the Unbreakable Tomorrow: Haiku by Richard Wright; Stories; Anne Milano Appel (Transl. Code: A Navajo Code Talker’s Story; Doreen Cronin (and Betsy Lewin, by Paolo Maurensig): Theory of Leslie Bulion (and Robert Meganck, Illus.): Click, Clack, Moo I Love You; Shadows; Peggy Archer (and Anne Illus.): Leaf Litter Critters; Loree Naomi Danis (and Cinta Arribas, Wilsdorf, Illus.): A Hippy-Hoppy Toad; Griffin Burns: Life on Surtsey: Illus.): I Hate Everyone; Sharon Rilla J. Askew: Most American: Iceland’s Upstart Island; Dori Hillstead Darrow: Worlds Within Words: Writing Notes from a Wounded Place; Butler (and Nancy Meyers, Illus.): and the Writing Life; Jasmin Darznik: Reza Aslan: God: A History; King & Kayla and the Case of the Song of a Captive Bird; Georgina Issac J. Bailey: My Brother Lost Tooth; John Butman (and Simon Davis: Revealing Serenity; Kenneth Moochie: Regaining Dignity in Targett): New World, Inc.: The Making C. Davis: More Deadly Than the War: the Midst of Crime, Poverty, and of America by England’s Merchant The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu Racism in the American South; Adventurers; and the First World War; Sasha Radley Balko (and Tucker Carrington): Rachel Caine (and Ann Dawn: Blink; Melissa de la Cruz: The Cadaver King and the Country Aguirre): Honor Among Thieves; Someone to Love and Love & War; Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in Laurie Calkhoven: Judy, Prisoner Matt de la Peña (and Loren Long, the American South; Molly Bang of War; Liam Callanan: Paris Illus.): Love; Lula Delacre: Rafi and (and Ann Stern): When Sophie Thinks by the Book; Simon Callow: Being Rosi: Pirates!; Dorothea DePrisco: She Can’t; Tracy Barrett: Marabel Wagner: The Story of the Most See for Yourself: The Ultimate Guide and the Book of Fate and Freefall Provocative Composer Who Ever to Eyes; Christine Dimmick: Summer; Marion Dane Bauer Lived; Stephanie Calmenson (and Detox Your Home; Cara H. Drinan: (and Richard Jones, Illus.): Winter Aaron Blecha, Illus.): Our Principal The War on Kids: How American Dance; Robert Bausch: In the Fall Is a Frog!; Stephanie Calmenson Juvenile Justice Lost Its Way; David They Come Back; Bruce M. Beehler (and Jane Newland, Illus.): Look! Duchovny: Miss Subways; (and John T. Anderton, Illus.): Bugs!; Marc Cameron: Tom Clancy Dave Eggers: The Monk of North on the Wing: Travels with the Power and Empire; Alyssa Satin Mokha; Dave Eggers (and Aaron Songbird Migration of Spring; Capucilli (and David Mottram, Illus.): Renier, Illus.): The Lifters; Karen Alex Berenson: The Deceivers; Mighty Tug; Clay Carmichael: English (and Laura Freeman, Illus.): Mike Berenstain: Just Grin and Bear Bear at the Beach and Other The New Kid; Helen Epstein: The It!: Wisdom from Bear Country; Adventures; Helen Marie Casey: Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma; Perle Besserman: The Kabbalah Zero Degrees; Samantha Chagollan Joseph A. Esposito: Dinner in Master; John Pratt Bingham: (and Nila Aye, Illus.): Starry Skies: Camelot: The Night America’s Greatest Hangtown: Secrets & Schemes; Learn About the Constellations Scientists, Writers, and Scholars Sophie Blackall: Hello Lighthouse; Above Us; Loretta Chase: A Duke Partied at the Kennedy White House; Lucy Bledsoe: The Evolution of Love; in Shining Armor; Alexander Chee: Jackson Fahnestock: Shu Wei’s Amy Bloom: White Houses; How to Write an Autobiographical Revenge; Sierra Faith: Absolutely Judy Blundell: The High Season; Novel; Lee Child: The Midnight Line; Adored: Stop Choosing Narcissistic

62 Authors Guild Bulletin Men and Finally Be a Well-Loved of Africa and Atonement; Bill in the Manuscript Room; John Woman; Michelle Falkoff: Questions Henderson (and Genie D. Chipps, Lescroart: Poison; Amy Lillard: I Want to Ask You; Mark Fallon: Eds.): Love Stories for Turbulent Kappy King and the Puppy Kaper; Unjustifiable Means; Joy Fielding: Times: Loving Through the Caroline Linden: My Once and Future The Bad Daughter; A. J. Finn: Apocalypse; Bill Henderson (Ed.): Duke; Sally Lloyd-Jones (and Leo The Woman in the Window; The Pushcart Prize XLII: Best of the Espinosa, Illus.): Goldfish on Vacation; Sue Fliess (and Petros Bouloubasis, Small Presses 2018; Rachel Herz: Alexandra Logue: Pathways to Illus.): Mary Had a Little Lab; Why You Eat What You Eat: The Reform: Credits and Conflict at Elizabeth Flock: The Heart Is a Science Behind Our Relationship The City University of New York; Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage with Food; Minfong Ho (and Frances Robin MacArthur: Heart in Mumbai; Douglas Florian: Pig Alvarez, Illus.): An Eagle’s Feather; Spring Mountain; Caitlin Macy: and Cat Are Pals; Aminatta Forna: Christopher L. Hodapp: Heritage Mrs.; Susan Mallery: Sisters Like Us; Happiness; Caroline Fraser: Endures: Perspectives on 200 Fran Manushkin (and Purificación Prairie Fires: The American Dreams Years of Indiana Freemasonry; Hernández, Illus.): Bamboo for Me, of Laura Ingalls Wilder; Delores Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams Bamboo for You!; Frederic Martini: Lowe Friedman: Wildflowers; (Illus.): Freya and the Magic Jewel; Betrayed; Chris Matthews: Bobby Patty Friedmann: Where Do They Mary Ann Hooper: Across America Kennedy: A Raging Spirit; Ben Mattlin: All Come From?; and Back: Retracing My Great- In Sickness and in Health: Love, Kathlyn Gay: Dealing Grandparents’ Remarkable Journey; Disability, and a Quest to Understand with Death: The Ultimate Teen Natalie Hopkinson: A Mouth the Perils and Pleasures of Interabled Guide (It Happened to Me series); Is Always Muzzled: Six Dissidents, Romance; Deirdra McAfee and Carole George: The Lambs: My Five Continents, and the Art of Betty Joyce Nash (Eds.): Lock and Father, a Farm, and the Gift of a Resistance; Eileen Hopsicker: Load: Armed Fiction; Stacy McAnulty: Flock of Sheep; Daryl Wood Gerber: The Balance of Justice; Leonard S. The Miscalculations of Lightning A Deadly Eclair; Adina Rishe Gewirtz: Hyman: Electricity Acts; Girl; Stacy McAnulty (and Deborah Blue Window; Libby Gill: The Hope- Ed Ifkovic: Mood Indigo; Hocking, Illus.): Max Explains Driven Leader: Harness the Power Patrick Ireland: Migrant Integration Everything: Grocery Store Expert; of Positivity at Work; Estelle Gilson in Times of Economic Crisis: Policy James P. McCollom: The Last Sheriff (Transl.; by Umberto Saba): Ernesto; Responses from European and North in Texas: A True Tale of Violence and Kathleen Giorgio: In Grace’s Time; American Global Cities; the Vote; Jennifer McGaha: Flat Broke Peter Gleick: The World’s Water, David Jauss: Nice People: with Two Goats; Mindy McGinnis: Volume 9: The Report on Freshwater New & Selected Stories II; Tayari Given to the Earth; Robert McParland: Resources; Jonathan Green: Sex Jones: An American Marriage; From Native Sons to King’s Men: Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Robert D. Kaplan: The Return The Literary Landscape of 1940s Blood, and Betrayal; Eloise Greenfield of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, America and Science Fiction in (and Don Tate, Illus.): PAR-TAY!: and American Interests in the Twenty- Classic Rock: Musical Explorations Dance of the Veggies (and Their First Century; Leslie Karst: Death of Space, Technology, and the Friends); Barbara Gregorich: Charlie Al Fresco; Joseph Keckler: Dragon Imagination, 1967–1982; Jillian Medoff: Chan’s Poppa: Earl Derr Biggers; at the Edge of a Flat World: Portraits This Could Hurt; Laura Krauss Nikki Grimes: Between the Lines; and Revelations; Jessica Keener: Melmed (and Sarita Rich, Illus.): Judy Gruen: The Skeptic and Strangers in Budapest; Bill Kimberlin: Daddy, Me, and the Magic Hour; the Rabbi: Falling in Love with Faith; Inside the Star Wars Empire: A Memoir; Nikki Meredith: The Manson Women Beth Gutcheon: The Affliction; Eric A. Kimmel (and Ivica Stevanovic, and Me: Monsters, Morality, and Gilda Haber: Cockney Girl Illus.): Search for the Shamir; Stephen Murder; Kenneth Miller: The Human (2nd Edition); Tara Haelle: King: The Outsider; Gordon Korman: Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Vaccination Investigation: The History Supergifted; Jane Kramer: The Reason, Consciousness, and Free and Science of Vaccines; Parnell Hall: Reporter’s Kitchen; Will; Tom Miller: Cuba, Hot and Cold The Purloined Puzzle; Patricia Hampl: Lester Laminack (and Jim and Panama Hat Trail; Dan Moldea: The Art of the Wasted Day; Kent LaMarche, Illus.): The King of Bees; Hollywood Confidential: A True Story Harrington: Last Ferry Home; Robie Jonathan LaPoma: The Summer of Wiretapping, Friendship, and H. Harris (and Chris Chatterton, Illus.): of Crud; Kirby Larson: Code Word Betrayal; Bonnie J. Morris (and D-M Crash! Boom!: A Math Tale; Linda Courage; Laurie Lawlor (and Withers): The Feminist Revolution: M. Hasselstrom: Gathering from David Gordon, Illus.): Big Tree Down!; The Struggle for Women’s Liberation; the Grassland: A Plains Journal; Mira T. Lee: Everything Here Walter Mosley: Down the River Nao Hauser: The Branding of Wendell Is Beautiful; Ursula K. Le Guin: Unto the Sea; Joanne B. Mulcahy Dawes: A Chef’s Comic Tale; John No Time to Spare: Thinking About (and Peter Chilson): Writing Abroad: Heminway: In Full Flight: A Story What Matters; Con Lehane: Murder A Guide for Travelers;

Spring–Summer 2018 63 Donna Jo Napoli: Hunger: Be Fine; Cynthia Platt (and Olivia Answers About Science and Other A Tale of Courage; Sharon Naylor: Holden, Illus.): Grow; Michael Pollan: Stuff; David N. Schwartz: The Last Weddings Away: The New Destination How to Change Your Mind: What Man Who Knew Everything: The Life Wedding and Getaway Wedding the New Science of Psychedelics and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father Celebrations Guide; John Nelson: Teaches Us About Consciousness, of the Nuclear Age; Lynne Sharon A Guide to Energetic Healing: Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Schwartz: Crossing Borders: Stories From Clearing Trauma/Abuse to Transcendence; Douglas Preston and Essays About Translation; Raising Consciousness; Sigrid Nunez: (and Lincoln Child): City of Endless Mimi Schwartz: When History Is The Friend; Night; Beatrice Tauber Prior (and Personal; Sandra Scofield: The Last Kevin O’Connell: Two Journeys Mary Ann Drummond): Grandma and Draft: A Novelist’s Guide to Revision; Home: A Novel of Eighteenth Century Me: A Kid’s Guide for Alzheimer’s and Richard Sennett: Building Europe; Robin Oliveira: Winter Dementia; Rick Pullen: The Apprentice; and Dwelling: Ethics for the City; Sisters; Peggy Orenstein: Don’t Call Ellen Rachlin: Permeable Renée Shafransky: Tips for Living; Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Divide; Noel Rae: The Great Stain: Terry Shames: A Reckoning in Sex, and Life; Roxanne Orgill: Siege: Witnessing American Slavery; the Back Country; Dyan Sheldon: How General Washington Kicked the Maya Rao: Great American Outpost: Just Friends; Judy Sierra (and British Out of Boston and Launched Dreamers, Mavericks, and the Making Eric Comstock, Illus.): The Great a Revolution; Patricia O’Toole: of an Oil Frontier; Chris Raschka: Dictionary Caper; Jeffrey Siger: The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and New Shoes; Deborah Reber (and An Aegean April; Patsy Sims (Ed.): the World He Made; Angela C. Santomero): Preschool The Stories We Tell: Classic True Katherine Hall Page: The Body Clues: Raising Smart, Inspired, and Tales by America’s Greatest Women in the Casket; Richard Panchyk: Engaged Kids in a Screen-Filled World; Journalists; Marilyn Singer and Boston History for Kids: From Red Suzanne Rhodenbaugh: The Deepest Susan L. Roth: Every Month Is a Coats to Red Sox, with 21 Activities; South I’ve Gotten and Other Essays; New Year: Celebrations Around James Pardew: Peacemakers: Richard Rhodes: Energy: A Human the World; Patricia Skalka: Death American Leadership and the End of History; Anne Rice (and Christopher Rides the Ferry; Jane Smiley: Riding Genocide in the Balkans; Elizabeth Rice): Ramses the Damned: The Passion Lessons; Caylen D. Smith: A Thief’s Partridge: Boots on the Ground: of Cleopatra; J. D. Robb: Dark in Death; Game; Roland Smith: Ascent; John America’s War in Vietnam; Dorothy Nora Roberts: Year One and Shelter Bell Smithback: Asia Betrayed: How Hunshaw Patent (and William Muñoz, in Place; Joanne Rocklin (and Lucy Winston Churchill Sacrificed the Far Photog.): Made for Each Other: Knisley, Illus.): Love, Penelope; East to Save England; Cornelia Maude Why Dogs and People Are Perfect Alan Rode: Michael Curtiz: A Life Spelman (and Alea Marley, Illus.): Partners; Fiza Pathan: The Love in Film; Lisa Romeo: Starting with Everybody’s Somewhere; William That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Short Goodbye: A Daughter’s Memoir of Stadiem: Madame Claude: Her Stories; Olive Peart: LANGE Q&A: Love After Loss; Gary J. Rose: Ark Secret World of Pleasure, Privilege, Mammography Examination (4th of the Covenant; June Rousso: We All and Power; Peter Stark: Young Edition) and Mammography and Live on This Planet Together; Washington: How Wilderness and Breast Imaging PREP: Program Review Susan Goldman Rubin: Maya Lin: War Forged America’s Founding and Exam Prep (2nd Edition); Thinking with Her Hands and Coco Father; Brian Starr: Book of Spells; Mark Pendergrast: Memory Warp: Chanel: Pearls, Perfume, and the Little Michal Strutin: Judging Noa: A Fight How the Myth of Repressed Memory Black Dress; Elizabeth Rusch (and Karin for Women’s Rights in the Turmoil Arose and Refuses to Die and The Anderson, Photog.): Impact!: Asteroids of the Exodus; Dana Sullivan: Most Hated Man in America: Jerry and the Science of Saving the World; My Red Velvet Cape; C. M. Surrisi: Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment; Richard Russo: The Destiny Thief: A Side of Sabotage; Cynthia Surrisi Todd Robert Peterson: It Needs Essays on Writing, Writers and Life; and Diane Goode: The Best Mother; to Look Like We Tried; Bill Petrocelli: Maria McFarland Sanchez- Lynn Swanson: To My Mother: Through the Bookstore Window; Moreno: There Are No Dead Here: Winter Circus; Don Swaim: Man Nathaniel Philbrick: Second Wind: A Story of Murder and Denial in with Two Faces; Nathan Szajnberg: A Sunfish Sailor, an Island, and the Colombia; John Sandford: Twisted JerusaLand: An Insignificant Death; Voyage That Brought a Family Prey; Deborah Santana (Ed.): Anca L. Szilágyi: Daughters of the Air; Together; Tamora Pierce: Tempests All the Women in My Family Sing: Edward Tenner: The Efficiency and Slaughter; Steven Pinker: Women Write the World—Essays on Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do; Enlightenment Now: The Case for Equality, Justice, and Freedom; Holly Thompson (and Ashley Crowley, Reason, Science, Humanism, and April Pulley Sayre: Thank You, Earth: Illus.): One Wave at a Time: A Story Progress; Matthew Pitt: These Are A Love Letter to Our Planet; About Grief and Healing; Holly Our Demands; Sally J. Pla (and Steve Larry Scheckel: I Always Wondered Thompson (and Jen Betton, Illus.): Wolfhard, Illus.): Stanley Will Probably About That: 101 Questions and Twilight Chant; Neal Thompson:

64 Member News Kickflip Boys: A Memoir of Freedom, Among them were Esther Allen for William Taubman’s Gorbachev: Rebellion, and the Chaos of Humanities Translation and Lily Tuck His Life and Times was a finalist in Fatherhood; Hayashi Tomio: Rebel for Creative Arts, General Nonfiction. Biography. Edwidge Danticat’s Isshinryu: The 57 Challenges, Exploring The Lambda Literary Awards The Art of Death: Writing the Final Karate Myths, Madness and Mysteries; finalists were announced on March 6. Story was a finalist in Criticism. John Whittier Treat: The Rise and Jennifer Finney Boylan’s Long Black The PEN America Award finalists Fall of Modern Japanese Literature; Veil was nominated in the category were announced on January 25. Daniel J. Wakin: The Man of Transgender Fiction. Mark Zubro’s Victor LaValle’s The Changeling was with the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Ring of Silence was nominated in a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Tales of a New York City Block; the category of Gay Mystery. Melissa Award. Jessica Cohen’s translation Ellen R. Wald: Saudi, Inc.: The Arabian Febos’s Abandon Me and Renate of A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Kingdom’s Pursuit of Profit and Power; Stendhal’s Kiss Me Again, Paris Grossman was nominated for the Amy Wallen: When We Were were nominated in the category of PEN Translation Prize. Ghouls: A Memoir of Ghost Stories; Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Kenny The American Library Doris Weatherford, Rosalind Reisner, Fries’s In the Province of the Gods Association presented its Youth Media Nancy Rubin Stuart, and Valerie was nominated in the category of Awards on February 19. Larry Dane Tomaselli: Women in the Literary Gay Memoir/Biography. Kristen Brimner won the Sibert Medal for Landscape; Douglas Wells: How Ringman’s I Stole You was nominated distinguished informational book for We End Up; Tim Wendel: Cancer in the category of SF/F/Horror. The Twelve Days in May: Freedom Ride Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors, winners were announced on June 4 at 1961. Elisha Cooper’s Big Cat Little Cat and the Quest for a Cure to Childhood an awards ceremony in New York City. was named a Caldecott Honor Book. Leukemia; Tara Westover: Educated: Finalists for the 2017 Eloise Greenfield received the A Memoir; Julie Whipple: Crash Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Course; David Wiesner: I Got It!; were announced on February 21. Award for Lifetime Achievement. Irene Willis (Ed.): Climate of Opinion: Victor LaValle’s The Changeling Deborah Heiligman’s Vincent and Sigmund Freud in Poetry; David Wind: and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers won A Better Place to Be: Based on the Sing were nominated in the the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Harry Chapin Song; Emily Winslow: Fiction category. Michael Connelly’s Award and was named a Printz Honor Look for Her; Kay Winters (and The Late Show was nominated Book. Dori Hillestad Butler’s King & Patrice Barton, Illus.): Did You Hear in the Mystery/Thriller category. Kayla and the Case of the Missing Dog What I Heard?: Poems About School; Ron Chernow’s Grant was nominated Treats, illustrated by Nancy Meyers, Barry Wittenstein (and Chris Hsu, in the Biography category. Frances was named a Geisel Honor Book. Illus.): The Boo-Boos That Changed FitzGerald’s The Evangelicals: M. A. Appleby was twice honored the World: A True Story About an The Struggle to Shape America at the Florida Authors & Publishers Accidental Invention; Meg Wolitzer: was nominated in the History Association’s President’s Book Awards. The Female Persuasion; Stuart category. Cornelia Dean’s Making Raising David Again was a Silver Woods: Unbound and Shoot First; Sense of Science: Separating Medalist in the Autobiography/Memoir Romy Wyllie: Eva Maddox: Innovator, Substance from Spin was nominated category and a Gold Medalist in the Designer, Educator; in the Science & Technology category. How-To/Self-Help category. Ellen Yeomans (and Chris Sheban, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot was Charlotte Bennardo’s Evolution Illus.): The Other Ducks; Bernice Yeung: nominated for the Art Seidenbaum Revolution: Simple Lessons (Book 3) In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Award for First Fiction. The awards won the gold medal in the Feathered Sexual Violence Against America’s were presented on the University Quill Book Awards for Middle Grade, Most Vulnerable Workers of Southern California campus on and her Evolution Revolution: Simple April 20, ahead of the Los Angeles Machines (Book 1) won the bronze. Times Festival of Books. Dianna Booher’s Communicate MEMBERS The winners of the National Like a Leader: Connecting Strategically MAKE NEWS Book Critics Circle Award were to Coach, Inspire, and Get Things Done announced on March 15. Frances was named a 2018 Axiom Business The Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society FitzGerald’s The Evangelicals: Book Award Silver Medalist in the presented the ALIHOT (A Legend The Struggle to Shape America Networking category. in His Own Time) Awards at its won in the Nonfiction category. Judith Cody’s poem “A Thousand annual conference this past December. Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: Nights at the War Window” won Patty Friedmann and Reza Aslan The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls second place in the Soul-Making Keats were among the six recipients. Wilder won in the Biography category. Literary Competition, an arts outreach The recipients of the Guggenheim Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, program of the National League of Fellowship were announced on April 4. Sing was a finalist for Fiction. American Pen Women.

Authors Guild Bulletin 65 Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Philip Roth Dewey Fairchild’s Parent Problem Solver made Kirkus Review’s The Authors Guild mourns the loss of Philip Roth, who Best of 2017 Middle Grade School & died on May 22 at the age of 85, surrounded by his close Friendship Stories. friends and family. Roth, who was a member of the Ernest J. Gaines’s The Tragedy Authors Guild for over 30 years, leaves behind a towering of Brady Sims was nominated for the legacy that includes a Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Hammett Prize for a work of literary Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the excellence in the field of crime writing. Man Booker International Prize for lifetime achievement Bull Garlington’s The Full and the United States National Humanities Medal, English was named a Foreword Indies presented by President Barack Obama in 2011. Award finalist in the category of During a career that spanned six decades, Roth Nonfiction Humor. authored 27 novels and numerous short stories, essays Lois V. Harris’s Lotta Crabtree: and critical commentaries. His books—many of which are Gold Rush Fairy Star won the National regarded as among the 20th century’s greatest literary Cowboy and Western Heritage works—explore themes of Jewish and American identity, Museum’s 2018 Juvenile Book Award. tradition, class, lust and masculinity, and narrate post-war It was also a finalist for the Western American life with an astounding frankness that earned Writers of America 2018 Spur Award the author both high praise and ﬁerce criticism. for Best Western Juvenile Nonfiction. Roth’s contributions to literature extend beyond Deborah Heiligman’s his proliﬁc body of work. At a time when the world Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh was bifurcated by the Iron Curtain, Roth sought out and Brothers won the Boston Globe-Horn introduced American readers to Eastern European Book Award, the Golden Kite Award writers such as Danilo Kis, Bruno Schulz, Vaclav Havel for Nonfiction and the CYBILS Award and Milan Kundera. for High School Nonfiction. His passing is a great loss to the writing community. Stephen King received the 2018 PEN America Literary Service Award at the 2018 PEN America Literary Gala, May 22. Jan Maher’s Earth as It Is was named the Great Southeast Book Festival’s grand prize winner. Michael Minchin’s short story “All Things, to the Ocean” was a finalist in the Glimmer Train Family Matters Contest. Peter Joffre Nye’s feature article “Airplane Wars: Finger Lakes Aviation Pioneer Glenn Curtiss Battled the Wright Brothers for Supremacy of the Skies,” published in Mountain Home magazine, won an IRMA Award for Historic Feature. Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work–Fiction as well as the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which recognizes “literature that confronts racism and examines diversity.” Paula Whyman was the recipient of the 2017 Towson Prize for Literature for You May See a Stranger,

a collection of linked stories. Getty Images Photograph:

66 Member News IN MEMORIAM the Robert Frost Silver Medal, and the second poet laureate of the the National Medal of Arts, awarded by United States, following Robert President Barack Obama in 2011. Donald Bain, 82, died October 21 Penn Warren, in 1987. His collection Stephen Hawking, 76, in White Plains, New York. He was of poetry Things of This World died March 14 at his home in best known for the Murder, She won the Pulitzer Prize and the Cambridge, England. The renowned National Book Award in 1957. Wrote novels and the Capital Crimes physicist was the author of many He won a second Pulitzer for mysteries, both written under books, including A Brief History of New and Collected Poems in 1988. pseudonyms. Time, The Universe in a Nutshell Tom Wolfe, 88, died May 14, , 61, Anthony Bourdain and five children’s books cowritten in Manhattan, NY. The author died June 8, in Kaysersberg, France. with his daughter, Lucy Hawking. of The Right Stuff, Bonfire of He was the author of three novels, Philip Kerr, 62, died March 23 the Vanities and The Kandy-Kolored and his memoir, Kitchen Confidential, in London, England. He was the author Tangerine-Flake Streamline catapulted him from the kitchen to of more than 30 books, including Baby chronicled the 1960s in both the bestseller lists, a personal imprint the Bernie Gunther crime novels and fiction and nonfiction, and with a at HarperCollins and fame as the a series for younger readers, Children sharp bite. “As a titlist of flamboyance inexhaustible creator and star of two of the Lamp. he is without peer in the Western popular food shows, “No Reservations” Ursula K. Le Guin, 88, world,” wrote one of his admiring and “Parts Unknown.” died January 22 at her home in contemporaries, who described Russell Freedman, 88, died Portland, Oregon. She was the author his prose as ”normally shotgun March 16 in Manhattan, New York. of more than 30 novels, poetry baroque, sometimes edging over He was the author of more than volumes and essay collections. into machine-gun rococo.” 60 books, most of them history books Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness for young people, including Eleanor won both the Hugo and Nebula Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery and awards. She was awarded the DECEASED MEMBERS Becoming Ben Franklin. National Book Foundation’s Medal Nancy Friday, 84, died for Distinguished Contribution to Anastasios Aslanis November 5 in Manhattan, New York. American Letters in 2014. Donald Bain She was a journalist and the best- Dallas Mayr, 71, died January 24 Lorraine Bodger selling author of My Secret Garden. in New York. He was the author Walter M. Brasch William H. Gass, 93, died of more than two dozen horror novels, Charles DeLuca December 6 at his home in St. Louis, written under the pseudonym Carol Field Missouri. Best known for The Tunnel Jack Ketchum. Thomas Fleming (1995) and for having coined Kit Reed, 85, died September 24 Russell Freedman the term “metafiction,” he was the in Los Angeles, California. She was Mary Anne Guitar winner of four Pushcart Prizes, the genre-crossing author of 30 Louis Harris the Pen/Faulkner Award and a lifetime novels and nine short story collections, Joanne Hoerr achievement award from the including The Night Children, Mother Joe Jares Lannan Foundation. Isn’t Dead She’s Only Sleeping and Nora Johnson Sue Grafton, 77, died Other Stories and...The Attack of the Ursula K. Le Guin December 28 in Santa Barbara, Giant Baby. Giovanni Maciocia California. She was best known Anita Shreve, 71, died Harry Mathews for her alphabetically titled detective March 29 at her home in Newfields, Kit Reed series that began with A Is for New Hampshire. She was the author George W. Rhen Alibi in 1982. She made it to Y with of 20 books, including The Pilot’s Wife Harriet Rochlin the publication last August of Y Is and The Weight of Water. Philip Roth for Yesterday. , 78, Penny Vincenzi James Srodes Donald Hall, 89, died died February 28. Known as the Eric A. Weiss June 23, in Wilmot, NH. The former “doyenne of the modern blockbuster,” Betsy Wittemann poet laureate of the United States Vincenzi was the author of 17 was also a prolific and engaged novels and two short story collections, writer of essays, short stories, plays, including the bestsellers The Best textbooks and children’s books, of Times, An Absolute Scandal and two books on baseball, and several A Perfect Heritage. memoirs including Unpacking the Richard Wilbur, 96, Boxes and Life Work. His many honors died September 24 in Belmont, included two Guggenheim Fellowships, Massachusetts. He was named

Authors Guild Bulletin 67 We Welcome 17 Years, 660,000 Articles, Tom Gauld 2,494 Writers, $9,456,000 Payoff as the First In April, 17 years after the Authors Guild filed suit, along with the Cartoonist American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Writers Union, and 21 freelance writers named as class representatives, the payoff arrived. Laureate of the Several thousand freelance writers have received, or will be Authors Guild receiving, a total of more than $9 million as compensation for copyright infringement by electronic database, newspaper, and magazine publishers, Tom is the most literary and including Dow Jones, The New York Times, and Knight Ridder. More bookish cartoonist we know. than 3,000 writers filed claims for 600,000 articles. The final count of He is a Scot living in London, writers receiving checks is 2,494; some others had their claims rejected born in Aberdeenshire in 1976. for a variety of reasons after publishers submitted challenges. His drawings have appeared The payments close the final chapter in a saga that began in 2001, in The New Yorker and The New when the Guild initiated a class-action suit on behalf of freelancers York Times, and he is a regular who had been paid for only one-time use of their articles and saw their contributor to The Guardian. work swept into electronic databases without further compensation. He once said, “I’m interested in A settlement was reached in 2005 but challenges kept the case in the the visual contrast between big courts for another decade. things and small things, and the “This has been a long road, and we are glad to finally see freelance narrative contrast between grand, writers compensated for the unauthorized uses of their articles,” said heroic ideas, and small human Mary Rasenberger, the Guild’s executive director. “Getting real money into ordinariness,” and that might be the pockets of real writers is always satisfying.” one key to what’s so appealing “We can see in hindsight that this early battle contained hints of about his style. He has a wry sense things to come,” said Guild president James Gleick, and one of the original of humor, and is uncommonly named plaintiffs. “Then, as now, big tech companies had the idea that they well attuned to the quirks, foibles, could profit from new uses of creative work without including the creators. and needs of those of us who We scored a victory, but the effects weren’t long lasting, and writers write books for a living. continue to struggle.”

Cartoon by Tom Gauld, the Guild’s ﬁrst Cartoonist Laureate

68 Authors Guild Bulletin Articles THE AUTHORS GUILD OFFICERS TURNING PAGES BULLETIN 5 President Annual Benefit Executive Director James Gleick An exciting season of new 8 Audiobooks Ascending Mary Rasenberger Vice President programming and initiatives is General Counsel Richard Russo underway at the Guild—including 11 Cheryl L. Davis Monique Truong Tap, Tap, Click our Regional Chapters and Editor Treasurer 16 Q&A: Representative Hakeem Jeffries Martha Fay Peter Petre enhanced author websites— 18 Making the Copyright System Work Assistant Editor Secretary on top of the services we already Nicole Vazquez Daniel Okrent offer our members. But as for Creators Copy Editors Members of the Council Heather Rodino Deirdre Bair we all know, this takes funding. 20 Empathy as Craft Hallie Einhorn Rich Benjamin So, in our seasonal Bulletin, 23 Art Direction Amy Bloom we are going to start accepting Connecting Our Members: Studio Elana Schlenker Alexander Chee The Guild Launches Regional Chapters Pat Cummings paid advertising to offset our costs Cover Art + Illustration Sylvia Day and devote greater resources 24 An Author’s Guide to the New Tax Code Ariel Davis Matt de la Peña All non-staff contributors Peter Gethers to your membership benefits. 32 American Writers Museum Wants You to the Bulletin retain Annette Gordon-Reed But our new ad policy copyright to the articles Tayari Jones is not merely for the benefit of 34 Authors Guild Annual Meeting Report that appear in these pages. Nicholas Lemann Guild members seeking Steven Levy advertisers. If there’s enough 41 information on contributors’ John R. MacArthur interest from members, we plan Featured Panel: “Our Cornered Culture” other publications are D.T. Max invited to contact the Susan Orlean on launching a low-cost, small Guild office. Published by Douglas Preston advertising section. Need a The Authors Guild, Inc. Michelle Richmond Departments James Shapiro researcher, assistant, agent, The Authors Guild, Hampton Sides beta reader, etc.? This section 2 Short Takes the oldest and largest T.J. Stiles will give you the opportunity association of published Jonathan Taplin 4 From the President authors in the United Rachel Vail to place classified ads for writing- States, works to protect Nicholas Weinstock related services. Stay tuned 6 From the Home Office and promote the Ex-Officio & for more information. professional interests Honorary Members 28 Legal Watch of its members. The Guild’s of the Council Turn the page to see our forerunner, The Authors Roger Angell first ad. 30 Advocacy News League of America, was Roy Blount Jr. founded in 1912. The Bulletin Barbara Taylor Bradford 62 Books by Members was first published Robert A. Caro in 1912 as The Authors Susan Cheever 65 Members Make News League Newsletter. Anne Edwards The Authors Guild Erica Jong 67 In Memoriam 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor Stephen Manes New York, NY 10016 Robert K. Massie t: (212) 563-5904 Victor S. Navasky f: (212) 564-5363 Sidney Offit e: [email protected] Mary Pope Osborne authorsguild.org Letty Cottin Pogrebin Roxana Robinson Jean Strouse Nick Taylor Scott Turow Advisory Council Sherman Alexie Judy Blume Jennifer Egan Louise Erdrich CJ Lyons Frederic Martini Cathleen Schine Georges Ugeux Meg Wolitzer The Authors Guild, Inc. SPRING-SUMMER 2018 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor PRST STD US POSTAGE PAID New York, NY 10016 PHILADELPHIA, PA PERMIT #164

11 Tap, Tap, Click 20 Empathy as Craft 41 Our Cornered Culture