AUTHORS GUILD Winter 2016 BULLETIN AG v GOOGLE Why We’re Still at It After All These Years T.J. Stiles: “This case is about the future of the book itself.” The Issues at Stake: Q&A Indie Publishing: A Primer The Writer in Old Age ALONG PUBLISHERS ROW By Campbell Geeslin n 1860, Charles Dickens set fire to many of the let- up with. It gave me a point of view, which I carry with Iters he had written over the course of two decades. me today. I’m a sailor.” He used them to cook, and he commemorated the inci- dent in—what else?—a letter to a friend. LITERARY VINES: “There are only two or three human “Dickensian scholars would have sold their souls stories,” Willa Cather wrote, “and they go on repeating for that barbecue fuel,” John Sutherland, professor themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened emeritus at University College London, told the Times before.” That was the beginning of Dwight Gar­ner’s Book Review’s John Williams. “There survive, of course, Times review of What Belongs to You by Garth Green­ about 15,000 Dickens letters. But whole tracts of the well. The story is about an affair between two men. private Dickens will be forever lost.” Garner said: “Mr. Greenwell writes long sentences, The exchange was prompted by Suther­land’s re- pinned at the joints by semicolons, that push forward view of Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934– like confidently searching vines. There’s suppleness 1995 in the same issue. Murdoch wrote 26 published and mastery in his voice. He seems to have an inborn novels, philosophical treatises and “an ocean of let- ability to cast a spell.” The review ended with, “Mr. ters.” She spent four hours at her desk every after- Greenwell has written a book about the faces we pres- noon replying to letters. At 17, she was asked what she ent to the world, and he has nothing consoling to say planned to do with her life, and she replied: “Write.” about anything at all.” “I can live in letters” she told a friend. “I have in OLD STUFF: It turns out that Rumpelstiltskin is even fact only once corresponded with anyone (now de- older than we thought. British anthropologist Jamie parted from my life) who was as good at writing let- Tehrani and Spanish folklorist Sara Graça da Silva col- ters as I am.” laborated on a study tracing the roots of popular fairy Murdoch, wrote Sutherland, belonged to “a gener- tales in much the same way biologists trace DNA. And ation and class for whom the handwritten letter was as just as Wilhelm Grimm suspected in the 19th century, necessary as breathing. The habit was instilled at her The Guardian reported, the scholars’ work showed that boarding school, where letters home were an obliga- many of the most familiar tales date back thousands tory chore. Throughout her life, her personal messages of years. retained an endearing jolly-hockey-sticks flavor.” The team studied the links among 275 Indo- “The traditional use of letters for the ‘life and let- European fairy tales, “mapping the stories through ters’ biography is going to be tricky in the future,” common languages and geographic proximity.” Sutherland said. “Or perhaps, if some way of getting Jack and the Beanstalk seems to have sprouted from a to all that correspondence in the cloud is found (the genre of stories known as “The Boy Who Stole Ogre’s delete key never deletes, one is told) it may be en- Treasure,” about the time “eastern and western Indo- riched and enhanced. We shall see.” European languages split—more than 5,000 years ago.” SEA CHANGE: Novelist Herman Wouk, author of The The origins of Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin Caine Mutiny, is one hundred years old. His new book date back 2,500 to 6,000 years. is a memoir, Sailor and Fiddler. Time magazine devoted “We find it pretty remarkable these stories have a page to him. survived without being written,” Tehrani told the Wouk said that he had kept a journal since 1937 and Guardian. “They have been told since before even that it was about a hundred volumes. He didn’t con- English, French and Italian existed.” sult it for his new book because “I was writing from Da Silva credits the stories’ endurance to “the power memory. If I started looking in my dairies, I might of storytelling and magic from time immemorial.” have said, ‘Oh, yes, let’s put in that.’” VILLAIN INCLUDED: A Beatrix Potter story, The Tale Asked what his favorite decade was, he said, “I’ve of Kitty-in-Boots, includes an older Peter Rabbit. It will got ten to choose from. I’d have to say the 1940s, when be published in September, one hundred years after it the big change in my life was going from writing com- was written and forgotten. Potter died in 1943. edy to going to sea as a naval officer. I was out at sea with very different company from what I’d grown Continued on page 35 Authors Guild Bulletin 2 Winter 2016 THE AUTHORS Winter 2016 GUILD BULLETIN President Roxana Robinson Executive Director ARTICLES Mary Rasenberger Editor Indie Publishing: A Primer ............................................... 9 Martha Fay By Angela Bole Assistant Editor The Writer In Old Age.................................................... 11 Nicole Vazquez By Harry Mark Petrakis Senior Contributing Editor Campbell Geeslin Authors Guild v. Google Staff Writer Fighting for the Digital Future....................................... 13 Ryan Fox By T.J. Stiles Copy Editors The Issues at Stake: Q & A........................................... 15 Hallie Einhorn Authors and Publishers Sign on in Support of Guild............. 16 All non-staff contributors to the Bulletin retain copyright to the Remembering Paul Aiken................................................ 19 articles that appear in these pages. Guild members seeking In Support of Apple’s Appeal ........................................... 21 information on contributors’ other publications are invited to Either We Swim Together or We Sink Together........................ 27 contact the Guild office. By Mary Rasenberger Published quarterly by: The Authors Guild, Inc. Authors Guild Fall 2015 Seminars Roundup........................... 46 31 East 32nd Street 7th Floor DEPARTMENTS New York, NY 10016 The Bulletin was first published Along Publishers Row...................................................... 2 in 1912 as The Authors League Short Takes................................................................... 4 News­letter. From the President.......................................................... 6 From the Home Office...................................................... 7 Legal Watch................................................................. 25 OVERHEARD Members Make News ..................................................... 42 Books by Members......................................................... 43 “At a time when so many machine-tooled novels are simply documentaries dis- ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST guised behind a few fictional Kevin Sanchez Walsh is a freelance artist and longtime contributor to the changes, it is pleasing to rec- ommend a book that shows Bulletin. He can be reached at [email protected]. what a novelist can accom- plish with quite familiar situ- ations.” —Herbert Mitgang, reviewing To Kill a Mockingbird in The New York Times, July 13, 1960 Copyright © 2016 The Authors Guild, Inc. Authors Guild Bulletin 3 Winter 2016 handwritten letter to a colleague in to having violated China’s customs SHORT TAKES which he stated “that he had gone rules by shipping “politically sensi- to the mainland urgently and of his tive books” to the mainland. Gone Missing own volition to ‘co-operate with a In October 2015, the two owners of relevant investigation.’” Threatened Poet the Hong Kong publisher, Mighty Mighty Current and Causeway The death sentence of a Middle Current Media, and two employ- Bay Books have published “titles Eastern poet accused of renouncing ees of the company’s bookstore, highly critical of the ruling Chinese Islam has been overturned; he will Causeway Bay Books, went missing. Communist Party,” according to serve eight years in prison and suf- Only one of the four individuals, Gui Radio Free Asia, including books fer eight hundred lashes instead. Minhai, has been heard from since. about the sex lives of government Last November, Ashraf Fayadh, Gui—a naturalized Swedish citi- officials. The disappearances may a Palestinian poet and longtime resi- zen deemed “a publisher who riled be related to Chinese president dent of Saudi Arabia, was sentenced China’s elite” by The Guardian—was Xi Jinping’s highly controversial to death by beheading in Saudi Ara­ in Thailand at the time of his disap- Operation Fox Hunt initiative, bia. The 32-year-old was arrested pearance. He remained “in on-off which seeks out expatriate critics in January 2014 and accused of a contact with his wife, daughter and and brings them to China for de- number of blasphemy charges. His the building manager from the lux- tention. This possibility has caused arrest has been protested by poets, ury Thai condominium” he owns, alarm for residents of Hong Kong, artists and intellectuals in the Arab according to The Guardian, but his as well as the Hong Kong Journalists world. After the death sentence location was unknown. Association, who fear that their of- was announced, the International A new chapter of the story began ficials may be colluding with the Literature Festival Berlin drew atten- on January 1, with a missing per- Chinese government. tion to his case by organizing a day son report filed by the wife of a fifth On January 11, the American of worldwide readings on Janu­ary person connected to the company, Book­sellers Association, the 14, 2016. Organizations, bookstores, editor Lee Bo, a British citizen. A Association of American Publishers, individuals and numerous chapters few days later, Lee’s wife retracted the Authors Guild, the European of PEN hosted poetry readings to her report, stirring further concern. and International Booksellers raise awareness about Fayadh’s sit- On a television news show, she said Federation, and PEN American uation and express their solidarity she had heard from Lee by phone, Center issued a statement express- with him.