I first became aware of  the New-York based National Writers’ Union (NWU) during our recent battle against the Google Book Settlement. Unlike our  Canadian unions — and the American Authors’ Guild, which brokered the Google deal — the NWU spoke up bitingly against the GBS, demonstrating an inspirational level of leadership on behalf of its members.

It is an activist union. In my view, this is what writers must have, at this time. NWU is vocal and specific about contract terms and has set high royalties for erights. They are not afraid to litigate. Their affiliation with the UAW (United Auto Workers) puts hard-line union teeth into their commitment. I contacted them to discuss how Canadian writers might participate with NWU.

Ten days ago, I  met in person with Larry Goldbetter, President, and Karen Ford, 3rd Vice President, who travelled to Canada to meet with me, writer David Bolt and Linda Page, a Canadian academic writer. We discussed how Canadian writers might join forces with NWU in order to fight together for a fair share of erights and related digital issues soon to confront all writers on this continent and elsewhere.

We agreed that digital publishing cannot be contained within geographic boundaries and will have vast implications wherever/however our writing is marketed to readers. We believe that writers can best fight for their creators’ share if they stand together, pool information and network with one another — certainly within North America. Possibly with Europe too, as we did, when we  joined with Gillian Spraggs in the U.K. in formally objecting to the Google Book Settlement.

In March, I resigned from The Writers’ Union of Canada. I do not believe it is sufficiently committed to fighting hard and smart on behalf of its members. This is a critical time for writers quickly to get savvy to the technology reshaping our livelihoods, and to put more voice into how we make our cultural contribution.

TWUC is currently searching for a new Executive Director. A steep learning curve lies ahead for whoever takes the wheel. Here’s hoping TWUC finds someone with both the passion and the steel to advance writers’ causes effectively. Meanwhile, there is no time to lose.

I am joining NWU. Its site is a model to me of what a writers’ union ought to be. At last, I thought, reading it. A real union. It is strong both in its advocacy and in its services, although it explains it is not a service organisation. Its posted Digital Bill of Rights and Campaign for Digital Rights is a passionate declaration of first principles. It will also look over contracts, patch you into a high-octane listserv of member writers across America and circulate a regular newsletter with very chewable contents.

Its membership is open to professional writers as well as to writers aspiring to break into the field. Its annual dues are scaled to earnings, starting at $120 (U.S) if your writing income is under $5000. It also offers a 6-month membership. There is no need to drop membership to other writers’ organisations in order to join NWU.

I urge you to visit their site and check it out for yourselves. I hope you will consider joining it. www.nwu.org.

United we stand.

Sarah Sheard

Debunking the latest Google fictions …

Fiction #1. I’m going to get $60 a book.
In your dreams.  Note that it’s (US)$60 per book to “the rightsholder”.  How that gets split between authors and publishers remains to be determined.

And if the book is deemed “in print” (many US publishers say all their
backlist is now in print forever because they are making it available in
POD or e-book format), the $60 is paid to the publisher.  It’s up to the
publisher to decide how much, if any, to pass on to the author(s),
according to the split specified in the author-publisher contract (which
of course probably didn’t provide for such a situation).

Even if authors believe that they own the electronic rights 100%, I think
the best they can hope for with most publishers is for the $60 to be
treated under the subsidiary rights clause, with a typical 50/50 split, or
US$30 per book for the authors.  More likely publishers will treat the $60
under the book royalty clause, and send the authors US$6-9 per book. To
get any better split, authors will have to take publishers to arbitration
or (maybe, if they can get past the arbitration clause) to court.

Fiction #2.  If the GBS is rejected, it will result in the lawless digitization of books.
This assertion is repeated often by The Authors Guild and TWUC (The Writers’ Union of Canada ) in the hopes that it will sink in.

In reality, the rejection of the GBS will result in Congressional legislation and the rule of law.
The Authors Guild likes to call this notion “Utopian”.  But it is not. The U.S copyright office was pressing for copyright legislation — as well as for the teeth to enforce it — before being interrupted by the GBS.  Constitutional copyright reform is front and center in this debate.  The GBS turns copyright law on its head, by turning a class-action settlement into an ongoing commercial deal, and this has offended a great many U.S. legal and constitutional observers who are making their concerns known to Congress.
The following eloquent quote from James Grimmelmann at New York Law School should be cast in bronze and put on bulletin boards across the country.

“From time to time, I’ve argued that the Google Books settlement tries to launder copyright reform legislation through a class-action settlement. In response, people often argue that Congress isn’t likely to pass copyright reform, or will foul up the task even worse if it tries. True or not, this misses the point. As outside critics, we can debate whether courts or Congress are more competent to fix copyright. But if the courts give up on Congress, then all is lost, not just for copyright, but for our constitutional democracy as well.”

Fiction #3. Those of us who want the GBS rejected are Luddites, anti-technology, anti-information, and just so 1990’s.
Not so.  Those who think the GBS is the only answer to out-of –print books are the ones who are out of date. Get with the program, chickadees, this is 2010 and you are so 2005.

It’s getting cheaper and cheaper to digitize books, and companies are springing up all over the place which are ready to do that and give copyright holders a much better cut of the profits.  But the reality is that confused copyright holders, baffled by the GBS, won’t realize this until it is too late.

Fiction #4. The Authors Guild is fighting on our behalf
Well, maybe at the beginning.  Now, the AG is part of the problem.  They have become partners with Google, collaborators in the deal.  They have a lot of time, effort and money invested in this, and are now determined to see it through.

The American unions fighting on Canada’s behalf are now the National Writers Union, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Science Fiction Writers Association.  They want the settlement thrown out.  They are the good guys.

The GBS should have been reparation for past copyright infringement, but it turned into an ongoing publishing deal.  And for a number of reasons it creates a de facto monopoly.  This is a threat to a free market in electronic versions of out of print books, and is also a threat to the principles of class-action law.  For those interested in the abstract legal principle and precedent, the principle and the precedent are not that abstract.  An exact analogy in class action law would be Dow Chemical and the Bhopal spill.  If that settlement had functioned the same as the GBS, Dow would still be polluting but the victims would get a cut of the profit.

Fiction #5. Resistance is futile
This attitude is very prevalent.  It is always accompanied by such phrases as let’s be realistic and hold our nose and make a deal with the devil because… well, some people just like to see the world like that.
But the fact is, New Zealand, Ireland, India,  South Africa, all of Continental Europe, protested.  And they are all out of the GBS.  Google scares surprisingly easily.  GBS spokespersons like to claim that the settlement is now restricted to the U.S., Australia, U.K. and Canada for administrative convenience.  But — to put it in the most euphemistic way possible — they are saying that which is not so.  The rest of the world is out because they protested.

If  we all push together, we can get out of this mess.

Bolt is one of a tiny handful of Canadian writers speaking up publicly against the Google Settlement. He was interviewed about Google in this week’s issue of ‘Tandem’, (Corriere Canadese’s English-language supplement.)

A Canadian’s Perspective

Sarah — Since Canadian papers are not covering the Frankfurt Book Fair, I thought your blog readers might be interested to know what is going on there.
The first big item for discussion is the Google Settlement.  Europeans don’t like this thing at all and the German government (in the person of Chancellor Angela Merkel) kicked the whole thing off by announcing “We reject the scanning in of books without any copyright protection, like Google is doing. The government places a lot of weight on this position on copyrights to protect writers in Germany.”

The Frankfurt meetings have been very heated, with the result that Google is now saying that that Europeans could be exempted from the settlement.  What bothers me, as a Canadian, is that our writers’ union, TWUC, has not been merely acquiescent but has actually thanked the Authors’ Guild for defending writers’ interests  — not once but several times, in comments to the CBC and to the newspapers.  For shame! Otherwise, Google would also be saying that Canadian books might be excluded.  It’s beginning to look like they might be, in a catch-all basket of non-U.S. copyright holders, but only thanks to the efforts of a host of other countries besides our own.  How nice we are, to avoid conflict and let the rest of the world solve our Google problem.

The other big issue in Frankfurt is electronic publishing generally, a subject on which Canadians have been remarkably silent, except for you.  The Europeans are well aware that the e-juggernaut is headed their way, and European publishers are being exhorted to “stop whining” and revise their business models.  Again, this is in sharp contrast to Canada where publishers apparently want to make up their shortfalls by gouging authors’ royalties.  So far as I have been able to find out, our writers’ unions are going along with the publishers’, well, whining.
Carry on, and good luck.

David Bolt

p.s. Here are  some news excerpts with links:

Frankfurt Book Fair: Europeans Play the Moral Rights Card Against Google Settlement

By Andrew Albanese — Publishers Weekly, 10/16/2009 8:03:00 AM

There’s been a simmering anti-Google sentiment at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, no doubt connected to European objections to the Google Book Search Settlement. And on Friday that simmer reached a boil, as the deal faced harsh—at times, puzzling—criticism at a registration-required panel on “European and American Positions Towards the Google Settlement.”

Exempting Europeans from Google Settlement

Fury in Frankfurt at Google’s global library project

By William Ickes – Sun Oct 18, 2009 1:26AM EDT

FRANKFURT (AFP) -
“Garbage” and “hysterical propaganda” was one angry reaction at the world’s biggest book fair this year when Google, the world’s biggest Internet information service, defended plans to turn millions of books into electronic literature available online.

The row erupted at the 61st international Frankfurt Book Fair, a major annual literary event…. read entire article

Book publishers fear advance of digital ‘glacier’

Frankfurt – Online writing is like an unstoppable “glacier” coming towards the world book publishing industry, says a book industry expert, summing up the worries for the future this week at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany. “Digital content is completely altering the publishing industry,” said Eoin Purcell, a consultant and writer, warning that even the most respected names in publishing will not be able to claim any “right to survive” in the new book economy…. read entire article