Below
are two letters, one from Scott Turow, acclaimed author and outgoing president
of The Author’s Guild, a fine writer’s support organization. The purpose is to gain new members. The second letter is from another highly
respected author, Richard Russo, who tells us about the dangers of Netflix,
Google, Amazon and the new digital world.
I certainly endorse their call to membership. They do many things to support the
profession. However I disagree with their
take on the state of publishing, which I’ll take up in the next post. Mr. Russo makes an important contribution to
the discussion, but as bestselling, established authors, they are looking at
the current disarray in the publishing industry from a perspective not
necessarily shared by emerging, midlist or struggling authors. Here’s the first installment.
Dear
colleague,
 |
| Scott Turow |
As
I enter the last few months of my time as Guild president, I have a favor to
ask.
Richard
Russo has written a letter that I'd like you to share with an author you know
who isn't yet a member of the Guild. The letter follows, and speaks eloquently
for itself. Simply forward this message on to a friend.
I'm
happy to report that the Guild has never had more members in its 100-year history.
Even so, we are beginning a process of self-renewal for the Guild. Rick's
letter is the first step in that process, in which we are determined to explain
our benefit to all authors in the U.S., and hopefully, draw in many more.
Many
thanks, and best wishes for a warm holiday season.
Scott
Turow
https://www.authorsguild.net/tools/join.php
An Open Letter to My Fellow Authors
 |
| Richard Russo |
It’s all changing, right before our eyes. Not just publishing,
but the writing life itself, our ability to make a living from authorship. Even
in the best of times, which these are not, most writers have to supplement
their writing incomes by teaching, or throwing up sheet-rock, or cage fighting.
It wasn’t always so, but for the last two decades I’ve lived the life most
writers dream of: I write novels and stories, as well as the occasional
screenplay, and every now and then I hit the road for a week or two and give
talks. In short, I’m one of the blessed, and not just in terms of my occupation.
My health is good, my children grown, their educations paid for. I’m
sixty-four, which sucks, but it also means that nothing that happens in
publishing—for good or ill—is going to affect me nearly as much as it affects
younger writers, especially those who haven’t made their names yet. Even if the
e-price of my next novel is $1.99, I won’t have to go back to cage fighting.
Still, if it turns out that I’ve enjoyed the best the writing
life has to offer, that those who follow, even the most brilliant, will have to
settle for less, that won’t make me happy and I suspect it won’t cheer other
writers who’ve been as fortunate as I. It’s these writers, in particular, that
I’m addressing here. Not everyone believes, as I do, that the writing life is
endangered by the downward pressure of e-book pricing, by the relentless,
ongoing erosion of copyright protection, by the scorched-earth capitalism of
companies like Google and Amazon, by spineless publishers who won’t stand up to
them, by the “information wants to be free” crowd who believe that art should
be cheap or free and treated as a commodity, by internet search engines who are
all too happy to direct people to on-line sites that sell pirated (read
“stolen”) books, and even by militant librarians who see no reason why they
shouldn’t be able to “lend” our e-books without restriction. But those of us
who are alarmed by these trends have a duty, I think, to defend and
protect the writing life that’s been good to us, not just on behalf of younger
writers who will not have our advantages if we don’t, but also on behalf of
readers, whose imaginative lives will be diminished if authorship becomes
untenable as a profession.
I know, I know. Some insist that there’s never been a better
time to be an author. Self-publishing has democratized the process, they argue,
and authors can now earn royalties of up to seventy percent, where once we had
to settle for what traditional publishers told us was our share. Anecdotal
evidence is marshaled in support of this view (statistical evidence to follow).
Those of us who are alarmed, we’re told, are, well, alarmists. Time will tell
who’s right, but surely it can’t be a good idea for writers to stand on the
sidelines while our collective fate is decided by others. Especially when we
consider who those others are. Entities like Google and Apple and Amazon are
rich and powerful enough to influence governments, and every day they
demonstrate their willingness to wield that enormous power. Books and authors
are a tiny but not insignificant part of the larger battle being waged between
these companies, a battleground that includes the movie, music, and newspaper
industries. I think it’s fair to say that to a greater or lesser degree, those
other industries have all gotten their asses kicked, just as we’re getting ours
kicked now. And not just in the courts. Somehow, we’re even losing the war for
hearts and minds. When we defend copyright, we’re seen as greedy. When we
justly sue, we’re seen as litigious. When we attempt to defend the physical book
and stores that sell them, we’re seen as Luddites. Our altruism, when we’re
able to summon it, is too often seen as self-serving.
But here’s the thing. What the Apples and Googles and Amazons
and Netflixes of the world all have in common (in addition to their quest for
world domination), is that they’re all starved for content, and for that they
need us. Which means we have a say in all this. Everything in the digital age
may feel new and may seem to operate under new rules, but the conversation
about the relationship between art and commerce is age-old, and artists must be
part of it. To that end we’d do well to speak with one voice, though it’s here
we demonstrate our greatest weakness. Writers are notoriously independent
cusses, hard to wrangle. We spend our mostly solitary days filling up blank
pieces of paper with words. We must like it that way, or we wouldn’t do it. But
while it’s pretty to think that our odd way of life will endure, there’s no
guarantee. The writing life is ours to defend. Protecting it also happens to be
the mission of the Authors Guild, which I myself did not join until last year,
when the light switch in my cave finally got tripped. Are you a member? If not,
please consider becoming one. We’re badly outgunned and in need of reinforcements.
If the writing life has done well by you, as it has by me, here’s your chance
to return the favor. Do it now, because there’s such a thing as being too late.
Richard Russo
December 2013
https://www.authorsguild.net/tools/join.php
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