The Authors Alliance team is back from Washington, DC, and we’re happy to report that our time at the 2017 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference was a great success. We’d like to extend a warm welcome to the many new members who joined Authors Alliance at AWP!

Now in its 50th year, the AWP conference draws 12,000 attendees, including MFA students, writing teachers, publishers, booksellers, and authors of all stripes. From February 9-11, Brianna Schofield and Erika Wilson hosted a table at the AWP Bookfair and were gratified by the level of interest and engagement from the writing community. Conference attendees kept us busy with questions about our resources and tools, especially our rights reversion handbook and our forthcoming guides to publication contracts and to best practices in fair use. We were thrilled to have so many enthusiastic new members join Authors Alliance. If you’d like to be part of our growing community of authors and creators, it’s easy to sign up online (basic membership is free).

In addition to staffing a robust information table, we also presented a conference panel on “Demystifying Copyright: A Crash Course in the Law of Literature,” featuring Authors Alliance executive director Brianna Schofield and intellectual property expert Rebecca Tushnet of Georgetown Law School. (Our third panelist, Jessica Silbey of Northeastern University, was unable to attend due to winter weather in Boston.) The session drew a large and engaged audience, and a number of attendees told us that it was the most useful panel they attended during the conference. We discussed topics ranging from Creative Commons licenses to fair use to publication contract language.

We thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful opportunity to meet hundreds of writers, share our resources, and share the Authors Alliance mission with our new members!

CC0 photo by tpsdave

On February 8-11, Authors Alliance will travel to Washington, DC for the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference and Bookfair. Following the success of last year’s presentation on rights reversion and publishing contract terms, we were again selected to present an educational panel at the conference—the largest professional gathering of writers, writing programs, and publishers in the United States.

This year’s presentation, Demystifying Copyright: A Crash Course on the Law of Literature, features intellectual property experts Rebecca Tushnet of Georgetown University and Jessica Silbey of Northeastern University. Copyright controls authorship’s inputs, in terms of how we can use the works of those who came before us, and its outputs, in terms of how others can use our work. But the law is too often arcane and its opacity can be disempowering. This panel of legal experts will outline important copyright basics and tackle some of the stubborn myths and misconceptions surrounding our copyright system.  The discussion will be moderated by Authors Alliance executive director Brianna Schofield.

In addition to the panel, Authors Alliance will also staff an information booth at the AWP conference bookfair.  We will be available for the duration of the conference to distribute educational materials, speak directly with authors, and answer questions about issues such as copyright, contracts, rights reversion, open access, and termination of transfers.

We look forward to the opportunity to connect with authors, creators, and our members and spread the word about our tools and resources. If you are planning to attend AWP this year, be sure to stop by our table and say hello!

On Thursday, October 6, Michael Wolfe will be the guest presenter for the American Library Association’s monthly CopyTalk webinar. The topic will be “SSRN: Another Enclosure of the Commons?”

Authors Alliance has been scrutinizing the changes at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), the academic paper preprint server that was recently acquired by Elsevier. Our concerns about continued open access to scholarship and research at SSRN prompted us to submit a list of principles to both SSRN and Elsevier, with the goal of safeguarding authors’ rights. Since then, reports of takedowns and other changes have led us to the conclusion that authors should seriously consider whether to leave SSRN in favor of other preprint archives, such as SocArXiv.

The webinar will take place at 2:00 PM Eastern. For more information and to register, visit the CopyTalk event page.  We hope you’ll join in for this important discussion at the intersection of copyright, open access, and scholarship.

Auckland, NZ by Mathew Waters | CC0

As our members know, part of our mission here at Authors Alliance is to spread the word about our work to empower authors in the digital age. We’ve hosted workshops and attended events throughout North America, and now our Executive Director Mike Wolfe will be heading to Australia and New Zealand to attend a series of events and connect with our friends and members in those countries.

We hope to see many of you at the following events. Spread the word!

Monday, September — 12 University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
2:00-4:30 PM — Scholarly Publishing workshop at Waikato University
5:30-7:00 PM — Lecture on “Copyright, Long-term Accessibility, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement”

Tuesday, September 13 — University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
4:30 PM — “Maximise the impact of your research”

Thursday, September 15 — Brisbane, Australia
Panel on authorship at Queensland University of Technology

Saturday, September 17 — National Writers Forum, Auckland, NZ
1:00 PM — Panel on copyright and contracts at the National Writers Forum in Auckland (conference registration required)

We would like to acknowledge and thank Creative Commons Aotearoa/New Zealand, LIANZA (Library and Information Association New Zealand), the University of Waikato, the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group, and the Queensland University of Technology for their support in making this travel possible.

Welcoming visitors at the 2015 Bay Area Book Festival

On the first weekend in June, downtown Berkeley will be transformed into a book lover’s paradise. The second annual Bay Area Book Festival is coming to town, and once again, Authors Alliance will be part of the fun. We’ll be staffing an information booth in the “Writer’s Row” section of the festival on Center Street, and look forward to taking part in this can’t-miss event for everyone who enjoys reading and writing as much as we do.

The Bay Area Book Festival is free and family-friendly, and runs from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Saturday, June 4  and Sunday, June 5. We invite our local friends and neighbors to stop by and meet us, and learn how Authors Alliance can help creators with copyright, publishing contracts, fair use, and more!

Brianna Schofield, Mike Wolfe, and Lila Bailey consider an audience question during their panel on authors’ rights at the AWP conference in Los Angeles.

Authors Alliance has been invited by California Lawyers for the Arts (CLA) to reprise our well-received panel discussion from the recent Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference. “On Your Terms: Managing Your RIghts to Keep Your Work Available” will be presented on Wednesday, April 27 in Berkeley.

The event is open to CLA members and the general public. Registration is required on the CLA event page.  (For those unable to attend, we have posted the slide deck from the presentation.)

Authors of all kinds are routinely asked to sign contracts that carve up their copyrights and determine where, how, and by whom their works can be published. This panel examines some of the ways authors can ensure that these agreements don’t stand between their work and their audience. Join Authors Alliance Executive Director Mike Wolfe and fellow copyright attorneys Lila Bailey and Brianna Schofield to work on demystifying embargoes, licenses, negotiations, rights reversions, and terminations of transfers. Be empowered to shape your own contracts!

photo credit: Architect of the Capitol | public domain

The cherry trees are in bloom in the nation’s capital, but our Executive Director, Michael Wolfe, won’t have much time for sightseeing—he’ll be traveling to Washington, D.C. to represent Authors Alliance at a series of events over the next ten days.

First on the agenda is DPLAFest, hosted by the Digital Public Library of America from April 14-16. The conference “brings together librarians, archivists, and museum professionals, developers and technologists, publishers and authors, teachers and students, and many others to celebrate DPLA and its community of creative professionals.” This year’s venues include the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Library of Congress.

On April 18, Mike will participate in a panel discussion at “Authors, Attribution, and Integrity: Examining Moral Rights in the United States,” a one-day symposium hosted by the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. Topics will include the “historical development of moral rights, the value that authors place on moral rights generally and individual moral rights specifically, the various ways these rights are provided for under current law, and new considerations for the digital age.” He will speak about the current state of protection of moral rights in the U.S.

The American University Washington College of Law is hosting an Authors Alliance meet-and-greet with MIke Wolfe, Peter Jaszi, Mike Carroll, and Brandon Butler on April 19 at 3:30 PM. The university community is invited to bring questions and chat about topics such as rights reversion, maximizing the impact of publications, and the effects of copyright law on scholarship and teaching. The event will be held in Warren N102, Washington College of Law, 4300 Massachusetts Avenue N.W.

Finally, to wrap up a busy week of events, Mike will attend the inaugural Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI) Conference from April 20-22 at George Mason University. This invitation-only conference is being held for the first time in 2016, and launches an ambitious ten-year effort to bring together key stakeholders from around the world and chart a course in scholarly communication across disciplines.

Join Authors Alliance’s Pamela Samuelson and Michael Wolfe for a workshop at the San Francisco Public Library that will explore how authors and researchers can manage their legal rights and choose publication outlets with an eye on securing long-term impact and availability. Among the questions to be discussed:

• What are terms to look for in publication contracts?
• How and when does open access benefit authors?
• What can be done to increase the availability of out-of-print and backlist titles?
• What resources can authors who write to be read use in managing their own rights?

Audience members are encouraged to submit questions in advance to info@authorsalliance.org.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged but not required. More information can be found here.

Our events programming, our tools and resources, and our advocacy all depend on the continued support of our members. Help us keep things going by joining, donating, and spreading the word!