Us authors

Our advocacy work supports authors’ rights and their ability to earn a living in the changing publishing landscape. Here’s where we stand on copyright, free speech, piracy, and other issues central to professional authors today.

Effective copyright protection is the linchpin of professional authorship: it enables authors to make a living writing. The Authors Guild is dedicated to ensuring this remains possible in the twenty-first century. But we also recognize that copyright is not absolute.

In the interest of bolstering the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression, the Authors Guild opposes censorship and lends its support to legislation protecting free speech, most recently by urging Congress to pass a federal reporter’s shield law.

Our new advocacy campaign aims to restore balance to the author-publisher relationship and help authors achieve a fair return for their contributions to the joint venture of book publication.

The Authors Guild has been working with legislators and private companies for years to develop a more comprehensive solution to Internet piracy. We advocate a balanced approach that protects the creative marketplace without standing in the way of digital innovation.

A twenty-first century Copyright Office is central to a properly functioning copyright law. The Copyright Office has been providing important, effective services to authors with the resources it has, but its infrastructure, funding, and status within the U.S. government are relics of the analog era.

On October 16, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reached a decision in our copyright infringement lawsuit Authors Guild v. Google. In holding that Google’s wholesale copying of millions of copyrighted books to develop its profitable Google Books program was fair use, the court failed to see the damaging effect that uses such as Google can have on copyright incentives and on authors’ potential income.

From time to time we’ve opposed Amazon’s more ruthless tactics, not because we’re anti-Amazon, but because we believe the company has threatened the publishing ecosystem in ways that jeopardize both our individual livelihoods and the future of authorship itself.

We’ve received final approval of our $18 million class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of thousands of freelance writers who had been paid by major newspapers and magazines for one-time use of their articles, only to see their work swept into electronic databases without further compensation.

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