Today’s post is unashamedly for authors - which, as I tell kids on my school visits, is all of us. So let me narrow it down a little: today’s post is for published authors. Or self-published authors. Or people who would like some day to be published or self-published authors…
Oh. Still haven’t narrowed it down much. Okay; perhaps it would be better if I told you what this post’s going to be about. Today, I would like to give a shout-out to the Society of Authors. Hello, everyone at the Society! *waves*
I remember the first time I spoke to someone at the Society. I can’t remember who had suggested I join them - it might well have been my editor - but I was very hesitant. As I recall, the conversation went something like this:
VOICE ON PHONE: Hello! Society of Authors! How can I help?
ME: [nervously] Um… hello. I’m… well, I’m not sure if I’m eligible for, um, membership or anything, but, well, someone suggested I talk to you…
VOICE: [encouraging noises]
ME: I mean… I haven’t had anything published yet, but, well, I have a contract for a, um, children’s book with Random House…
VOICE: [cheerily] Oh, well, you’re certainly eligible for membership, then. Let me talk you through it…
Actually, they almost certainly didn’t say ‘Let me talk you through it,’ because there’s not much to be talked through; joining the Society is pretty simple. Anyway, the point is that the Society of Authors is much more inclusive than its slightly grand-sounding name and Kensington address might make you think. There are two levels of membership - full member and associate - but aside from the right to vote on or stand in council & committee elections, there’s really no difference between the two. And you’re eligible for associate membership if you’ve had an offer from an agent or a publisher, or if you've self-published. The Society really is for all authors.
Now, other organisations for authors are available, and I’d encourage you to join as many of them as you like - I’m very glad, for instance, to belong to the Scattered Authors’ Society - but whichever other writers’ organisations you belong to, I really, really recommend that, if you’re eligible, you join the Society. You see, although it’s great that there are other organisations for networking and professional development, that’s not all the Society provides.
It’s our trade union. It fights for us. It campaigns for writers, and for the book. It protects us and our rights. If you’ve been offered a contract - whether by an agent, a publisher, or someone who wants to adapt your work for another medium - the Society’s legal team will look at it for you, and give you free legal advice. If you’re not sure what your rights as an author are, the Society will happily tell you. And it will help whether you’re just starting out, or have been published for decades.
I’m almost at the end of my term as chair of CWIG - the Society’s Children’s Writers & Illustrators Group - and if there’s one thing I’ve learned serving on the CWIG committee, it’s that the people who work for the Society of Authors are good people who work very hard for all of us. So I hope you’ll join me in thanking them, and if you're not a member, I hope you’ll join us by clicking on this link.
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John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series, illustrated by David Tazzyman, is published by OUP.
John has been a CWIG committee member since November 2010, and chair since November 2013.
8 comments:
*applauds wholeheartedly* I've been a member ever since I was eligible and I will continue to be a member till I depart for the great garden office in the sky, after which the SoA will continue to protect my work for 70 years. The SoA is exactly everything you say. It is important for all those reasons. It fights for writers but it also fights for readers, and I think some writers' groups forget that without readers we are whistling in the wind. So, we fight for school libraries and attack funding cuts to both education and the arts. We fight for rights but don't believe we have a right to be published. We work hard to be published and to stay published and to nurture a reading culture.
As your successor as Chair, i will continue to extol the virtues if the SoA. You've done a great job and will be a hard act to follow!
Yes - thank you Society of Authors and all who sail in her!
99% agree - but it does niggle with me that, a few years ago, the SoA was apparently happy to see Google grab up all our rights. You could opt out, but if you opted out, you couldn't object to this theft of intellectual property. To raise an objection, you first had to give Google permission to snatch all your rights - and only then could you say you thought it was wrong. Very clever of Google, whose motto, as far as I know, is still, 'Do no evil.' A little copyrght snatching is okay, though.
I assumed that the Society would be fighting them tooth and nail on this - until Diana Kimpton made me aware that they weren't. As I understand it, the SoA apparently saw nothing wrong in it. So I assumed, trustingly that there was nothing wrong - until Diana persuaded me to read what Google actually proposed. I couldn't believe that the SoA seemed to be standing on the sidelines, admiring the view.
It was the US courts that protected us from Google mining, not the SoA.
Am I mistaken? I'd love to think so. The SoA are my union, they've given me valuable advice in the past, and I'd like to be 100% behind them.
Never trust any entity whose motto is 'Do no evil'. It's like a man who needs a post-it note on his steering wheel to remind himself not to mow down pedestrians.
Yes, I'm aware of the irony of commenting with my G+ identity.
Joining the SoA was the first thing I did after opening the envelope with the contract in it. Well, after jumping up and down shouting "Yippeee!" obviously. Their contact advice was vital. Thanks.
First there was IBM, then Microsoft, and now there's Google. We Cassandras keep shouting, but nobody is listening. Of course I'm signed in via G+ too and I've got Amazon Prime. That's the problem with the world today: utility beats ethics.
Wise words, Nick. And yes, Google and Microsoft have split the world up between them, and they just tolerate us living in it, so long as we do as we're told.
The Soc of Authors and in particular in this instance Jo McCrum, were invaluable in giving advice on a short story that had been accepted for an anthology proposed for every Yr 10 pupil in schools in South Africa. On their advice I negotiated a recurring set permission fee for every 10 000 copies of the anthology printed and it has paid off handsomely. I didn't have an agent acting for me on this short story so it was superb advice.
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