Join Authors Alliance as we team up with the UC Davis to present a cross-disciplinary panel discussion on authorship in the digital age, with a focus on the specific goals and needs of academic authors. Authors who write to be read care about how their works are published and what that means for reader access. While traditional options and copyright arrangements still predominate in many fields, there are ever-increasing ways to share works of authorship. What works best to get textual and visual works out there and under what circumstances? Join us to explore the opportunities and challenges authors face in maximizing the reach of their work, both in and outside of academia.

Panelists include a range of UC faculty, independent authors, and legal experts:

• Mario Biagioli (UC Davis Law; Science & Technology Studies)
• Stephanie Boluk (UC Davis English)
• Jonathan Eisen (UC Davis Biology)
• Alexandra Lippman (UC Davis Science & Technology Studies)
• Rick Prelinger (UC Santa Cruz; Director of the Prelinger Archive)
• Kim Stanley Robinson (Author, The Mars Trilogy)
• Pam Samuelson (UC Berkeley Law; Authors Alliance)
• MacKenzie Smith (UC Davis Library)
• Madhavi Sunder (UC Davis Law)

Co-Sponsors:

UC Davis Institute for the Social Sciences
Davis Humanities Institute
UC Davis Center for Science and Innovation Studies
UC Davis Innovating Communication in Scholarship Project
UC Davis School of Law

The event is free and open to the public. More information can be found here.

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

Join Authors Alliance’s Pamela Samuelson and Michael Wolfe for a workshop at the New York 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 at authorsalliance.org/nypl.

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

On November 5, Authors Alliance is joining with partners at the University of North Carolina and Duke University to present “Enhancing the Impact of Scholarship: How Authors Can Better Reach Readers in the New Publishing Economy.” The event will feature a panel discussion exploring the opportunities and challenges scholars face in maximizing the impact of their work. Authors Alliance will introduce a new, author-oriented guide to the ins and outs of open access publishing and explain why authors of books should consider rights reversions as another avenue toward open access publishing.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged but not required. More information can be found at authorsalliance.org/duke.

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

Calling all Wolverines and Michiganders!

Join Authors Alliance as we team up with the University of Michigan Library and the U-M Institute for the Humanities to present a panel discussion and workshops on “Preserving Your Creative & Intellectual Legacy.” This is the first in a series of workshops scheduled around the country throughout the fall and spring to provide hands-on expertise and assistance to authors. The event will feature a panel discussion followed by workshops designed to help creators both make and keep their works accessible to a wide audience, now and in the future.

Panelists include a range of University of Michigan faculty, independent authors, and legal experts:

• Paul Courant, Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor Public Policy
• Don Herzog, Edson R. Sunderland Professor of Law
• James Hilton, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, and Vice Provost for Digital Education and Innovation
• Melissa Levine, U-M Library Lead Copyright Officer
• Jessica Litman, John F. Nickoll Professor of Law
• Robert James Russell, author and founding co-editor of the literary journal Midwestern Gothic
• Sidonie Smith, Mary Fair Croushore Professor of the Humanities and Director of the Institute for the Humanities
• Jennifer Traig, author of Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood and other books
• Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, UC Berkeley Professor of Law and member of the Authors Alliance Board of Directors
• Michael Wolfe, Executive Director of Authors Alliance

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged but not required. More information can be found at authorsalliance.org/michigan.

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

Original photograph by Joel Friesen, modified and used here under a CC BY 2.0 license.

Join Authors Alliance and the University of Toronto Libraries for a lively discussion of the opportunities and challenges the internet presents to both academic and independent authors. Topics will include the role of copyright law and fair dealing, new publishing opportunities (including open access publishing), and how digital dissemination can provide new life for older and out-of-print titles.

Following an introduction by Ariel Katz, University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist will moderate the panel, which features:

• Ren Bucholz, Lawyer, Lenczner Slaght, LLP
• Natalie Zemon Davis, Professor of History, University of Toronto
• Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management, University of Toronto
• Ryan Merkley, CEO, Creative Commons
• Margaret Jane Radin, Distinguished Research Scholar at the University of Toronto; Professor of Law, University of Michigan; Professor of Law, emerita, Stanford
• Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law and Information, University of California, Berkeley; Co-founder of Authors Alliance
• Peter Unwin, Fiction Author and Poet

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged.

Get ready to mark your calendars, as Authors Alliance has a number of events around North America over the next couple of months. Join us if you can!

April 9 in Berkeley, California: Preserving Our Intellectual Legacies in the Digital Age

Will future generations of scholars appreciate our contributions after our books go out of print? Or when the physical bookshelves on which they are stored must compete with virtual bookshelves, full of new electronic resources that are more easily discovered and accessed online? How can authors avoid the prospect of intellectual oblivion in the digital age? Join Authors Alliance’s board and distinguished historian Thomas Laqueur as we explore the ways in which titles can best continue to make their mark in a shifting intellectual ecosystem.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged.

May 27 in Toronto, Ontario: How Can Canadian Authors Thrive in a Digital World?

Join Authors Alliance and the University of Toronto Libraries for a lively discussion of the opportunities and challenges the internet presents to both academic and independent authors. Topics will include the role of copyright law and fair dealing, new publishing opportunities (including open access publishing), and how digital dissemination can provide new life for older and out-of-print titles.

Following an introduction by Ariel Katz, University of Ottawa’s Michael Geist will moderate the panel, which features:

• Ren Bucholz, Lawyer, Lenczner Slaght, LLP
• Natalie Zemon Davis, Professor of History, University of Toronto
• Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management, University of Toronto
• Ryan Merkley, CEO, Creative Commons
• Margaret Jane Radin, Distinguished Research Scholar at the University of Toronto; Professor of Law, University of Michigan; Professor of Law, emerita, Stanford
• Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law and Information, University of California, Berkeley; Co-founder of Authors Alliance
• Peter Unwin, Fiction Author and Poet

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged.

But wait! There’s more!

Can’t make these events? You can also catch Authors Alliance executive director Michael Wolfe at DPLAfest 2015 on April 17–18 Indianapolis, or meet up with us when we table at this year’s Bay Area Book Festival on June 6–7 in Berkeley. Stay tuned as we prepare to announce more events for the second half of the year.

Think an Authors Alliance event would benefit your community? Get in touch and let us know!

Last Thursday, Authors Alliance traveled to Harvard to present a panel discussion titled “Authorship in a Digital World: How to Make It Thrive.” The panel was co-sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication, and was composed of a mix of writers, publishers, scholars, and attorneys interacting in a way that moderator and Authors Alliance Advisory Board member Jonathan Zittrain likened to a conversation at dinner, but with the panelists “only at one side of the table and with no food.”

All told there were eight panelists, each with a different perspective on how the landscape for creating and disseminating one’s work is changing. They were:

• Rachel Cohen, a Cambridge-based author and creative writing professor at Sarah Lawrence College;
• Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian at Harvard University;
• Ellen Faran, director of MIT Press;
• Mark Fischer, a copyright lawyer at Duane Morris LLP;
• Katie Hafner, a journalist, memoirist, and nonfiction writer;
• Alison Mudditt, director of UC Press;
• Sophia Roosth, a Harvard historian of science; and
• Pamela Samuelson, Authors Alliance co-founder and law professor at U.C. Berkeley.

Before getting underway, Katie Hafner—a journalist, nonfiction writer, and a member of our Advisory Board—started things off by telling the story of her book A Romance on Three Legs, which had gone out of print. Its continued digital availability meant her publisher was under no obligation to return the rights, but Hafner felt strongly that being in print was important to reaching her readers. In her presentation, Hafner discussed how she managed to negotiate with her publisher to resolve the issue. Her experience is now being used to assist Authors Alliance’s current efforts to create a guide for authors interested in rights reversions.

Robert Darnton, also of our Advisory Board, picked up on the same theme of rights and availability, but with concern for books that, unlike Hafner’s, are no longer commercially viable. “Once the commercial life of your book is exhausted and it’s no longer selling, what else do you want?,” said Darnton. “You want readers. And that means you don’t want it to sit on a remote shelf in some library where a handful of people will read it, but put it online. We know that’s a great way to spread knowledge.” Complementing Hafner’s story, Darnton illustrated this point by explaining how he had worked with Harvard University Press to secure the right to make two of his earliest books available on an open access basis. Those titles will soon be made available under Creative Commons licenses through the efforts of Authors Alliance and allied organizations.

On May 21 Authors Alliance celebrated its public launch at an event at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.  Approximately 150 guests mingled with the Authors Alliance founders and Advisory Board members.

Attendees included scholars, novelists, journalists, publishers, students, and curious members of the public drawn by our invitation to “BE READ.”

Photo credit: Joe Khirallah, Green Bear Group. Used with permission.

Photo credit: Joe Khirallah, Green Bear Group. Used with permission.

The program kicked off with a welcome from our host, Internet Archive founder (and Authors Alliance Advisory Board member) Brewster Kahle.

Next, Authors Alliance co-founder Molly Van Houweling recounted the history of Authors Alliance and presented our mission:  “to serve the public good by helping and representing authors who want to spread their contributions to knowledge and culture more broadly.  Our slogan is promoting authorship for the public good by supporting authors who write to be read.”