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Roxana Robinson Elected as President of The Authors Guild

The Authors Robinson2_JoyceRavid[1]Guild announced on Monday that Roxana Robinson, an American novelist and biographer, has been elected to replace Scott Turow as president.

At its annual meeting on Wednesday of last week, The Authors Guild members also elected Judy Blume, Richard Russo, and James Shapiro as co-vice presidents. CJ Lyons joined the Guild’s executive Council.

Mr Turow led The Authors Guild through a tumultuous time that included the rise of independent authors as they gained more ways to bypass publishers and reach readers directly, the rise and fall of Agency pricing, and a surging global ebook market.

During his tenure, Mr Turow oversaw 2 important legal battles that were successfully resolved with rulings that confirmed the definition of fair use, benefiting publishers and the public alike. The Google Books case, which was initially filed in 2005, and the HaithiTrust case, which was filed and resolved on Mr Turow’s watch, both resulted in rulings that will help creators in the long run.

The Authors Guild is of course appealing those rulings: “Groundbreaking lawsuits are most often decided in higher courts,” said Mr. Turow. “We know we were right to bring these cases, and we expect to prevail at the end of the day.”

 

 

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Comments


Dazrin March 18, 2014 um 10:02 am

I thought this was a quote from the news release and was shocked that they would actually write it. 🙂

"…The Google Books case, which was initially filed in 2005, and the HaithiTrust case, which was filed and resolved on Mr Turow’s watch, both resulted in rulings that will help creators in the long run.

The Authors Guild is of course appealing those rulings:…"

fjtorres March 18, 2014 um 10:22 am

No surprise.
Turow’s author’s guild was militantly pro-publisher.
It remains to be seen if the changing of the guard results in any meaningful change.

Nate Hoffelder March 18, 2014 um 10:35 am

I was going for a subtle form of snark.

fjtorres March 18, 2014 um 11:42 am

Nothing subtle about Turow’s brownosing, though.

flyingtoastr March 18, 2014 um 8:05 pm

When an author stands up for a major publishing house it’s "brownosing", but when an author stand up for self-publishing they’re "sticking it to the man".

Do you see the contradiction caused by your biases?

Nate Hoffelder March 18, 2014 um 8:41 pm

Where did Felix write “sticking it to the man”?

The thing about Turow is that he never missed an opportunity to release a statement in support of whatever position the legacy publishers were taking. It didn’t matter whether the AG had a stake in the fight; he still took the side of the publishers – and sometimes he made arguments that were detrimental to the interests of authors.

His actions rose to the point of brown-nosing whenever there was an Amazon-publisher conflict. Arguably authors benefit as much if not more by dealing with Amazon instead of publishers, but Turow still sided with the publishers.

fjtorres March 18, 2014 um 8:58 pm

Others have dissected Turow’s tenure and pandering to the trad press far better than I could.

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/a-list-of-things-scott-turow-doesnt-care-about/

In every instance he sided with the publishers against authors and readers.

For a sampling of what actual authors think, check the comments here:
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/04/2013/a-list-of-things-scott-turow-doesnt-care-about/

Nate Hoffelder March 18, 2014 um 9:02 pm

I forgot that post, thanks!

Yes, the Author Solutions acquisition is the perfect example of Turow going against the interest of authors.


Greg Strandberg March 19, 2014 um 12:33 am

Well I guess he’s gone now so everything’s dandy!


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