Vote for me! By Terry Freedman
The really nice thing about standing for election to the management committee of the Society of Authors is that I don’t have go around kissing babies. So, I will have to rely on the merits or otherwise of my statement, which you will find below.
I’m up against some fierce competition, so if I am unsuccessful I won’t feel too bad. On the other hand, if I am elected, it will be a privilege to serve alongside these people.
The full information about the election, including the other candidates’ statements and bios, is given below. In the meantime, here’s my statement, with a huge thanks to the people who seconded me: Ignaty Dyakov, chair of the Society’s Educational Writers Group, and Michael Crossland, a fantastic writer on the subject of vision (as in eyesight, not strategy documents!).
These are challenging times for writers: poor contractual terms offered, copyright and privacy issues, declining earnings… Therefore I fully agree with the Society of Authors’ stance on several issues, especially the promoting of a reading culture, support for a UK version of the EU Copyright Directive, and its CREATOR campaign.
To take two examples which illustrate why I believe these issues are critically important, first consider libraries. According to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA), 773 libraries had been closed in this country by December 2019. Research shows that this is likely to adversely affect social mobility, because one of the benefits of visiting libraries is that doing so encourages reading, which has been shown to improve life chances.
Secondly, the statistics unveiled by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) in 2019 showed that authors’ earnings have declined in real terms by 42% since 2006, while a survey by the SoA in April 2020 revealed that 57% of respondents reported that their incomes had declined since the outbreak of Coronavirus. The situation was potentially exacerbated by the ‘National Emergency Library’ making copyrighted books freely available. Therefore, the SoA’s work in representing authors’ interests at the highest levels is crucial.
Since joining the SoA in the early 1990s I’ve found it invaluable for contract-vetting, the guides on various aspects of publishing, and events such as talks about tax. The advice on contracts has been extremely helpful not only as far as books are concerned, but also magazines. I’ve also found other benefits, such as book discounts, very useful. For all these reasons, I often recommend joining when I talk to writers, and on my blog.
I do feel, however, that there is more that the SoA could do in certain areas. In particular, those members who self-publish are under-represented in any formal sense. The Alliance of Independent Authors clearly is very prominent in this area, but perhaps one way of addressing the SoA’s 2018 membership growth target would be to explore what the SoA could offer in this important area.
Also, although the SoA is very active on Twitter, and its blog posts are very interesting, the two do not seem to be linked.
Thirdly, as education writers constitute 7.76% of the membership, I think there should be a writer with experience of secondary education and adult non-fiction, as well as a children’s writer, on the Management Committee.
My credentials for putting myself forward for election to the Management Committee are as follows:
• Long-standing SoA member
• Support of its aims
• Membership and committee member of the Educational Writers Group (EWG)
• Published in journals and articles since 1986
• Books published by mainstream publishers and as an independent publisher
• Blogging and other social media experience since 1995, such as Twitter, moderator of online debates, forum moderator
• 45 years in education
* Tutor in adult education.
• Several senior leadership roles in schools, local authority and an NGO
• Committee memberships of educational associations, including position of Chair
• Fellow of Royal Society of Arts (RSA)
• Experience of public speaking.
For further information about the other candidates and the election procedure and timetable, see the Management Committee page on the Society of Authors website.
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