L.A. Times 25th Festival of Books Goes Going Virtual
Sunday, October 18, 2020
Los Angeles Times, in partnership with USC, celebrates 25 years of the Festival of Books, Stories & Ideas with 25 individual virtual events. Originally scheduled for April, the festival was postponed to October 3-4 owing to public health concerns related to the coronavirus.
It has now moved to, beginning Sunday, October 18, and continuing over the course of four weeks, The Times will offer author panels, readings, and other events. Organizers say, “Over the years, festivalgoers have listened to Eric Carle read about a ravenous caterpillar; the late Congressman John Lewis discuss his lifelong work for racial equality; Julie Andrews reminisce about the Swiss Alps; Luis J. Rodriguez wax poetic about life in Los Angeles; Viet Thanh Nguyen expound reclaiming historical narratives; Padma Lakshmi dish on food and life; and gone home inspired. This year, the festival will make that kind of inspiration accessible from home.”
Details: latimes.com/FestivalofBooks, and follow the festival on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (#bookfest).
Branches and Members Get Busy
Book tours we prepped for at killer pace have slid through our fingers. Face-to-face meetings have gone on hiatus. Several branches have expanded their social media programs. One started a writing contest, followed by plans for an anthology of fiction about pandemics. One member leads a homegrown team that has turned out 5000 masks. Many of us found time for that writing project we could never quite get around to before.
For inspiration and kindred spirits, check out branch social media activities and contests by clicking on each branch under the Branches tab at calwriters.org. Remember that with social media, you don’t necessarily have to seek a branch where you live.
Meanwhile, we look forward our next face-to-face meetings – after the crisis passes – to reunite, reconnect, and jubilate with the friends who rode through the fire together with us.
Authors Guild Protests
Loss of Copyright Protection
We report this March 2020 item from the Authors Guild as an extremely important issue that commands the attention of all writers.
“The Authors Guild is appalled by the Internet Archive’s (IA) announcement that it is now making millions of in-copyright books freely available online without restriction on its Open Library site under the guise of a National Emergency Library. IA has no rights whatsoever to these books, much less to give them away indiscriminately without consent of the publisher or author. We are shocked that the Internet Archive would use the Covid-19 epidemic as an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges, and in doing so, harm authors, many of whom are already struggling.
“With mean writing incomes of only $20,300 a year (https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/authors-guild-survey-shows-drastic-42-percent-decline-in-authors-earnings-in-last-decade/) prior to the crisis, authors, like others, are now struggling all the more—from cancelled book tours and loss of freelance work, income supplementing jobs, and speaking engagements. And now they are supposed to swallow this new pill, which robs them of their rights to introduce their books to digital formats as many hundreds of midlist authors do when their books go out of print, and which all but guarantees that author incomes and publisher revenues will decline even further.
“READ MORE at https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/internet-archives-uncontrolled-digital-lending/).”