It’s been an incredibly busy start to the summer here at the Society of Authors.
One of my favourite evenings of the summer, of course, is our annual SoA Awards and Summer Party. For this year’s event, which took place on 18 June, we welcomed more than 300 guests to Southwark Cathedral to celebrate a wealth of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature, as we distributed more than £170,000 in prize money to over 20 authors.
Outside of the celebrations, our big focus has been the ongoing campaign against the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works to train AI.
As Vice-Chair of the Creators’ Rights Alliance, I have been in Westminster regularly to have meetings with MPs across the House as we fought for Baroness Kidon’s amendments to be included in the Data (Use & Access) Bill.
Despite an unprecedented level of Parliamentary ‘ping-pong’, the amendments did not pass, but our campaigning has been instrumental to a series of high-profile defeats for the Government and has helped to put this issue at the top of the news agenda, where it needs to stay.
We’ll continue to drive this urgent campaign forward as Government shapes its AI policy approach and we look forward to keeping members updated on developments as they happen.
Alongside this, we’ve been highly vocal in our support of human translators who face a growing threat from the use of AI to translate texts (please support and share our open letter) and we’ve also been raising our voices against the use of AI-voiced audiobooks instead of human narrators.
Until we are successful in our battle to get the labelling of AI-generated works, we look to support authors by developing a ‘mark’ that UK authors can optionally use to recognise their human creativity. We’ll share more information with members in the autumn.
Issues around copyright and AI aren’t going away, and these will remain a core part of our campaigning as we continue to fight for​ fair pay and fair treatment of all human writers, illustrators and literary translators, and to protect and promote the value of human creativity.
As we look towards the rest of the year, and the longer-term future of the SoA, we need your help to decide and agree on our priorities.
Next week is an important date: Tuesday 15 July is the deadline for applications for the four seats that are available on our Board, which is made up of 12 democratically-elected Full Members who volunteer their time to represent the membership and set our policy and strategy decisions.
If you feel you have the time to get involved as a member of the Board, and you want to help shape the future of SoA, here’s what you need to know:.
Each person on the Board serves a three-year term, and as Committee of 12, we need members from all stages of their careers and from all backgrounds to help reflect the broad diversity of our membership and to help us deliver on our core mission of fighting for authors’ rights.
This year, we’re particularly in need of members with skills and experience in fundraising, finance, governance, PR and marketing.
Please consider submitting an application (using the form on our website) if you have skills or experience in these areas, and crucially, you have the time to commit to reading the papers and attending the hybrid meetings etc.
If we receive more than four nominations, elections will take place from 16 September to 22 October – ahead of our AGM online on 20 November.
The Society of Authors is a member-led professional organisation, and as such, we encourage as much involvement or input from members as possible through our open channels. As democratic organisation, Full Members can propose resolutions for consideration by the membership, which will inform our future work.
For example, at the AGM last November, members passed a resolution for the SoA to lobby Government to ensure that the Arts Council England (ACE) remains free from political interference, and to campaign for freedom of expression for writers, illustrators and literary translators. We implemented this resolution by raising this issue both at our regular Arts Council England roundtable meetings, by email, and by submitting a letter after the call for evidence into an independent review of the Arts Council England (ACE), which is covering their strategic objectives, working relationships and partnerships, and the relationship between ACE and Government.
Also, at the EGM in May last year, you may remember that two resolutions were passed – one on Artificial Intelligence, which I hope you’ll agree, we’ve been implementing with vigour, and one on ending fossil fuel finance within the books industry.
On the latter, we wrote to a number of institutions last year, and we have been keeping the pressure on industry to adopt more climate-friendly practices through the Sustainability Industry Forum, raising awareness through our Tree to Me Campaigning, speaking on panels including at London Book Fair as part of our work with Publishing Declares initiative, and via the important work of our members who volunteer their time on the Sustainability Steering Committee and Member Network.
And so, as we head toward another Board election and the AGM, we’d love to hear your thoughts about what you think our priorities should be for the coming years.
And, if you’re thinking about applying to stand for the Board, do drop me a line if you’d like to have a chat before hitting the submit button.
Thank you for your support.
Anna
