20 July 2017 Ofcom has entirely removed quotas for radio comedy, drama and readings in their first draft Operating Licence (OL) for the BBC. BBC programming was previously defined in Service Licences set by the BBC Trust which gave a commitment to a minimum of 790 hours a year across BBC Radio 3 and 4….
17 July 2017 We started July with a total membership of 10,051. The 10,000 milestone will be celebrated on Tuesday 18 July at the SoA’s Summer Party at Waterstones Piccadilly, with an address from SoA council member Antonia Fraser dedicated to ‘Member 10,000’, the ten authors whose sign-up in June took membership numbers into five…
The SoA’s advisors warn about misleading websites and unsolicited emails
21 June 2017 The Society of Authors’ Translators Association (TA) announces a new prize for debut literary translation, funded by translator Daniel Hahn, with backing from The British Council. We are thrilled to announce the launch of the TA First Translation Prize, which will be run alongside the Society of authors’ nine other translation awards….
Following our Prizes consultation and approval from the Charity Commission, we are delighted to announce that the changes proposed to the eligibility criteria for three of our annual Authors’ Awards have now been approved. From September to November 2016 we ran a public consultation on prize eligibility with the goal of making our awards more…
20 June 2017 Novelist and poet Ben Okri presented the prizes to writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, at a ceremony held at the Army & Navy Club, Pall Mall. £35,000 was awarded in prizes for poetry (the Eric Gregory Awards and the Cholmondeley Awards) £31,500 was awarded in prizes for fiction (the Betty Trask…
The Society of Authors and the Publishers Association join forces with English PEN to campaign for imprisoned writers across the globe. English PEN, the Society of Authors and the Publishers Association are pleased to announce the launch of their joint campaign ‘Speak Out’. English PEN has long campaigned for the rights of writers and other…
9 June 2017 What we know, what we don’t – our initial response to the election result. If the aim of calling a June election was to stabilise government, shore up support and clarify direction, it is obvious today that it has had the opposite effect. No single party has the seats to form a…
7 June 2017 The Power by Naomi Alderman has been named as the winner of the £30,000 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction at an awards ceremony at Royal Festival Hall this evening. The Power, a feminist science fiction novel, follows four characters navigating a changed world in which all women have developed the power to…
7 June 2017 We were deeply saddened to hear of the death, earlier this week, of writer, poet and children’s author Helen Dunmore. Helen joined the Society in 1993. She won a McKitterick prize in 2004 for Zennor in Darkness. Helen always showed a great interest in and support for our causes. She went on…
6 June 2017 With the election just days away we measured the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat manifesto pledges against our campaign asks. At the beginning of May, we published More than Just Words, a set of pre-election asks calling on the next Government to “support Britain’s cultural heart: with funding and legislation, with transparency…
EU member states can now reduce the rate to zero, in line with print. After years of lobbying by authors and publishers, the European Parliament voted today to allow individual EU countries the right to reduce the VAT rate on ebooks. Ebooks currently attract a 20% VAT charge because they are classified as an ‘electronic…
