Industry News – September 2024

AWARDS

Manitoba Book Awards Discontinued

In late August, the coalition running the Manitoba Book Awards (MBA) announced the program would be suspended until further notice. Plume Winnipeg, the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers, the Winnipeg Public Library, and the Manitoba Writers' Guild had been jointly administering the awards for the last few years after earlier budgetary troubles caused in large part to changes to provincial arts funding. A recent consultancy analysis of the provincial awards sector across the country found the MBAs to be working with insufficient funds for their ambitious ten award program, prompting the shutdown. A possible merger with Alberta and Saskatchewan for a Prairie Book Awards program is being investigated, as is the possibility of sponsorship funding.

BOOKS MEDIA

New Author Interview Show on CBC Radio

CBC Radio has announced the debut of Bookends with Mattea Roach, a new interview show that promises fresh new voices discussing Canadian literature. Mattea Roach is a previous winning book champion on Canada Reads (2023), and a 23-match winner on television’s Jeopardy!. 

After the 2023 departure of Eleanor Wachtel from Writers & Company and the discontinuation of Shelagh Rogers’s The Next Chapter, the national radio landscape for Canadian books was severely reduced, with the once-yearly run of Canada Reads being the only remaining entirely book-focused bit of programming on the public network. Writers & Company has continued after Wachtel’s retirement, but airs repeat interviews from past broadcasts. 

The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC) has engaged in a number of discussions with Canadian media about the decline of books programming and coverage of CanLit, which includes the loss of standalone book sections in national daily papers. TWUC's National Council is currently engaged in a discussion about researching the national literary conversation, and finding new ways to encourage a wide-ranging discussion about writing and books. Bookends is a welcome development.

CENSORSHIP

Authors, Students, Parents, and Publishers Jointly Sue Over Florida Book Bans

The U.S. State of Florida’s House Bill 1069, passed last year, has placed unprecedented demands on schools and libraries to remove books deemed unsuitable based on criteria many consider overly broad and arbitrary. The U.S. Authors Guild has recently joined a number of publishers, individual authors, parents, and students in a court challenge to the Florida law.

Where books and instructional materials are concerned, HB 1069 provides a very narrow scope for subject instruction, especially in areas touching on human sexuality and gender, and broad leeway to parental objection against books in the system. As the Authors Guild writes in their lawsuit announcement:

The vagueness of the law is exacerbated by the fact that Florida’s training materials repeatedly encourage the media specialists who are tasked with reviewing the books to “err on the side of caution” in removing books from school libraries, and educators are subject to felony charges for failing to comply with the law. This atmosphere of fear means that books are likely to be removed for extended periods without due consideration of whether they violate the law.

HB 1069 also makes it illegal in public education settings to refer to students by their preferred pronouns if those pronouns do not align with the assigned sex at birth, and declares that within the public school context refusing anyone’s preferred pronouns does not constitute discrimination. Going even further, it makes it illegal for anyone working in public schools to express a preferred pronoun that does not align to assigned sex.

COPYRIGHT

Canada’s Copyright Act Turns 100

Initially passed by Parliament in 1921, the modern day Copyright Act of Canada came into force in 1924, making 2024 its 100th anniversary. Previous copyright regimes in Canada were pastiches of U.K. and U.S. law that were mainly focused on the interests of publishers in those markets, and did little to foster and encourage independent Canadian writing and publishing aimed at a Canadian market of readers.  

The 1924 Act was modelled closely on U.K. law and meant to respond to and respect the 1886 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, an international treaty that significantly shifted the focus of copyright to the rights of cultural workers. Canada’s new Act remained relatively untouched until new technologies prompted amendments in 1988, 1997 and 2012, significantly weakening the labour focus of our law, and calling into question Canada’s ongoing compliance with the Berne agreement. 

A Centennial Symposium, set for September 19th at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, will examine the history of our Act’s evolution, and to look into a future carrying significant challenges such as artificial intelligence.

COURT

U.S. Appeals Court Rules Against Internet Archive

Lending without Licensing Ruled Unfair 

San Francisco’s Internet Archive, which drew the ire of writers and publishers around the world through their practice of scanning physical books and lending them without the permission of copyright holders, has had their appeal of an earlier ruling against them denied. The panel of appeals judges in New York’s Second Circuit wrote:

This appeal presents the following question: Is it “fair use” for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety, and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the Copyright Act as well as binding Supreme Court and Second Circuit precedent, we conclude the answer is no.

In ruling this way, the court has upheld a bedrock principle for professional creative labour often overlooked in earlier decisions granting fair use — that industrial scale use of creative work must involve the established permission and licensing structures of the creative economy. The appeals panel took direct aim at the controversial theory of Controlled Digital Lending behind which IA sought to hide its illicit practice. Should this decision stand as precedent, questions now arise about all other industrial uses, such as the training of artificial intelligence with unpermitted uses of creative work.

The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) has engaged with our members for many years on the issue of Internet Archive scanning and lending, offering support for takedown demands, information about ongoing legal challenges, and representation in the form of court interventions. TWUC participated in this court case directly when it helped to gather a host of colleague organizations on a supportive amicus brief pointing out key differences between IA’s project and legitimate library practices, and highlighting the dangers to the marketplace on which authors depend for their creative income.

LIBRARIES

U.S. Digital Library Testing eBook Ownership for Libraries

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), a metadata and search aggregation organization, has announced an agreement with the Independent Publishers Group (IPG) to change the way public libraries in the United States access IPG digital titles. For the most part, libraries have acquired digital content through a licensing service like Overdrive, meaning that the libraries themselves do not own the ebook titles, and must abide by terms of service designed to protect the value of ebooks in a lending environment that could potentially see a single copy service multiple borrowers simultaneously. 

The IPG is a major distributor of independent ebooks, and serves both traditional publishers and publishing services companies. The DPLA calls the agreement a “landmark collaboration,” suggesting a sea change in the way libraries will now deal with digital books. With only 38,000 titles in the program so far, it’s clear not every IPG publisher has authorized sales over licensing, and DPLA allows that participating publishers are setting their own price points. Publishers Weekly reports an average price point of $30 USD for these sales, making it hard to see how such a program will find a happy fit in the traditional publishing business model. 

The Writers’ Union of Canada will watch this program carefully to monitor any potential negative impact on author incomes in the library market. 

NEWS MEDIA

Google to Subsidize News Industry in California

In an agreement similar to the one reached recently by the government of Canada, the U.S. State of California has extracted $55 million USD over the coming five years from Google, with the money to be aimed at helping to reverse the decline of professional news in the age of advertising capture by tech platforms. Despite maintaining an economy smaller than California, Canada recently came to a $75 million USD agreement for a fund to support print and broadcast media in this country. While neither agreement imposes permanent responsibility on the search giant to pay for the media content it uses in search results, Google’s agreement to help subsidize media is a sideways admission of the value of writing and publishing. The Writers’ Union of Canada has long advocated for platform responsibility for content investment. TWUC would prefer to see a permanent licensing structure that includes all writing on the publicly available internet, but the spread of these subsidy agreements (Australia has also challenged Google to pay for news) is a positive development.

PEOPLE

Noah Genner, Longtime BookNet Canada CEO, Dies

Canada’s writing and publishing sector lost a great champion and meticulous researcher in late August, 2024 with the death of BookNet President & CEO Emeritus, Noah Genner. Genner served BookNet for over twenty years, and was instrumental in professionalizing point-of-sale data collection and research into Canada’s book trade.

Genner was an in-demand keynote speaker, and opened a number of Writers’ Union conferences with his stats-driven understanding of Canada’s book business. But those who knew Noah personally will miss most his kind and low-key manner and his fierce support of colleagues and staff.

A Celebration of Life is set for October 27, 2024 at the University of Guelph Arboretum. Memorial contributions to Toronto Mount Sinai Hospital and/or the Canadian Cancer Society are encouraged. Links to donate and/or RSVP to the Celebration of Life can be found here.

The Writers’ Union of Canada expresses our deep condolences to Genner’s family, friends, and colleagues.

PUBLISHERS

The Porcupine’s Quill Sold to New Owner

Erin, Ontario’s 50-year-old main street publisher, The Porcupine’s Quill, has been sold by original owners Tim and Elke Inkster to Gordon Hill Press from nearby Guelph. Stock, web-presence, and promotional materials, plus ownership of the extensive and historic backlist go in the deal. The Inkster’s in-house printing equipment (a hulking Heidelberg press and bindery) appears not to be part of the sale.

Porcupine’s Quill authors will now see their print titles also released in ePub format as more widely accessible electronic books. The Inksters will retain ownership and control of The Devil’s Artisan, a twice-yearly journal dedicated to the printing arts.

UNION BUSINESS

Writers’ Union Presses for PLR Increase 

In early August, Union Chair Danny Ramadan and CEO John Degen met with policy staff at the Department of Canadian Heritage to press the case for a 100% increase to the Public Lending Right budget (from $15 million annually to $30 million). TWUC first filed this recommendation with Heritage in 2019, and was pleased to see a related election promise from the governing Liberal Party in the following campaign.  

Federal Budget 2022 promised a 50% increase to the program, and that intention also made it into the mandate letter for the Minister of Canadian Heritage. With an election coming soon, TWUC is working hard to make sure these promises are not lost in a potential change of government. 

Ottawa Newspaper Launches Federal Appeal to Protect Their Paywall 

Blacklock’s Reporter, an online government accountability daily that depends on institutional subscriptions for a large portion of its income, has launched a federal appeal following a court ruling that declared the sharing of passwords in order to circumvent subscription costs to be a “fair dealing” under Canada’s Copyright Act.

The May 2024 decision threatens business models for newspapers, magazines, streaming, and gaming service in Canada, and could even give tacit permission to online book pirates to break the technological protection measures on ebooks. It has received a critical reception from Canada’s copyright law sector, with one expert declaring the ruling “riddled with mistakes.” 

The Writers’ Union of Canada is investigating the possibility of intervening in this appeal along with several of our sectoral colleague organizations.

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