[stylist] Writers' Division February Telephone Gathering- Association of American Publishers

[Robert Leslie Newman]

Dear Writers' Division and/or STYLIST Member

RE: February 26th Telephone Gathering 

Topic: Guest speaker from the Association of American Publishers

 

In my quest to arrange for meaningful topics and guest presenters, I
recently made a Google search on publishing, and after sending out a variety
of  emails to publishers, authors, societies and/or associations of the same
--- I did get a promising response back from Andi Sporkin Vice President,
Communications for AAP:  Association of American Publishers.
http://www.publishers.org

 

I wrote that we were a group of writers and were looking to get smarter
about our craft. Below I'll paste in some of the text of 2 of our recent
emails. Read it and you will get a sense of what we can expect on Sunday,
February 26th at 7:30 PM- 

 

**Andi writes in her initial email: What AAP could offer is probably more
informational than inspirational.  We are the trade association for
publishers and we mainly provide advocacy for them on behalf of policy,
legislative, trade and regulatory issues.   Because of the nature of our
organization, we don't work with authors so the extent of knowledge or
advice we might have in that direction is pretty limited.  We can, however,
talk about issues facing those in the broader publishing industry  and I
could have AAP staff speak on such areas as:

 

--protection of authors' intellectual property and copyright, the piracy
problem and anti-piracy efforts in force including monitoring, takedowns and
the need for legislation (the SOPA and PIPA bills, for instance)

 

--First Amendment issues - Freedom to Read, Freedom to Publish,
international activities

 

--publishing's expansion in digital technology and the implications - what's
ahead, how publishers are producing for new technology, defining standards,
providing accessibility and related topics

 

Separately, if you and your members are more interested in the
publisher/author relationship and navigating that industry, I can put a
request out to one of our member publishing houses.   Just give me a better
sense of what you all are seeking.

 

**Second Email:

 

Our head of government affairs, Allan Adler, will be happy to be guest
speaker for the 26th .  I'm thinking he should talk mainly about how content
creators such as authors and publishers protect copyright.  Of every issue
that's out there, this is the most important to any writer.  But I think
I'll put you two together tomorrow by phone and you can work out details.

 

And thanks for the offer about assistance to us on disability issues, which
we will definitely call on at some point.  We've been working on two big
projects relating to readers who are blind or have other visual disabilities
- one is AccessText Network, founded by our members and aimed at enabling
college students to easily get course materials in usable formats, and the
other is a universal digital format platform that will let any reader have
access to any book in any format.  I don't know much about the latter but
Allan can explain.

 

**Back to me and this notice of our February Telephone Gathering. As we get
closer I'll remind you all of the date, time and numbers to call in on.
Until then --- Don't forget we have a writing contest going on! Here is an
opportunity to showcase some of your work. Yes, submitting to a contest is a
risk --- submitting for publishing is also a risk that you need to get smart
and comfortable with. 

 

 

Respectfully

 

Robert Leslie Newman

Personall Website-

Adjustmen To Blindness And Visual impairment

http//www.thoughtprovoker.info

NFB Writers' Division, president

http://www.nfb-writers-division.net