Writers and readers take note! I'll be at the Disrupted Festival In Perth on Saturday 27 July on a panel with Australian Children's Laureate Morris Gleitzman, Annabel Smith (who you might know from marvelous novels like Whiskey Charley Foxtrot, or her taboo smashing blog series 'How writers earn money') and the CEO of the Australian … Continue reading The Author’s Interest Project @ Disrupted Festival

We've previously blogged about various author earnings data out of countries including Australia, the US, the UK and Canada. That data is really important for providing a snapshot of who's earning what, where it comes from and how it's changing over time. There is now a new report out of the UK, commissioned by ALCS … Continue reading 2018 UK author earnings data: full report now available

I was recently interviewed by Canada's Michael Geist for the LawBytes podcast. We had an energetic conversation about problems with existing approaches to copyright, how they fail authors, and how rethinking them could help us reclaim lost culture and get authors paid. Check out the recording here (and for those of you who aren't pod … Continue reading New podcast: Rebecca Giblin on the need for author rights

In countries like Australia and the UK, authors' rights are governed almost entirely by publishing contracts. But what do those contracts actually say? As part of the Author's Interest Project, Joshua Yuvaraj and I have gone through the Australian Society of Authors' archive, spanning almost 60 years of publishing contracts. In this keynote for the … Continue reading #notallpublishers

[Article by Rebecca Giblin, originally published on Overland] Authors are always put at the centre of Australia’s copyright debates, grounding claims for more rights or fewer exceptions. Despite that, our law has no explicit rights to protect authors in the case of unfair, unclear or outdated contacts. I criticised this state of affairs in the last … Continue reading Does Australia really need author rights? A response to industry pushback

When we got together last year to talk about the author's interest in copyright, Cory Doctorow had some hugely insightful observations about the impact of book industry consolidation that we couldn't fit into the main video. So here's a little extra: 8 minutes about capitalism! monopolies! the failures of antitrust law! Cross-collaterisation of books! Crucially too … Continue reading Giblin & Doctorow on book industry consolidation: ’40 years of capitalism with the gloves off’

Cory and I looking for the train station after our interview, inadvertently setting up the cover for our first album. Photo credit: James Pattison. Last year when leading science-fiction author and activist Cory Doctorow was touring Australia with his new book Walkaway, we sat down to talk about the author's interest in copyright. We get … Continue reading Cory Doctorow on declining writer incomes, breaking Amazon’s dominance, and getting a bigger share for authors

By changing our approach to author rights, we can help writers earn more. shutterstock Rebecca Giblin, Monash University and Joshua Yuvaraj, Monash University Who makes the money in publishing? Nobody. This often repeated dark joke highlights a serious issue. The most recent figures show that Australian authors earn just $12,900 a year from writing work … Continue reading Five ways to boost Australian writers’ earnings