Author Support Organizations – A number of national and international organizations support different kinds of authors, with professional services, as well as advocacy efforts. Below we list and describe the principle US-based author organizations.
- Authors Alliance – An organization (established 2014) interested in promoting distribution of their works. The Authors Alliance is explicitly aimed at representing the interests of academic scholarly authors.
- Association of Independent Authors (AIA; est. 2009) – The AIA serves self-published authors.
- Authors Guild – This organization primarily represents trade fiction authors, and has been very active in litigation. The Authors Guild has spearheaded litigation targeting book indexing (Authors Guild v. Google and Authors Guild v. HathiTrust), disability features in ebooks, and library digitization, preservation, and indexing projects.
- National Writers Union – The NWU is a labor union (UAW-affiliated) that represents freelance writers. The NWU brought theTasini v. New York Times litigation that requires database companies and publishers to get permission from authors before republishing previously licensed content in electronic databases. It frequently advocates on behalf of authors in negotations and policy disputes with publishers and media companies. Most members of the NWU are book authors or journalists.
- “Collective licensing organizations” collect royalties, licensing, and other fees from users of copyrighted materials. In the US, the Copyright Clearance Center (“CCC”) collects licensing fees from organizations, including universities and libraries. CCC and other collective licensing organizations may periodically distribute royalties to authors who hold copyrights on their works, and are registered with those organizations.