I AM ALMOST ALWAYS in enthusiastic agreement with bestselling author Hugh Howey regarding his take on the publishing industry. HOWEVER (capitalized, so nobody misses it), I take GRAVE exception to an idea he is floating: whether authors need to FORM A LABOR UNION. Now, to be fair to Hugh, he didnt come right out in his blog post and say that we absolutely should form a union; he just raised the question, and in fact he spent considerable time discussing the problems of representation among such a diverse and changing community as writers. (The old cliche about herding cats applies here.) Hugh concluded his blog post saying, I don’t speak for you. No one does. I don’t want to speak for anyone but myself. And again, maybe no one else does. But perhaps someone should. No, Hugh, someone should NOT. If you arent qualified to speak for others, Hugh, and I am not, then who is? The business and financial interests of Lee Child and John Grisham are not the same as mine, or as Hughs, or as those of many of you who are authors. So, why should we allow our INDIVIDUAL interests to be determined by MAJORITY vote? Who would even be a qualified voter -- a real author, thus qualified for union membership? What are the criteria to be? How are they to be decided, and by whom? Unions also engage in collective bargaining. But against whom -- and for what? And how is its ever-changing agenda, in response to ever-changing circumstances, to be determined? Are the interests of 49.9% of members always to be subordinated to those of 50.1%? And if so, can such an union truly be said to represent authors? A writers union is a very bad idea. A very GOOD idea, however, might be a writers service organization. Such an organization could offer writers group insurance, legal services, directories of literary and publishing services, tax help, career advice, how-to information, etc. Writers can use this kind of help. What they could NOT use is any entity presuming to speak collectively in their name, on a host of legal and financial issues, in a book industry that is so rapidly evolving. Anyone interested in this debate can follow it on the Passive Voice blog; I have weighed in with my own thoughts there in the reader comments thread: thepassivevoice/07/2014/do-writers-need-a-union/#comment-224701
Posted on: Sun, 06 Jul 2014 22:05:59 +0000
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