How do authors consider the threats to their livelihoods, and how are they managing the opportunities? What, in other words, do the actual copyright holders think about copyright?
With Daniel Hahn & Nicola Solomon, Society of Authors
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The business motivation that brings the book world to London each spring is the exchange of publishing rights. The legal foundation for this marketplace is copyright. Yet as fundamental as it may be, copyright is also one of the more complex and possibly least well understood areas of publishing.
In 2018, copyright laws and general respect for intellectual property face tremendous public and policy pressures in the UK, across the EU, and around the world. How do authors consider the threats to their livelihoods, and how are they managing the opportunities? What, in other words, do the actual copyright holders think about copyright?
“If I translate a book, the copyright in the original still exists. But another copyright comes into existence as I create a new thing [the translation]. So, any of my books in translation will have two copyright lines on the copyright page – copyright of the author, such-and-such a date, copyright me, such-and-such a date,” notes Daniel Hahn, a writer, editor and translator, with fifty-something books to his name. “Any translation, almost by definition, is going to have been established by two very different systems.”
Daniel Hahn’s recent translation from the Portuguese of José Eduardo Agualusa’s A General Theory of Oblivion won the International Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. He designated a portion of his Dublin Award prize money toward creation of The TA First Translation Prize—“TA” for the UK’s Translators Association—which is administered by the Society of Authors. He is also a past chair of the Society of Authors.
Joining Hahn at the recent London Book Fair was Nicola Solomon is Chief Executive, Society of Authors, a UK trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators that was founded in 1884. Nicola’s role includes protecting authors’ interests in negotiations/disputes with publishers and agents, and campaigning for authors’ rights, including copyright, e-book rights, Public Lending Right, defamation reforms and freedom of speech. Nicola is a solicitor and a Deputy District Judge in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court. She is a Board member of the British Copyright Council, the European Writers’ Council and the International Authors’ Forum.
