The Authors Guild Foundation

The Authors Guild Foundation is the educational arm of the Authors Guild, America's oldest and largest society of published authors. The Guild's 8500 members receive business and legal counsel, contract reviews, website services, programs and symposia, and the quarterly Bulletin.

The Authors Guild Foundation, a tax-exempt organization was founded a quarter century ago, to express the Guild's concern for the welfare of writers and to protect the value of their contributions to the reading public. The founding members--who included Saul Bellow, John Hersey, Madeleine L'Engle, James A. Michener, Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Janeway, and Barbara Tuchman--were among the authors committed to the Foundation's basic premises:

• Protecting authors' intellectual property rights is essential to the creation of literature.
  


• Restrictions of free expression deprive readers and authors of civilization's critical exchange of knowledge and ideas.
  


• Individual authors are the creators of the literary, historical, and dramatic work that educates, entertains, and defines our culture.

This is a difficult time to be a professional writer. In an era of increasing access to digitized information, fresh threats to authors' livelihoods emerge from every quarter. Certain corners of the Internet frequently assume that literary property should be available without compensation to its creators. As more and more independent publishers are swallowed up by conglomerates, writers' works and economic interests are subsumed and threatened. At the same time, the unremitting forces of censorship compromise the intellectual freedom of authors and readers, parents and children, teachers and librarians.

The Authors Guild Foundation is dedicated to the profession of writing, the encouragement of skills and standards, and the protection and advocacy of writers' interests.