Book Division

The NWU Book Division represents authors, contributors, and ghostwriters of books of all types in all genres and formats: fiction or non-fiction, single-author or anthology, published by large or small commercial or academic publishers or self-published, distributed on paper or as audiobooks or e-books.

The Book Division provides a place for networking, information sharing, and mutual support in our working lives as authors, especially through the NWU-BOOK email discussion list. The Book Division also takes a leading role in the NWU’s advocacy work on copyright and other issues of particular concern to book authors.

The Book Division is a national caucus within the NWU. Book authors are members of their respective local NWU chapters as well as of the Book Division.

The Book Division has published a variety of resources and advisories for authors about book contracts, copyrights, e-books, licensing, and other issues. NWU members are also eligible to receive assistance and advice from the NWU Grievance and Contract Division (GCD) on book contracts or disputes with publishers or others.

The Chair or Co-Chairs of the Book Division are unpaid member volunteers elected by the NWU’s triennial Delegate Assembly.  The current Book Division Chair elected at the 2021 Delegate Assembly is Dan McCrory, (Southern California Chapter), writingbiz@yahoo.com, phone 323-719-2173.

Contact the Book Division Chair if you would like to be part of this work or have ideas for what the Book Division should be doing.

    • Report infringements of your copyrights (including infringements by publishers) to the U.S. National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center. Reporting is essential to document the nature and extent of infringement problems.

Latest Division News

New Addendum To Book Contracts Guide

Over the past few years, we’ve had increasing numbers of inquiries about the treatment of electronic books (e-books) within book contracts. While they were traditionally considered subsidiary rights that compensated authors at 50 percent of net sales, many publishers have begun to see them as a windfall, and have tried to get members to accept […]

NWU and Nautilus Settle $60,000 Non-Payment Grievance

New York City, January 31 – Today the NWU announced that we have a signed settlement with Nautilus magazine resolving a non-payment grievance with twenty Nautilus freelancers. In mid-December, the freelancers filed the grievance with NWU for help in seeking payment of over $60,000 owed to them for articles published in the National Magazine Award-winning […]

President’s Column – Feb. Newsletter

Happy New Year and I hope you were all able to participate in the recent Women’s Marches. In NYC, the numbers were much larger than the stated 200,000, and thousands of people never got to actually join the march because the crowds were so big and due to NYPD crowd control. I was one, who […]