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Lewd Rude and Nude: the art of translating body parts

29th July 2009 - all welcome

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Society of Authors in Scotland

If you are a member of the Society, don't forget to log-in to access the members only information. Log-in here

About the Group

Despite not having a separate office, the Society of Authors in Scotland organises its own activities through a Committee of volunteers, which is currently formed as follows: 

Nicola Morgan (Chair), Angus Konstam (Hon Secretary), Keith Charters (Treasurer), Lin Anderson Caroline Dunford, Eric Swanepoel, Naomi Tarrant, Nick Thorpe and John Ward. To see the Committee biographies, click here.

Activities of the Group are often reported in The Author, and members of the Society living in Scotland are sent all relevant mailings automatically. To view a report of recent activities of the Group, click here.

The Group's Liaison Officer in London is Anna Ganley

Membership Benefits

  • Contract vetting: Members are encouraged to send in their publishing contracts for confidential advice from the Society’s staff
  • Advice and support on professional issues
  • The Author, the journal of the Society of Authors, and regular newsletters from the Chair are sent free to members
  • Publications: The Society produces a number of Quick Guides on a range of topics of interest to all writers
  • Full and varied calendar of events
  • Discounts specifically for Scottish members

Members can access more information about the Society of Authors in Scotland by clicking on the following link: Members area

How do I Join?

The SOAIS is a group within the Society of Authors. To join you must have one full-length work, or its equivalent, published or accepted for publication. Membership of the Society costs £90 per annum (£64 if you are under 35). You can download a form from the membership page, or contact the office if you would like us to post the form to you.

Online Survey on Intellectual Property Rights

  • Are you a Scottish author?
  • Why take part in the survey?

Intellectual Property Rights are at the heart of publishing. They enable the reward of authors and managed dissemination of their work across diversity of media and often in a variety of forms. Without the protection offered by IPR as applied in differing forms and jurisdictions across the world, authors would face diminishing returns from their work and loss of control over its integrity and nature. This all sounds quite inspirational but to a large extent it may also be aspirational as well.

Concern about the effectiveness of authors, agents and publishers in awareness, administration and exploitation of IPR has led to the setting up of the ‘Creativity and Rights’ project within the Scottish Centre for the Book at Edinburgh Napier University. This project, funded through an internal Edinburgh Napier Principal’s Award from Professor Joan Stringer, seeks first to discover the degree of knowledge and understanding of and benefits from IPR among authors, agents and publishers in Scotland and then to identify viable measures in order to resolve any gaps or problems.

This is not an ‘academic’ project; it aims to deliver a useful service to the creative community in Scotland. Accordingly, the project team includes Lorraine Fannin, recently retired Chief Executive of Publishing Scotland, and Aly Barr, on a six-month secondment from the Scottish Arts Council funded by the Principal’s Award, as well as staff and postgraduate students from the Scottish Centre for the Book.

The first stage of the project has to be an information-gathering exercise so that a clear snapshot of current knowledge and practice is available. An online survey of Scottish publishers is underway and this will be followed up by a number of interviews. Interviews are being undertaken with Scottish-based agents and agents based elsewhere who act for Scottish authors. It is vital to the project that the voices of authors should be heard as well. That is why we are using the pages of your newsletter to ask you to give approximately twenty minutes of your time to undertake the online survey at: www.surveygizmo.com/s/128588/society-of-authors-scotland-survey.This survey is anonymous and its results will be published in aggregated form.

If you do not have access to the Internet, then we would be pleased to send you a paper copy with sae for return. Just phone Fiona Hartree on 0131 455 6429 or send her a note at Scottish Centre for the Book, Edinburgh Napier University, Craighouse Campus, Edinburgh EH10 5LG. We will contribute a further piece to this newsletter later on in the year to offer a summary of the survey’s results and an update on the project’s progress. As an additional incentive, we will offer a bottle of champagne to a participant drawn at random from all those completing the survey online or by post.

Alistair McCleery
Melanie Ramdarshan
Scottish Centre for the Book at Edinburgh Napier University



For further information about the SOAIS please contact the SOAIS Liaison Officer in London, Anna Ganley.