Authors and readers discuss current trends
Readers and writers alike gathered to celebrate the Academic and Non-fiction Author’s Association of South Africa’s (ANFASA) 10th anniversary at Birchwood Hotel from March 13 to 15.
The event featured local and international speakers from the world of non-fiction and academic publishing.
The three day event marked the organisation’s first annual conference, as well as its general meeting.
In a session titled Writers and Readers: How to strike a balance, panellists Paolo Lanteri, Barbara Hayes, Naomi Haasbroek and panel chairman Brian Wafawarowa looked at the impact of the recent World Intellectual Property Organisation Treaty for Visually-Impaired Persons on access, as well as authors’ rights to remuneration.
The Treaty, which was signed this year, focuses on the accessibility of information from books through an audio book that is made available to people who are blind, visually impaired, or have a perpetual reading disability that cannot be repaired.
Lanteri is a lawyer specialising in intellectual property, as well as a member of both the Spanish and the Italian Bar Association.
In his presentation, he pointed out the legal implications of the treaty with reference to accessibility, translation, reproduction, distribution and remuneration.
He highlighted the fact that the treaty strictly stipulates that audio books must serve only beneficiaries, such as blind people, or the visually impaired.
Haasbroek is the head of Library and Information Services at iThemba LABS, a research facility that serves multi-facetted professionals, as well as researchers and students from undergraduate to post-doc levels.
Haasbroek referred to the treaty as a breakthrough for blind people.
“Textbooks can now be converted for blind people soon after they are published in print,” she said.
She touched on striking a balance between the users (readers) and the libraries (including archives).
Barbara Hayes, who is the deputy chief executive of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), in the UK, spoke about how to strike a balance between writers and readers.
Her focus was on pointing out how authors can be paid, while readers gain access to their material.
“Access is important to authors, after all, they like their work to be read and they want to be given an opportunity to give permission for the use of their work,” she said.
Issues raised by members of the audience to the panel included language as barrier to audio books, e-libraries being the future, books not being available in libraries, and lack of sufficient libraries as an ongoing problem.
ANFASA was founded in 2004 as the first national association specifically for authors of non-fiction works, textbooks and academic books, dedicated to promoting their works, sharing information and offering advice.
