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On April 19, 2024, the Association of American Publishers, joined by the American Booksellers for Free Expression, Authors Guild, Inc., Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Educational Book and Media Association, Freedom to Learn Advocates, Half Price Books, Records, Magazines, Inc., Independent Book Publishers Association, National Press Photographers Association, National Writers Union and Sisters in Crime, filed an amicus brief in Iowa in support of the plaintiffs in two lawsuits, filed in November 2023, challenging provisions of SF 496, a 2023 law that violates constitutional standards by censoring books for students in a vague and overbroad fashion. 

The lawsuits, Penguin Random House, LLC. v. Robbins and GLBT Youth in IA Schools, Etc. v. Reynolds, were filed in November 2023 by plaintiff groups that include publishers, renowned authors, educators, and students. The original filing by Penguin Random House has since been joined by Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks. Among other problems, the law prohibits any K-12 public school in Iowa from maintaining a “library program” containing “any material with descriptions or visual depictions” of a “sex act” no matter how innocuous or brief, and with no variation for the age of the minor or consideration of the value of the work as a whole. In practice, hundreds of books have been pulled from library shelves as a result, including timeless classics by authors such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, Aldous Huxley, and Richard Wright, and award-winning books by contemporary authors such as Toni Morrison, Malinda Lo, Sapphire, John Green, Jodi Picoult, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Maya Angelou.

Amicus brief excerpts include:

• “The reach of SF 496…will have a direct impact on the ability of the wide range of writers, artists, publishers, distributors, new organizations, and retailers that amici represent to write, create, publish, produce, distribute, and sell books and literary works of all types, including materials that are scholarly, journalistic, educational, artistic, scientific, and entertaining. This will be felt certainly within the state of Iowa and with potential nationwide ramifications if this law is upheld.”

• “SF 496 provides a legal basis for eliminating a substantial portion of the history of human creativity from school library shelves.”

• “SF 496 does not take into account the work as a whole [as required by the test the Supreme Court set out in Miller/Ginsberg], a fatal flaw in the law.

• “SF 496 is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad because, among other things, it does not adequately indicate what constitutes a “description or visual depiction of a sex act” that would trigger the material as inappropriate for a minor ranging in age from 5 to 18. . . . [It] is so broad that it could include images that illustrate sensitive, historical, political, or health-related topics in a news article.”

The full amicus brief can be found here.

Princeton University Press, Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press, and The MIT Press Honored with Excellence Awards

Top PROSE Awards Prize, The R.R. Hawkins Award, goes to Princeton University Press’ The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced the four Excellence winners of its annual PROSE Awards, which recognize best-in-class scholarly publications in four categories: Biological & Life Sciences, Humanities, Physical Sciences & Mathematics, and Social Sciences. 

AAP also announced that the program’s top prize, the prestigious R.R. Hawkins Award, has been awarded to Princeton University Press for The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate.

“We congratulate this year’s winners from Princeton University Press, Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press, and The MIT Press, who illustrate the incredible quality and innovation that is representative of PROSE Award for Excellence winners,” commented Syreeta Swann, Chief Operating Officer at the Association of American Publishers. “Taken as a whole, this year’s winners illustrate the power and importance of scholarly publishing, combining detailed research, concise prose, and inventive approaches that make these works truly compelling for both expert and lay readers. We thank our judges for their tireless work in determining our PROSE Award for Excellence Winners, and all who entered for their contributions to the field of scholarly and professional publishing.”

R.R. Hawkins Award Winner

“Princeton University Press is honored to accept the R.R. Hawkins Award, and humbled to do so for a second year in a row. We are grateful to the PROSE judges for their engaged reading—and listening!—and to our peer presses for their inspired publishing,” notes Christie Henry, Director of Princeton University Press. “Nicolas Mathevon entrusted to our team this extraordinary work, The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate, which opens all of our senses to the ways in which sounds and communication shape culture, community and environment. It’s a thrill to amplify its impact with this award.”

“The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate, is as inventive as it is trailblazing, combining accessible writing with a unique online audio tie-in to create a truly immersive experience,” commented PROSE Chief Judge Nigel Fletcher-Jones, PhD. “I have every confidence that this innovative approach will dramatically expand the understanding bioacoustics, and provide an invaluable tool for scholars and readers of all kinds.”

Excerpts from The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate:

On the origins of Song:

"When we were vulnerable beings with limited weaponry, as we were until very recently, we kept predators at bay by increasing the range and diversity of our vocalizations…this type of antipredator strategy would explain the polyphonic songs sung, especially on moonless nights, in certain hunter-gatherer societies (among the Hadza and Ba Yaka of sub-Saharan Africa, for example)...if each one of us pitches in with some polyphonic variations, the predator will have the impression that these humans are particularly numerous and will not dare approach.”

On Bird-Human Collaboration:

The honeyguide is “in the habit of leading hive hunters to the object of their common lust. How does it proceed? By calling and flying from one tree to another, patiently waiting for the humans to catch up. When all have arrived at their destination, the hunters, protected from the bees by clothing and equipped with tools, open the hive to extract the honey from it, leaving the wax combs in plain sight, which their winged guide delights in as they leave.”

The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate is accompanied by an innovative audio tie-in site that immerses readers in the world of the animals they are learning about. That site can be found here.

2024 PROSE Excellence Winners are as follows:

R.R. Hawkins Award Winner & PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences

• The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate, Nicolas Mathevon, Princeton University Press

PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences 

• Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures, Gabrielle Hecht, Duke University Press

PROSE Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

• Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Nature Conservation along the Former Iron Curtain, Sonja K. Pieck, The MIT Press

PROSE Award for Excellence in Humanities 

• Giotto's Arena Chapel and the Triumph of Humility, Henrike Christiane Lange, Cambridge University Press

About the PROSE Awards

Since 1976, the AAP’s PROSE Awards have recognized publishers who produce books, journals, and digital products of extraordinary merit that make a significant contribution to a field of study. 

During the 2024 PROSE cycle our panel of 25 PROSE judges selected 118 finalists and 41 category winners. Of the 41 exceptional category winners, today’s Award for Excellence Award Winners and R.R. Hawkins Winner illustrate the extraordinary quality of scholarly publishing and contribute novel ideas to their respective areas of study.

More information about the 2024 PROSE Awards can be found here.

Trade (Consumer Book) Revenues Down 1.2% for Month of December, and 0.3% for Full Calendar Year

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today released its StatShot report for December 2023 reflecting reported revenue for Trade (Consumer Books), Religious Presses, Higher Education Course Materials, and Professional Publishing.

Total revenues across all categories for December 2023 were down 2.5% as compared to December 2022, coming in at $920.7 million. Year-to-date revenues were up 0.4%, at $12.6 billion for the year of 2023.

Trade (Consumer Books) Revenues

Calendar 2023

Trade revenues were down 0.3%, at $8.9 billion for the calendar year. Hardback revenues were up 0.4%, coming in at $3.3 billion; Paperbacks were down 2.0%, with $3.1 billion in revenue; Mass Market was down 22.9% to $140.0 million; and Special Bindings were up 2.2%, with $210.0 million in revenue.

eBook revenues were up 0.6% as compared to 2022 for a total of $1.0 billion. The Digital Audio format was up 14.9%, coming in at $864.0 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 16.2% coming in at $12.9 million.

December 2023

Trade (Consumer Books) sales were down 1.2% in December, coming in at $719.0 million.

In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of December, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were down 8.6%, coming in at $245.3 million; Paperbacks were down 7.2%, with $244.0 million in revenue; Mass Market was up 5.4% to $11.0 million; and Special Bindings were down 14.2%, with $18.1 million in revenue.

eBook revenues were up 16.3% for the month as compared to December 2022 for a total of $90.3 million. Digital Audio was up 24.5% for December, coming in at $81.9 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 7.8% coming in at $1.1 million.

Religious Presses

Calendar 2023

For the calendar year 2023, religious press revenues were up 7.8%, reaching $819.7 million. Hardback revenues were up 6.7% at $493.2 million in revenue, Paperback revenues were up 11.1% to $162.8 million, eBook revenues were down 3.3% at $53.8 million, and Digital Audio revenues were up 8.5% at $45.6 million. 

December 2023

Religious press revenues were up 0.3% in December, coming in at $60.9 million. Hardback revenues were down 1.6% to $36.0 million in revenue, Paperback revenues were up 3.9% to $12.2 million, eBook revenues were down 4.7% coming in at $3.7 million, and Digital Audio revenues were up 21.7% at $3.8 million.

Education

Calendar 2023

For the calendar year 2023, Higher Education Course Materials revenues were $3.0 billion, up 3.2% compared to 2022.

December 2023

During December 2023 revenues from Higher Education Course Materials were $149.6 million, down 5.2% compared with December 2022.

Professional Books

Calendar 2023

Professional Books revenues for calendar year 2023 were $457.8 million, down 3.9% as compared to 2022.

December 2023

Professional Books, including business, medical, law, technical and scientific, were down 1.7% during the month of December, coming in at $37.4 million.

AAP’s StatShot

AAP StatShot reports the monthly and yearly net revenue of publishing houses from U.S. sales to bookstores, wholesalers, direct to consumer, online retailers, and other channels. StatShot draws revenue data from approximately 1,240 publishers, although participation may fluctuate slightly from report to report. 

StatShot reports are designed to give ongoing revenue snapshots across publishing sectors using the best data currently available. The reports reflect participants’ most recent reported revenue for current and previous periods, enabling readers to compare revenue on both a month-to-month and year-to-year basis within a given StatShot report.

Monthly and yearly StatShot reports may not align completely across reporting periods, because: a) The pool of StatShot participants may fluctuate from report to report; and b) Like any business, it is common accounting practice for publishing houses to update and restate their previously reported revenue data. If, for example, a business learns that its revenues were greater in a given year than its reports first indicated, it will restate the revenues in subsequent reports to AAP, permitting AAP in turn to report information that is more accurate than previously reported.

Today, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Random House, and Wiley (the “Plaintiffs”), filed a brief opposing Internet Archive’s appeal of its loss in the copyright infringement case Hachette Book Group, et al, v. Internet Archive.  In June 2020, the Plaintiffs filed suit against the Internet Archive for its digitization of millions of print books and distribution of the resulting bootleg ebooks for free from its website, without the consent of the publishers and their authors or the payment of any license fee. 

The filing in the case followed the District Court’s March 24, 2023 grant of summary judgment in favor of publishers, finding Internet Archive liable for copyright infringement. That decision unequivocally rejected Internet Archive’s argument that so-called “controlled digital lending” constitutes fair use, holding that each “enumerated fair use factor favors the Publishers,” and noting that any “copyright infringer may claim to benefit the public by increasing public access to the copyrighted work” (P. 44, quoting Harper & Row Publishers v. Nation Enterprises).

Excerpts of the brief include:

• Controlled digital lending is a frontal assault on the foundational copyright principle that rightsholders exclusively control the terms of sale for every different format of their work – a principle that has spawned the broad diversity in formats of books, movies, television and music that consumers enjoy today.   

• “…there is no resemblance between IA’s conversion of millions of print books into ebooks and the historical practice of lending print books. Nor does IA’s distribution of ebooks without paying authors and their publishers a dime conform with the modern practices of libraries, which acquire licenses to lend ebooks to their local communities and enjoy the benefits of digital distribution lawfully.”

• The Internet Archive (“IA”) operates a mass-digitization enterprise in which it copies millions of complete, in-copyright print books and distributes the resulting bootleg ebooks from its website to anyone in the world for free. Granting summary judgment, the District Court properly held that IA’s infringement is not saved by fair use as each of the four factors weighs against IA under longstanding case law.

• In sum, IA distributes the Publishers’ copyrighted material in a market that the Publishers, as the copyright owners, are exclusively entitled to exploit, and IA looks to replace the Publishers as the supplier of ebooks to its customers. “This is precisely the kind of harm the fourth factor aims to prevent.”

• “There is nothing transformative about IA’s CDL practices because it does nothing “more than repackage or republish” the Works. “IA does not reproduce the Works in Suit to provide criticism, commentary, or information about them.” Rather, IA admits that CDL serves a “similar[ ]” purpose to licensed library ebooks – i.e., to make books available to be read – which precludes transformativeness “even if the two were not perfect substitutes.”  

• IA’s flawed policy argument is that the law must change to “ensure[ ] that technological innovation allows libraries to improve access to books…” But public libraries practicing “traditional library lending” across the country have already implemented this “technological innovation” via the Publishers’ authorized library ebooks – which serve “‘people of diverse geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds,’” “‘individuals with disabilities,’” and “‘residents of rural and urban areas,’” as well as facilitating research.  In other words, the Publishers have realized the innovation IA belatedly champions; IA is merely usurping it.

• The authorized library ebook market is thriving – readers have never had more access to free, licensed ebooks than they do today…  The number of ebooks and audiobooks checked out via OverDrive in 2020 was 430 million, a more than 500% increase from 2012.

• Copyright law benefits the public by guaranteeing that authors and publishers have the right to get paid for ebook editions of their works, not by idolizing consumer convenience.

• While the potential for catastrophic market harm should be obvious, the dangers to the Publishers’ ebook markets are far from hypothetical, not only because of the historic damage that out-of-control content distribution has wrought on the music and news industries, but because the rapid development of generative AI has unleashed new threats involving both mass reproduction and substitution of literary works and other works of authorship.

• Internet Archive “tries to justify its mass-scale infringement through a wholly manufactured theory it calls “controlled digital lending” (“CDL”), arguing that CDL is a “modern, more efficient version of lending that is used by libraries across the country.”  But, as the District Court ruled, there is “no case or legal principle support[ing the] notion” that controlled digital lending constitutes fair use – and “[e]very authority points the other direction.”  

Detailed reflections on the case can be found here.

Publishers statement on Internet Archive’s appeal can be found here. 

Publishers brief opposing Internet Archive’s appeal can be found here.

Paid Internship Program Available to Junior and Senior Students at HBCUs, other 4-Yr Colleges and Universities, or UNCF-Affiliated Colleges across the United States

Washington, DC —The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and UNCF (United Negro College Fund) Internship Program is accepting applications for the ninth year of its partnership to provide paid summer internships to students with an interest in pursuing a career in the publishing industry. Students who are juniors and graduating seniors from Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs), other four-year accredited colleges or universities, or any UNCF-Affiliated college in the United States are eligible for this program.

The deadline to apply for next summer’s program is March 11, 2024, with internship placement for summer 2024.

Participating organizations this year include Princeton University Press, W.W. Norton, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), Macmillan, Scholastic, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, SAGE, De Gruyter, and Wiley.

“This is a really great opportunity for students who are interested in the publishing industry to gain real work experience and connections,” said Taliah Givens, senior director, student professional development programs, UNCF. “With nearly a decade of partnership, we know how important these first steps are for students looking to develop publishing careers and networks.”

“The AAP-UNCF partnership continues to be one of the critically important pathways for students to bring their unique voices to the publishing space,” said Jonathan Walker, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion, AAP. “As these students connect with the industry their impact on their organizations is just as large, providing new insights, opportunities and connections for both the students and the publishing community.”

History of the AAP – UNCF Partnership

Initiated in 2016, the program has provided over 60 internships to date giving rising and graduating seniors opportunities to learn the business of publishing while working directly with executives responsible for bringing important knowledge and stories to readers every day. Internships have been secured in Washington, DC, New York, Boston, Princeton, St. Louis and Atlanta.

Program Requirements

Applicants with a minimum GPA of 2.75 on a 4.0 scale, a record of leadership and community service, and strong writing skills are encouraged to apply online here.

About AAP

AAP | The Association of American Publishers represents the leading book, journal, and education publishers in the United States on matters of law and policy, advocating for outcomes that incentivize the publication of creative expression, professional content, and learning solutions. As essential participants in local markets and the global economy, our members invest in and inspire the exchange of ideas, transforming the world we live in one word at a time. Find us online at publishers.org.

About UNCF

UNCF (United Negro College Fund) is the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization. To serve youth, the community and the nation, UNCF supports students’ education and development through scholarships and other programs, supports and strengthens its 37 member colleges and universities, and advocates for the importance of minority education and college readiness. While totaling only 3% of all colleges and universities, UNCF institutions and other historically Black colleges and universities are highly effective, awarding 13% of bachelor’s degrees, 5% of master’s degrees, 10% of doctoral degrees and 19% of all STEM degrees earned by Black students in higher education. UNCF administers more than 400 programs, including scholarship, internship and fellowship, mentoring, summer enrichment, and curriculum and faculty development programs. Today, UNCF supports more than 50,000 students at over 1,100 colleges and universities across the country. Its logo features the UNCF torch of leadership in education and its widely recognized trademark, ‟A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”^® Learn more at UNCF.org or for continuous updates and news, follow UNCF on Twitter at @UNCF.