Advocacy

On Monday, the Republican Party adopted a national platform that includes provisions relating to the role of small businesses in the American economy.

Senate confirms Carla Hayden as Librarian of Congress; NEA Big Read announces new focus; Christopher Myers to launch imprint with Random House Children’s Books; Carl Lennertz named Children’s Book Council executive director; Inaugural edition of Buzz Books: Romance released; AAP survey reveals book industry net revenue of $28 billion in 2015; Malaprop’s owner discusses post-H.B. 2 decline in business; Longlist for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize announced; PEN America introduces PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers

This past weekend, the Democratic Party finalized a national platform that promises to tackle antitrust violations, increase the federal minimum wage, and pursue single-payer healthcare.

Bookstores in seven cities will hold events on the same night during this year’s celebration of Banned Books Week (September 25–October 1) to highlight challenges to books written by authors of diverse backgrounds.

In the news this week, advocates called for Minneapolis to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour, and an increase to $15 per hour by 2020 was signed into law in Washington, D.C.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is urging the state’s Department of Revenue to adopt a rule that would let the state collect sales tax from online companies that sell more than $500,000 annually in the state.

Booksellers have joined publishers, authors, and librarians in urging a federal appeals court to invalidate an Idaho law that would suppress undercover investigations of animal abuse and other illegal conduct at public or private agricultural facilities.

ABA is seeking feedback from booksellers who have used the Antitrust Action Kit to urge state or federal officials to investigate Amazon for antitrust violations.

Citing concerns about free speech, Rhode Island Gov. Gina M. Raimondo has vetoed a bill that would have made booksellers, newspapers, and other media criminally liable for the distribution of nude images without the affirmative consent of the people pictured.

ABA, AAP, and ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom have praised a Hong Kong bookseller for revealing details of his illegal imprisonment by Chinese authorities and for refusing to identify customers in China who purchased books critical of Chinese officials.

A speaking appearance by author Kate Messner was cancelled by a Vermont elementary school on June 6 because school officials feared that discussion of her new book, which includes a character who is a heroin addict, might anger parents.

Booksellers who haven’t already adapted the Antitrust Action Kit’s easy-to-use templates to ask lawmakers to investigate Amazon’s business model for antitrust violations are encouraged to do so now.

Despite protests from business groups, in Washington, D.C., the mayor's minimum wage increase proposal moved forward; in Cleveland, the mayor and city council president urged defeat of a city-only $15 per hour minimum wage.

ABFE Director Chris Finan looks back at the life of Rhett Jackson, a much-honored Southern gentleman who confounded people's expectations and always stood up for civil rights and First Amendment issues.

ABFE has joined the Association of American Publishers and other groups in filing a friend of the court brief in a lawsuit that could have a potentially crippling effect on the public debate of important subjects.