This is a demonstration website. Authors International is a fictional organisation — every name, figure, date and quotation here was invented to exercise a content-management system.
Founded 1974

The trade association for working writers.

Fair contracts, collective bargaining power and a legal defence fund — for 14,200 novelists, journalists, translators and ghostwriters in 61 countries.

Join the association Read our positions
14,200
Members
61
Countries
38
National chapters
52
Years of standards work
What we do

Four things, done properly.

A writer negotiating alone has almost no leverage. The association exists to change that arithmetic — with standards, representation, money for the hard cases, and the company of people doing the same work.

Contracts & standards

The Model Trade Contract, now in its 11th edition, is the baseline our members hold publishers to — on reversion, accounting transparency and the moral right of attribution.

Advocacy

We take positions to legislatures and standards bodies, and we publish the evidence behind them. Our submissions are public, and so are our disagreements.

Legal defence fund

Members facing a contested reversion, an unpaid advance or a spurious infringement claim can apply for counsel. The fund heard 214 applications last year.

Craft & community

Regional intensives, a mentoring register pairing first-book authors with working novelists, and the annual Congress.

A contract and reading glasses on a walnut desk beside a green-shaded lamp and fountain pen
The Model Trade Contract

Eleventh edition, published March 2026.

Eleven editions in fifty-two years. Each one has moved a single argument from “unusual ask” to “standard clause” — and the eleventh does it for machine-training rights, which are now severable, time-limited and separately remunerated by default.

  • Rights revert automatically when a title is out of print for 18 months.
  • Royalty statements twice yearly, itemised by channel.
  • Machine-training rights severable and separately licensed.
  • Attribution survives assignment of the copyright.
What we argue, and why
Membership

Three ways in.

Dues are annual and fund the legal defence fund first.

Associate
$95

Working toward a first contract.

  • Model Trade Contract & clause notes
  • Contract-reading helpline
  • Regional intensives at member rate
  • Quarterly journal
Full member
$180

One published book, or 24 months of professional earnings.

  • Everything in Associate
  • Legal defence fund eligibility
  • Individual contract review, twice yearly
  • Voting rights at Congress
  • Mentoring register
Fellow
$340

By election. Sustains the fund for everyone else.

  • Everything in Full member
  • Standing on standards committees
  • Named support of the defence fund
  • Congress registration included
Compare in full
Congress 2027

Lisbon, 14–17 April.

Four days of standards votes, craft sessions and the Fellows’ lecture. Registration opens to Full members in November and to Associates in December.

Programme & registration
“I signed the first contract I was offered because I had no idea what was normal. The second one, I had the model contract open beside me and asked for six changes. I got four.”