The Authors Guild has yet to write the book on Paul Aiken, its Executive Director

The recent news that the United States Dept. of Justice sent civil investigative demands to various parties in the proposed $125 million Google Book Search Settlement offers an opportune time to read about the background of one of the more outspoken participants in the legal conflagration: Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild.

A main character in the future of books, e-books and audiobooks, Paul Aiken also starred in the recent drama over the text-to-speech feature in Amazon’s Kindle 2 electronic book reader. In fact, Aiken et al. have been fighting legal battles with publishing and media companies for more than a decade. But if you’re interested in reading a biography of Mr. Aiken, you’ll have to conduct most of the research yourself, because the Guild has yet to write the book on its Executive Director. Consider:

• According to the website of the Authors Guild, Paul Aiken is the Executive Director. The website has no biographical information or photograph of Mr. Aiken. He is simply the Executive Director, who, presumably, maintains an office in the Guild’s headquarters at 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY.

See what I mean? Sadly, the Guild hasn’t adopted the finer points of 21st-century nonprofit governance. However, thanks to Google, the Guild’s archenemy, you can use this information to build your own biography of Mr. Aiken:

• According to his personal profile on the professional networking site LinkedIn, Paul Aiken earned a B.A. in Science from Lawrence University in 1981 and has served as Executive Director of the Authors Guild for 16 years, from 1993 to the present.

• According to a biographical sketch posted on the website of the Authors Registry, Paul Aiken, an attorney and vice president of the Registry, has served as Executive Director of the Authors Guild since 1995. Interestingly, there is no photograph of Mr. Aiken, despite the fact that there are photographs of eight of the other nine directors and officers.

• According to a biographical sketch compiled for a 2006 American Independent Writers’ panel discussion on the Google Print project in which Paul Aiken participated: “A 1985 graduate of Cornell Law School, he has been the executive director of the Authors Guild since 1996. Aiken testified before the White House Task Force on Copyright and the Internet, participated in the Conference on Fair Use and, in the past year, testified on the topic of fair use before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and on the need for a small claims court for copyright infringement before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. His commentary on the publishing industry has been published in Publishing Research Quarterly and The New York Times.”

• According to the July 1993 newsletter of the Textbook Authors Association, Paul Aiken was a staff attorney for the Authors Guild.

• According to the database of attorneys maintained by the New York State Unified Court System, Paul Daymond Aiken of the Authors Guild graduated from Cornell Law School and was admitted to the Bar of the State of New York in 1986.

• According to the Authors Guild’s 2008 IRS Form 990 in GuideStar, Paul Aiken of 30 East 9th Street, New York, NY, earned $87,500 in compensation as the Guild's Executive Director.

• According to the Authors Guild Foundation’s 2008 IRS Form 990-PF in GuideStar, Paul Aiken of 30 East 9th Street, New York, NY, earned $37,500 in compensation as the Foundation’s executive director. The Foundation, a tax-exempt private foundation established by the Authors Guild in 1972 and headquartered at 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY, improves “the condition and welfare of American authors by providing them with education, financial and informational resources.” Surprisingly, the website of the Authors Guild Foundation does not mention Mr. Aiken.

• According to the Authors League Fund’s 2007 IRS Form 990-PF in GuideStar, the Fund paid $20,000 in legal fees to Paul Aiken, Esq. The Fund, a tax-exempt private foundation established by the Authors Guild in 1936 and headquartered at 31 East 32nd Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY, provides “loans to authors in financial need” and “aid to indigent authors.”

• According to an obituary published in Wisconsin's The Portage County Gazette in the year 2000, Paul Aiken of New York, NY, is the youngest son of the late Daymond J. Aiken, a longtime math and physics teacher who taught in Illinois and Wisconsin. The obituary indicates that Paul Aiken is married to Stefanie Rosenfeld.

• According to the Google Book Search project, the late Daymond J. Aiken, Paul Aiken’s father, co-authored several mathematics text books published in the 1950s and 1960s.

• According to various bits of information gleaned from electronic sources, Stefanie Rosenfeld, Paul Aiken’s wife, worked as a book cover designer for Harper Collins and Puffin Books/Penguin Group. One of the covers Ms. Rosenfeld designed: A 1997 reprint of the classic novel The Outsiders (1967), by S. E. Hinton.

• According to a photograph posted on the website of the Patrick McMullan Company, Paul Aiken and Stefanie Rosenfeld attended an Authors Guild function on May 21, 2007.

Best of success in building your biography of Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild! If you find out what Mr. Aiken was doing between the years 1985 and 1993, please let me know. Thanks!