There are a couple of perennial topics on this blog. One of them is public speaking, and the other is banging the drum about joining the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society.
The ALCS was founded in 1977 to ensure writers are given fair payments for any of their works that are copied, broadcast or recorded. The organisation is the literary equivalent of the better-known PRS for Music, which does a similar job for musicians.
This year, £35,038,136 was shared between 111,415 members. It’s important to note this is not an equal share, but calculated according to the activity of each author’s work. You can bet that bestsellers like Richard Osman and Julia Donaldson took a sizeable chunk of the pie.
My payment this year was around £133. It’s not enough to live on, of course, but it’ll pay my energy company for nearly two months. What’s more, that’s from just nine publications spanning as many years.
So how does an author grab a piece of the action?
The ALCS has recently suspended online applications for reasons unknown, but will accept a postal version. Visit the How to Join page to download and fill in the form.
You don’t need to send any money. Instead, the organisation will deduct a one-off fee of £36 once you’ve earned that figure in royalties. This grants you lifetime membership. Payments are collected for a variety of different visual works, so check the website for details of these.
To start earning, you’ll need to enter the ISBN of each work you’ve had published. This is the 13-digit string of numbers beside the barcode, or 10 digits if the book was published before 2007. Remember to include every publication where you receive credit, regardless of its age.
After all that, it’s just a matter of maintaining your list of works on the website and awaiting the annual payment.
Gavin Cameron 
It’s good you’re getting paid to write and the £133 sure helps towards expenses. I’ve often dreamed of making money through my blog if I posted more the deeper topics of life like I used to although it’s hard enough to get people to read my journal for free lol, never mind paying to read my thoughts 😉
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Yes, it’s hard enough to attract readers, never mind getting them to pay for it.
Actually, that’s why I don’t post much of my prose or poetry here, as it makes it impossible to send to publishers. If they know it’s available freely online, there’s no incentive for them to print it in a book and charge a cover price.
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