Year after year, there’s one topic I revisit on this blog, and that’s encouraging readers to join the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS).
For nearly 50 years, the organisation has been collecting royalties on behalf of authors. Unlike primary royalties, such as book sales, these are from secondary uses of creators’ works, including: photocopies, cable retransmission, digital reproduction and educational recording. Members receive a bank payment in March and/or September every year, depending on the types of work registered and how often the works have been requested.
If your work appears in at least one publication with an ISBN, you’re almost certainly eligible to join. You’ll need that ISBN, plus a few other details about the work.
Be aware of the one-off membership fee of £36, which is deducted from your first payment rather than paid upfront. There is also a commission of 10% taken from each annual payment, which allows the ALCS to continue to fund its work.
This year, writers received a total of £47.5 million. This is not shared equally, but is based upon the number and type of works registered. It almost certainly won’t be enough to live on as a passive income, except perhaps if you’re a prolific author.
Rather, it’s an acknowledgement of the principle that authors should be paid when a transformative or derivative work is made using someone else’s source material.
Gavin Cameron 