Tag: authors’ licencing and collecting society

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Money for Nothing, Join for Free

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.

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A Trickle of Income

In 2003, The Killers released their first single Mr Brightside, but it didn’t take off commercially until 2004. Despite the gap of nearly two decades since then, the single has spent 307 non-consecutive weeks in the UK Top 100, accurate to Friday 25 March 2022. This type of sleeper hit has a literary equivalent called the midlist.

A midlist book in a publisher’s catalogue won’t shift a lot of units at any one time, instead consistently selling enough copies to justify keeping it in circulation. But is this a good or a bad place to be? It depends on who you ask.

Publishers typically like the midlist because it gives them a wide pool to choose from, not to mention bringing in reasonable passive income for minimum marketing. On the other hand, writers can find it difficult to promote their work because those marketing budgets are geared towards new releases.

Realistically, most published novels will end up on that list, with only a few breaking out as household names. But the aforementioned passive income can also benefit authors. I’ve had a few short stories and poems published between five and ten years ago, and they bring in secondary royalties from when books are lent or copied.

If you’ve had anything published with an ISBN, I urge you to register with the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. There’s a one-off membership fee taken from your first payment, but subsequent ones are made every six months with no further deductions.

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It’s Fun to Stay at the ALCS.

Some time ago, On the advice of Writing Magazine, I joined the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). If you’ve ever had an article, script or book published, or if you’ve made a contribution to a book, this not-for-profit organisation collects and pays the secondary royalties. Two-thirds of the money is generated by photocopying, scanning and digital copying.

English: A small, much used Xerox photocopier ...
English: A small, much used Xerox photocopier in the library of GlenOak High School in Canton, Ohio, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lifetime membership of the ALCS costs a one-off fee of £36, but you don’t have to pay anything upfront as it’s deducted from your royalty payments. Likewise, you won’t pay anything if they don’t collect any money for you.

The payments are sent out twice a year, and the March one arrived last week. I was surprised to find I was in profit from the three works I’d registered up to that point.

I debated whether or not to reveal the actual figure. I’ve decided to do so on this occasion by way of encouraging others to register. After the £36 fee was deducted, I was left with £84.12. This isn’t a massive sum, but it’s money that would otherwise have been given to someone else or never have been paid. By contrast, The Purple Spotlights EP has only earned me a total of £7.10 from sales, most of that from the first month after release.

I therefore urge you to join the ALCS today and potentially start receiving those missing payments for your work.