We’ve been working with the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) for many years now, and we wanted to share a little bit about what the ALCS does for authors. We strongly encourage our authors to sign up as a member and register all of their books. The photocopying licence money belongs to the authors, and if they don’t claim it, the money will just go unclaimed!
The ALCS is a not-for-profit membership organisation which works to protect and promote authors’ rights. It represents the interests of authors and safeguards their intellectual property rights. ALCS collects money owed to authors for secondary uses of their work such as photocopying, scanning and digital copying. This income is from licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), set up jointly by ALCS and the PLS to license reproduction rights on behalf of its member organisations. Institutions such as universities must pay a licence fee to be able to use the material in this way.
Authors should register all their books and any journal articles written in the last 3 years with ALCS so that they receive any money they may be due. Anyone who has written a book or journal article can join ALCS. ALCS now has over 80000 members, many of whom are academic authors. You can apply to join online at www.alcs.co.uk. Lifetime membership is £25 and this is deducted from the first payment so you don’t have to pay anything if the ALCS doesn’t collect any money for you.
The ALCS also campaigns on behalf of writers to ensure that they receive fair payment for the use of their work and to raise awareness of intellectual property and copyright.
To keep up-to-date with ALCS you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook.
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