Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society

About two weeks ago, I read a Medium article about the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). The organization ensures that writers receive money when someone copies or uses their work. The article explained that the organization collects funds owed to writers from around the world and distributes these funds to them twice a year. The author of the article (An American professor teaching in the UK) shared one of her statements, showing a payment of £576.74 Pound Sterling ($726.73 USD) that had been collected on her behalf.

What’s the catch? Well, they’re definitely not doing this for free. Authors must pay a one-time lifetime fee of £36 ($45.36), and the organization takes a 10% commission on the funds they collect on your behalf. Additionally, ALCS supports UK authors only, regardless of where they live. Read their website to learn more and you can access the website here. 

According to the website:
“We pay those who write or contribute to books, scripts, and articles – writers, editors, translators, adaptors, and more. As well as sole authors, we pay writers of chapters, essays, and poems included in books.”1  

I’m not an author, but I know many in my WordPress community who are, so I wanted to pass this along for you to investigate. If this is something you’re interested in, you can explore it further. 

I looked into similar organizations in the United States but couldn’t find any operating at the same level as ALCS. The ones I found focus primarily on music rights. 

Here’s a Wikipedia link listing copyright collecting societies worldwide. Explore and maybe you can recover some funds for all the beautiful work you do.

Keeping this post short today. I just wanted to share what I found with my community, and I hope it helps!

  1. https://www.alcs.co.uk/how-it-works/tell-us-about-new-works/ ↩︎

22 thoughts on “Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society”

    1. Thank you, and I agree. But it would be nice if a groups of people who work at the U.S. Copyright Office would take this on as a part-time job and start a company that does this. I’ll bet they would make a lot of money.

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    1. You’re welcome, Cindy. If we had something similar in the U.S., all you would have to do is add your book information, and they would handle the work, collect the money, and pay you after subtracting their commission. I hope UK authors are taking advantage of this.

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  6. Thanks for sharing, Edward! It’s always good to know! More protection and acknowledgment of copyrights are definitely needed. And if there’s a payment for the intellectual and creative works, the better. Financial return from one’s creations is the cherry on top of the cake! Have a peaceful day, my friend; may there be light and blessings on your way*

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    1. You’re very welcome. Authors deserve to get paid every time someone uses their work, especially when it’s incorporated into someone else’s work for which they receive payment. Thank you for reading, my friend, and have a wonderful weekend.

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    1. Yeah, I looked for one, but the ones I found were all focused on music. I need to read the U.S. Copyright Office website to see if they have something there. It would be great if we had a society like the one in the UK.

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  8. Thanks for this information, Edward. Although it’s not quite the same, it still irks me when someone copies others’ blog posts to their site as if they wrote it. It’s happened to me a few times and I know I’m not the only one. When people ask permission and then credit the author of the post, that’s a different thing. This likely wouldn’t fall under the category you’re describing.

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