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Have You Claimed Your Free Money?
How to get paid twice for your articles in print periodicals
I love this time of year. March is when UK writers (and some overseas writers) get their free money from the ALCS. Free money? Oh, yes!
Where does this free money come from? Well, it’s all to do with secondary rights, and there are organisations around the world that collect income generated by these secondary rights, which they then distribute to writers who are entitled to it.
In the UK, it is the ALCS, the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society, that administers this scheme for published (print) articles, books, as well as some television and radio scripts. There are 55 similar collecting agencies in other countries around the world, so if you live outside the UK, then check out this Wikipedia page lists several of them.
(Alternatively, the lovely people at ALCS say they’ll try to point you in the right direction. If you visit their FAQ page and then select the question I don’t live in the UK, can I still join the ALCS? there’s a contact us link you can click on and they’ll try to help you that way.
What are Secondary Rights?
When you sell an article or a short story to a print magazine (the publication MUST have an ISSN — an…
