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ALCS again!

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  • They sent me an email yesterday - not had a September payment before (it's very welcome :) ) - according to my statement this one is apparently for magazine photocopying.
  • Mine is STAGGERINGLY tiny. I can't understand it, just one of my books, out last year and used extensively in schools has sold 8,000 copies... it makes NO sense.
    Will payment for those be included this time? They seem to work a long time in arrears.

    I've had a March payment for books and magazines for years. This is the first September payment I've ever had.
  • Same here, firsy Sep payment ever. I had no books in this one, just a couple of old magazine articles and £5.05 from CBeebies.
  • Had email from ALCS. Apparently you have to have been granted a license by the Copyright Licensing Authority to be counted in the monies distributed, and the ALCS then takes a sample of places in one area to calculate monies given to authors from the people who are license holders, and as the area changes each time then the monies change and for what they have been received changes. It has nothing to do with what the thing is, article, magazine or book.
  • Rather like how the plr rates are calculated then?
  • Yes. you'd think in the day and age of computers you could get people just to enter what they've used.
  • I'm unsure how libraries could possibly police the photocopying of books and magazines. I always confirm it's okay and then they leave me to it.
  • Actual photocopying isn't monitored so it's not quite like plr. Certainly for e.g. magazine stories it makes no difference if your story was actually copied or not. More to do with the fact that the licence gives people the right to copy it. Then it's all averaged over all the stories they might have copied. I just make sure my stuff is registered and take what I'm given.
  • LizLiz
    edited September 2018
    That's all you can do. And it would be too complicated to do it yourself...
  • I've got a payment this Sept which was a big surprise because I didn't last Sept. As my book contributions are only 1 or 2 short stories in an anthology I didn't really expect more than a few quid at most so was chuffed that it was well over 100.
  • That's interesting, DB, and since I have stories in anthologies it prompted me to have a look at the ALCS website.
    You can do a royalty search to see if anything has already been collected for particular books so I searched our One Word Anthology and various other anthologies I have stories in - all of them came up blank, so I guess there's no point in joining. :(
  • That's interesting, DB, and since I have stories in anthologies it prompted me to have a look at the ALCS website.
    You can do a royalty search to see if anything has already been collected for particular books so I searched our One Word Anthology and various other anthologies I have stories in - all of them came up blank, so I guess there's no point in joining. :(
    I suppose it depends on how they determine the royalties. Do they really know all the individual books that were copied in libraries, or do they distribute a general pot across all those who have registered books on ALCS?
  • I always thought the latter, but then how does the royalty search work? Hmmm.
    Maybe they are too old to come up. Magazine stuff has to be registered within 3 years of publication - is book stuff the same?

    There was an historic payment for some old magazine stuff this Sept DB - if you check your statement it might have been for that rather than the books. My payment this year was for that, with nothing for books, and I don't usually get a Sept one.
  • I registered my contribution to the One Word Anthology as soon as I could when the paperback version became available years ago. Needed to put down how many contributors there were, so I get a small portion.

    I don't usually get a September payment and my statement said it was magazine stuff.
  • I always thought the latter, but then how does the royalty search work? Hmmm.
    Maybe they are too old to come up. Magazine stuff has to be registered within 3 years of publication - is book stuff the same?

    There was an historic payment for some old magazine stuff this Sept DB - if you check your statement it might have been for that rather than the books. My payment this year was for that, with nothing for books, and I don't usually get a Sept one.
    I've just checked the statement and in small lettering it does mention that the payments were for magazines between Sep 13 and Dec 15. Does anyone know why they're paying out for a period several years ago? At least I now know it's nothing to do with my anthology contributions!
  • Yes, that's the one.
    They do sometimes get late payments coming in from licences - not sure why - and you sometimes get a bit of that in the March payment, but it's not so obvious there.
  • The one thing we do know is that it's all very unclear and seemingly random!
  • The one thing we do know is that it's all very unclear and seemingly random!
    The main thing is that it's money coming our way! :-) Discovering ALCS a few years ago, and then DACS, has been fantastic for giving a secondary payment for my writing work.
  • That's nice , just saw a payment in my bank never had one in September before. :)
  • I never thought of joining DACS but I guess I could as an illustrator of my Pluto books.
  • Yikes! Do it, Lou!
  • Reminder to get all your magazine articles/stories published Jan 2015 to Dec 2017 updated to ALCS by the end of this month.
  • One week left for this year to get all your Jan 16 to Dec 18 publications in.
  • Hmm, I didn't realise it works like that and thought it covers anything published in the 3 years to end of November. So anything published in 2019 won't be included in payments until March 2021?
  • I can't remember waiting three years. I know I could add work going back three years, but I'm sure my first payment arrived the following March. 
  • I add things when they come out so they don't get missed and will get the payment as it comes round.

    I thought anything from 2019 would be paid in 2021.
  • How strange. I really can't remember waiting that long to receive the first payment - although it was yonks ago.
  • I got payment the year I joined.
  • Yes, that's right. You don't have to wait 3 years. You will get payment the first year if you also add older works. You just don't get anything for publications in the last full year before the payment. It's based on the date of the publication, not the date it was added to the account, provided it is not so old as to have expired.
  • That makes sense. Just looked back and the first batch I ever registered covered two years. 
  • This is a pain. All the articles I get published next year and logged on my ALCS account won't get payments until 2022!
  • So long as you have checked you have listed all items published between 2016 and 2018 before the end of November you will get some payment in 2020 and from then on it will be a welcome bonus when it arrives. The same applies for DACS if you are registered with them, although many now get their image payments through ALCS instead. I have had editors hold on to work before publishing for longer than two years and not on pay on acceptance terms, either. 
  • TBH, DeneBebbo, if you keep feeding your ALCS account you won't have a break from receiving payments moving forward and it is, as Wordy says, a welcome bonus.
  • TBH, DeneBebbo, if you keep feeding your ALCS account you won't have a break from receiving payments moving forward and it is, as Wordy says, a welcome bonus.
    Yeah, I log articles soon as they're published. The ALCS and DACS money is definitely a welcome bonus for very little effort.
  • Thanks for the reminder. Updated mine last night.
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