Protecting Your Work
In the pre-internet age, authors and artists could create great works; publishers could publish them and aside from a few spats over percentages, everyone got paid and no one worried too much about the future. In the digital age writers and artists cannot afford to take their eye off the ball. It has become all too easy to lose the rights to your own work. And it is ever more important to keep abreast of the trends and fads and the legislation that might affect your rights. But how can individual authors possibly keep up to date on all this stuff? When will they have time to write?
At Fantastic Books Publishing we take a 21st century view of the importance of protecting the work that you entrust to us. We license the rights we need in order to publish and market your book. We do NOT ask for rights that we don’t need. And we never ask for your copyright.
What does this mean in practice? To take a single example, in many parts of the world educational establishments pay a licence fee in order to be able to make copies for students of some of the works they own. These licence fees are collected by Collecting Societies and Reproduction Rights Organisations and through a worldwide network are returned to the rightsholders – the authors, the artists and publishers of the works in question.
For UK works, these licence fees are collected by the CLA
CLA – Copyright Licensing Agency
The CLA aim to obtain fair reward for authors, visual creators and publishers for the copying of their work. By supporting them in this way CLA plays a part in maintaining the value of their work and helps to sustain creativity.
The CLA then pays the authors, artists and publishers via their individual Collecting Societies, ALCS, DACS and PLS.
ALCS – The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society
The largest not-for-profit writers’ organisation in the world, these guys will protect your work globally and will hunt down lost revenues on your behalf. There is a fee to join but don’t run away yet, it is very modest and they deduct it from the first cheque they send you so unless you’re owed, you don’t pay! We would suggest joining the ALCS if you are a writer of any description.
DACS – Design and Artists’ Copyright Society
Established by artists for artists, DACS (Design and Artists Copyright Society) is a not-for-profit visual arts rights management organisation. Founding artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi, Susan Hiller and Elaine Kowalsky set up DACS nearly three decades ago to protect artists’ rights and ensure they are recognised both financially and morally.
PLS – Publishers Licensing Society
Thinking of becoming a publisher yourself? Then you need to join one of the highly professional publishers’ organisations in the world. PLS is dedicated to advancing publishers’ interests through protecting and strengthening the copyright framework.
In order that our authors get their fair share of such fees, we encourage them to join their local Collecting Society.
We also encourage our authors to join their professional bodies and trade unions. These are the organisations that fight for authors’ rights, that keep their collective eye on the ball of the fast-changing 21st century world of publishing, that allow authors the space get on with their writing confident their interests are being looked after.
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