It’s a new year and a renewed opportunity to catch up on your finances and ensure you are benefiting from all avenues of income open to you. Public lending rights and the Authors Licensing and Copyright Society are two areas that are often missed by authors, but it can make a big difference!
Public Lending Right
PLR is a scheme designed to provide authors with a payment based on the number of times their books, or e-books, are borrowed from public libraries. The amount payable is not high (about 8-9p per borrowing) but it can mount up. The maximum payable to any author is currently £6600 a year.
PLR is particularly useful to authors whose books are out of print but still being read.
To qualify for PLR, one should either be entitled to royalties, whether owning the copyright or not, or be a named contributor on a book’s title page. Each book should be registered and each new edition where it has a different ISBN.
The British Library website contains a good deal of useful information at www.bl.uk/uk/plr/registration-service
Authors Licensing and Copyright Society ( ALCS )
The annual subscription to ALCS of £36 is often worthwhile as they collect ”secondary income” from sources all over the world such as charges for photocopying, digital reproduction, cable retransmission and educational recording.
Details are available on www.alcs.co.uk/what-we-do
Anyone who has ever written anything and had it published or broadcast can join.
Pension contributions
This is just a reminder that in order to qualify for tax relief in 2020/21 pension contributions must be paid by 5 April 2021.
In many cases, contributions not paid in previous years can be brought forward and paid now. This is an area that requires specialist advice
If you have any questions or if you would like to have a more detailed discussion about your own circumstances, please get in touch – our partners are here to support you.
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