I've had the email below from the UK Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). This is an organisation which collects copyright fees for authors of journal articles and books. It's well worth being a member if you are an author.
They are looking into ways of maximising bloggers' income. The proposal is that if you are a member of the ALCS, fees for blogs would go to them, and then passed on to be to you. They say this would produce higher fees.
They want to assess interest in this proposal from those who write medical and legal blogs.
Fees for your Blog
ALCS is in discussion with an organisation that provides syndicated access to content on blogs. This company aggregates different blogs and provides its clients with content grouped according to their pre-defined preferences. By providing a collection of relevant blogs to this company, ALCS can secure a much-improved rate of return for their authors when compared with the rates paid to individual contributors. Any fees collected would then be included in an author’s regular ALCS payments. The syndication company is particularly interested in content for the medical and legal sectors and we note from our records that you have received ALCS fees in respect of journal articles targeted at these sectors.
At this stage we are simply looking to evaluate the level of interest amongst members in such a service. If you would be interested, please respond to the following email address: ben.pearson@alcs.co.uk providing a URL link to your blog. Alternatively if you do not write a blog yourself but know of a colleague or associate who writes medical or legal blogs, please pass this email on to them.
With thanks and best wishes,
Owen Atkinson, CEO ALCS
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