Who is the Mugger, Pray, and Who the Mug? (fao UK authors)

[steepholm]

If you're a member of the ALCS - the body that licenses educational institutions to copy and use writing for academic purposes - you should probably take a look at this.

In brief, the Government is proposing to scrap all fees for educational copying, and hence all licensing income for authors. Since most journals do not pay their authors, and the amount of paid time officially allocated for research for academics* is about a quarter of that actually spent (judging by my own case), the annual cheque for £120 or so has been very welcome, not least as a reminder that someone out there is reading and using one's work.

It used of course to be said that academics were "paid in promotion" for the time they put into scholarship. Well, twenty-one years, two monographs, two edited collections, a scholarly edition, numerous articles, chapters and introductions, an international research project, and six novels later, I'm still waiting to see the truth of that one. Not that I'm bitter...

* Of course, by no means all the authors of material copied by universities and other educational institutions are paid to do research at all.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Deep joy.
It was always on the cards with this govt, of course. We can hope, but we don't have much clout, sadly.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I know!

Maybe I'll just give up writing, reviewing and research!

Sigh :o(

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I don't think we have that in the US. I've been paid for reprints of my material a couple times, but that came directly from the publisher. Once when an article of mine was used in a class, any cash payment would have been derisory; instead, I asked for (and received) an e-mail from the professor after the term, telling me how the discussion went. That provided the kind of emotional satisfaction you describe.

[sheenaghpugh]

This is really bloody annoying. ALCS are good eggs and have been one of my few steady sources of writing income. I might write to my MP, for all the good it'll do (he's a LibDem).

Only a blockhead...

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

...as Doctor Johnson said. I take great pleasure in the very little money I get from reprints and the like. The very little money. It gives me what Philip Pullman, in his great adult novel Galatea, calls economic reality.

Also, six novels? Where can I find one? (I think I know your name, but maybe not.)