it pays to belong

Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog know how strongly I feel about the importance of networking for writers. Belonging to writer’s groups and/or professional writers’ associations is critical. I belong to 7:
– a local writer’s guild and a local arts org to keep me locally connected and tapped into a variety of genres and the local literary scene;
– a national travel writer’s org which helps connect me to other travel professionals;
– a national freelance writer’s assn;
– a national union for freelance creators;
– a national assn for farm writers as I still love to write about the rural lifestyle;
– and a national assn specifically for book authors as that is where my professional path has taken me.

Toastmasters International is a marvellous group to belong to.

Each of these organizations has benefitted me in some way, and I hope that my membership has also benefitted the organization, whether it’s because I have volunteered for it, mentored a fellow member, helped raise the organization’s profile or simply helped its bottom line thru my dues.

Being engaged in volunteerism and self-improvement programs like Toastmasters International (I’ve been an active member for nearly 10 years) is also part of my daily life. Couple that with any other endeavour or organization that feeds or supports your passion for writing/creating in a positive fashion and you’ve created a recipe for success.

This week I’d like to give a salute to Access Copyright (AC), Canada’s Copyright Licensing Agency, for several reasons. I became an affiliate of  AC shortly after joining the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) in 1997. Thank you PWAC for being a founder member of AC and for encouraging me and all members to join. If I wasn’t connected to PWAC I still may not have known the benefit of becoming an AC affiliate. Do you?

In the second year following your FREE membership in AC, you qualify for an annual cheque. Most years it has been around $500 that each and every one of the roughly 8,000 creator affiliates have gotten. Some even received more for direct copying of their copyrighted work, but the cheque (direct deposit) I am speaking of has customarily been simply for being an affiliate member.

This year I got more than double that. Why? Because AC had taken on the challenge (at the board’s direction and recommendation from various independent consultants) to develop a formula through which each member affiliate would receive a portion of the annual distribution based on their own individual repertoire of published work.

That means that under the new “payback” system, I was compensated for the periodical articles (to which I retained copyright) that I have had published in numerous magazines and newspapers, the numerous photographs that accompanied those articles, and the books I have written (or contributed to if I retained the copyright and reprography rights to that work.) Next year I’m hoping my piece of the pie will be even larger as my first solo project as an author was published this year and not reflected in the current calculations.

Not everyone is happy with the new “weighting system.” But I don’t think anyone can dispute the fact that it is indeed more fair and reflects the original mandate of the collective: to distribute reprographic royalties to the rightsholders of copyrighted works.