Advice - Photography / Copyright / Get paid for copying and lending

Photographers are entitled to extra money from companies and organisations that copy their published work, whether traditional photocopying or by newer means. To be sure of receiving this, and other payments for such "secondary uses", photographers need to register with the collecting society DACS. This is free to NUJ members. See the link below.

How these payments generally work is that libraries, press offices and others who do bulk copying pay a licence fee to the collecting society. This arranges a survey of a sample of licensees, to work out statistically how to distribute it. Efforts continue to deliver the share of this money due to newspapers' contributors. DACS also distributes money collected for secondary uses in other countries.

DACS collects and distributes certain payments due to photographers by default. Any photographers who want to opt out of this arrangement should contact DACS (linked below).

Public Lending Right

If you are an author of a book - and you are if your photographs appear in one - and the book is supplied to libraries, you are entitled to claim Public Lending Right to compensate for loss of sales due to it being lent by libraries. See "Public Lending Right", linked below.

ISSN

In order to claim for work that appeared in a magazine or "journal" you need to give its International Standard Serial Number (ISSN). This uniquely identifies a "serial" - the librarian's jargon for a newspaper, magazine or journal. An ISSN is an eight-digit number in the form 0000-0000. (Annoyingly, the ALCS website wants you to enter it without the hyphen.) It "should be displayed in a prominent position on every issue". An online edition may have a separate ISSN to a print edition, and editions in different territories should have different ISSNs.

In the UK ISSNs are managed by the British Library and there is an international ISSN lookup tool: see the links below. It's probably easier to update your own records of where your work has appeared as you go.

ISBN

In order to claim for work that appeared in a book you need to give its International Standard Book Number (ISBN). This uniquely identifies an edition of a book. The preferred form is a 13-digit number; older editions may quote only a 10-digit number. These may or may not be broken up with hyphens.

UK publishers and self-publishers buy ISBNs from the Nielsen ISBN store; there are many lookup tools, such as www.bookfinder.com - see the links below.

ISNI

You may see mention of an International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) - a new-ish standard for unique identifiers for authors (or illustrators or photographers...) You do not, yet, need to give this to claim payments from a collecting society. We believe these identifiers are being assigned automatically behind the scenes. For UK authors, the British Library offers a "portal" to add and update ISNI entries - see the link below.