Royalties due from Authors Coalition of America (ACA)

[sbay]

Does anybody have experience with the Authors Coalition of America?

I just received a letter from them claiming that it holds (a significant sum of) money from reproductive royalties that are due to me "from one or both of the following foreign Reprographic Rights Organizations: CAL of Australia and/or CopyDan of Denmark. This money was collected by CAL and/or CopyDan in their respective countries, in connection with photocopying visual materials you created either individually or as a coauthor". They are asking me to fill-in a W9 and a form verifying that I am the author in order to receive payment.

The weird thing is that in the letter they list a photo on my website that as far as I remember, I've never licensed nor sent out as a high-res comp. I suppose somebody could have taken my web image and used that as a low res picture.

My initial thought was scam but after looking at their website, they appear to be legit. Has anyone actually received a royalty payment from them?

Thanks,

Stephen

P.S. You can see if they are holding royalties for you at :
http://www.authorscoalition.org/individual_author_distributions/list.html

[Colorado David]

Do you have an agent or attorney who can make contact on your behalf?  It is possible that you received the email from a scammer who has included the website link to appear legitimate.  If I were you, I wouldn't simply reply to the email since the return email could be redirected to a scam site.  What they are doing is asking for your Social Security number.

[sbay]

Just to clarify, I was contacted via USPS mail and the return address that they want me to send the forms matches what's on the public website. I would use my EIN and not SSN, but I suppose there could be identify theft issues even with the EIN.

[bdkphoto]

The ACA is a legit organization. They are charged with distributing funds collected in Europe for reprographic rights. Here is some info from ASMP:

http://asmp.org/articles/authors-coalition-america.html

Good luck, hope you get a nice check.

[sbay]

Thanks -- I'm going to fill in the forms and send them in.

[thomasallen63]

I, too , was contacted by ACA several weeks ago. However, my notification arrived via email from Dorien Kelly - author and administrative assistant. I visited her website, checked her contact info and the email matched. I was a bit hesistant at first, especially when asked to provide m SSN. I downloaded the paperwork and completed it using my EIN and mailed it back. I still haven't heard anything in response. Will update when something changes.

[sbay]

Just as an update, I received my check in the mail today.

[thomasallen63]

I received mine in the mail on Friday. Should anyone else receive an email from ACA, rest assured - they are 100% legitimate!

[tom b]

CAL is an Australian copyright agency. Educational institutions (schools, universities, etc) use copyright materials under CAL legislation and authors, artists are compensated based on usage. In one school I taught in every photocopy had to be recorded for a term (approx 10 weeks) including ISBN, page number and number of copies. Obviously you can't take details for everything that is copied. That was at least 20 years ago. It would be more interesting these days. A friend used to get around AU$500 a year for photocopies of his blackline book on world flags.

CAL homepage.

Cheers,