The Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) was set up to recoup money for authors when schools, universities etc use their copyrighted material.
How annoying it is therefore to read in The Australian newspaper that more money (ie public institutions’ and authors’ money) goes on salaries at the agency then goes towards author payments.
CAL’s chief executive, for example, earned more than $350K last year, while two other staff members received salaries of between $250K- $299K and $200K-$249K respectively, and five more got between $150K and $199K and a further 21 between $100K and $149K.
All this in a country where the average writer earns less than $20K per year. Sure we do it for the love of it, and we don’t need to eat either!
See the article here.
I am quite stunned that the head of CAL earns more than a third of a million a year.
That is a disgrace (a very fine novel by JM Coetzee, who probably has earned a third of million from his novel, but then again, he did win a Nobel Prize).
You pay people a lot of money because you need their financial skills. Collecting copyright monies does not require great skills. It requires bookkeeping 101.
Disgusted of the Blue Mountains!