Membership Fees

Membership of the Publishers Association is open to businesses which the Council deems to be bona fide publishers of books, journals, ebooks, or audiobooks in the United Kingdom. When considering applications for membership, the Council is required to satisfy itself that the following criteria have been met:

• The applicant should be engaged in the United Kingdom in the business of commissioning, producing and issuing original works of copyright in a form and quantity suitable for sale to the general public;
• The applicant by virtue of its business practice must be deemed to be more than just a subsidy or vanity publisher;
• The applicant must have an office in the United Kingdom; and
• The applicant must be able to demonstrate that the United Kingdom market is a principal or significant focus of the applicant’s publishing activities.

Cessation of membership
A member in Bands 4-5a who has not notified the Publishers Association in writing by 30 September of the preceding year of its wish to resign from the Association remains liable for the coming year’s subscription.

Consolidation of turnover
Publishers in the same group (as defined for accounting purposes in the Finance Acts) are entitled to consolidate their turnover for subscription purposes. When subscriptions are consolidated in this way, only the company which pays the subscription is entitled to vote at a general meeting or election.

Membership of publishing groups
Our Memorandum and Articles of Association provide that, except as determined otherwise by the Council in any particular case, all the associated parts of any company or group which the Council considers to be under common control, and which are eligible for membership, must be in membership of the Publishers Association. In exercising its discretion under this paragraph, the Council normally requires that companies which are required to consolidate their accounts by the appropriate legislation shall be regarded as being under common control, but exceptions may be made for companies in a group that do not have common management links between them.

Financial year for subscription purposes
For subscription purposes, the financial year in respect of which turnover must be declared is the member’s accounting year that terminated during the twelve months up to September of the previous year for Bands 2 to 5a and the closest financial year for those in Band 1.

VAT
Subscriptions are liable to VAT at the standard rate.

Publishing businesses acquired in the previous year should be included in the total turnover declared.

For the purpose of calculating your subscription, the turnover that must be declared includes all publishing revenue associated with the company. This includes, but is not limited to, the following categories:

• Book sales: Home and export sales (including sales to overseas officers and agents and subsidiary companies) of all physical books, ebooks, and downloadable audio, as well as book and/or printed sheet sales to book clubs, apps, serialisations, remainders, and all other special sales.
• Royalty and subsidiary rights income: This includes the publisher’s share of all income deriving from royalty and subsidiary rights of a physical book, ebook, or downloadable audio.
• Net income from digital platforms, databases, and research services: To include revenues derived from platforms and databases as well as analytical services such as text and data mining.
• Scholarly, academic, or professional journals or articles: For subscription purposes, a journal or article is defined as one that exists mainly to peer review and publish the results of original research, discussion, analytical papers, and associated materials for an academic, professional, technical, or scholarly readership. Not everything it will publish will be peer reviewed.