570. Intellectual Property

"If you don't own the master or the copyright, you're not in the music business." - Quincy Jones.

It is the intellectual property that provides your residual income. If you hold copyright, patents or a percentage clause in a contract, then you will earn royalties on work you have done. Never sign a contract to perform unless there are points in it. i.e. an agreement to pay you a percentage of the gross income the book, play, film or song produces.

The beauty of this type of arrangrment is that you do the work once but continue to get paid over and over again. This is called automatic income because you receive it automatically whether or not you work.

In some juristictions (Ireland, for example), royalties are exempt from income tax.

You may want to know why residual income is important. The answer is that it forms the basis of your pension fund, i.e. what you have to live on once you stop working.