Is the Authors Registry, from the Authors Guild, legitimate?

I wrote a book a few years ago for O'Reilly called Laravel: Up and Running. It's been an incredible experience and I'm proud to be a published author.

However, as most authors will tell you, especially those who worked with traditional publishers, you don't write a book to make money.

The story

So when I got an email telling me there was an entity named The Authors Registry, and they collected money for authors' work published overseas and copied in lending libraries there, and they had a $600 check waiting for me and all I had to do was provide my social security number and address and everything else... I was skeptical.

My checks

I looked up the organization, found its web site, and contacted them. Yes, they said, the person who had contacted me was legitimate, and yes, they really did have money for me.

I still sat on it for a few weeks. I wasn't fully comfortable. So I looked into the organization more, and found they share a mailing address with The Authors Guild, who was also listed as one of their founding organizations. And to their credit, the Authors Guild has documentation online showing they're an actual legitimate non-profit. I emailed them, and yes, they said, Authors Registry is also legit.

... still not enough

But I still wasn't satisfied. I looked up "Authors Registry" on Twitter, and it was almost exclusively people just like me—asking "is this thing legit?" I contacted a few and none had ever used it, citing my exact same concerns.

What the hell

I finally figured, what the hell, all of our information has been released to the broad internet dozens of times. Social security numbers are hardly secure anymore.

So I filled out the forms, emailed them in, and tried to just chill out.

... success!

And... a few weeks later... a check arrived for just under $600! I deposited it, it cleared, and there have so far been no signs that my personal information has been hacked.

So why am I posting about this here?

I hope that the next person who gets one of these emails will type something into Google like "Is Authors Registry legit" and find this page and get a bit more confidence than I had when I first sent my vital details off into the ether.