PLR Time for UK Authors

If you're a UK author registered for PLR, you can now check your earnings for 2010/11 on the UK PLR website. Just log in here and click on My Statement.

This year (July 2010 to June 2011) they are paying 6.05 pence per library loan, with payment due between 13 and 24 February 2012.

For those who don't know, PLR stands for Public Lending Right. The UK PLR Office distributes money to UK authors based on the number of times their books have been borrowed from public libraries in Britain in the last year. This money is paid to authors as compensation for their presumed lost royalties on sales.

All UK authors are eligible for PLR (even if they don't currently live in Britain), but you do have to register with the UK PLR Office first. If you're a UK author with at least one published book to your name, therefore, you should sign up immediately to get what is due to you.

Non-UK nationals cannot claim from the UK PLR Office, but many other countries (though not the USA) have schemes in place to compensate writers for library lending. As I discovered in my recent interview with Ruth Barringham, Australia has what appears to be quite a generous program, though payments are based on the estimated number of copies of an author's book in libraries, not total loans. For more information on PLR schemes worldwide, visit the PLR International website.

In many countries there are also reciprocal arrangements to compensate non-nationals for lending in the country concerned. In Britain this is co-ordinated by ALCS (the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society), and UK authors should also register separately with them. ALCS also pay out photocopying fees to authors, incidentally.

I always find it interesting to study my PLR statement. One message that comes across very clearly in my latest one is that public libraries are cutting back on buying new books. By far my highest-earning titles for PLR are those published 5 to 10 years ago. My recent titles have fewer loans and some none at all, suggesting that not many libraries have them in stock. But even my oldest books, published up to twenty years ago, are still being borrowed in some libraries. Those copies must be pretty dog-eared by now!

Over the years I have made literally thousands of pounds from PLR payments; in the case of some books I have earned more from PLR than I have in publisher fees or royalties. So if you're a UK author, it is definitely worth taking the few minutes needed to register yourself and your book/s at the UK PLR site. Otherwise, you really are leaving money on the table!

Photo Credit: Stacks by Nrbelex on Flickr. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Licence.