09.09.10 - Victoria Gallagher - The Bookseller
Authors including Philip Pullman, Joanna Trollope, Sarah Waters and Jacqueline Wilson have signed a petition urging the government to maintain the current level of funding for Public Lending Right (PLR) in the upcoming spending review.
Over 4,000 authors have now signed the statement which says any reduction to the PLR "will have an immediate and detrimental effect of the 'front line' payments to authors". The petition has been arranged by the Society of Authors and supported by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society and the Royal Society of Literature. The groups state that PLR funding has been subject to "significant cuts" in the last three years amounting to over 10% in "real terms."
Mark Le Fanu, general secretary of the Society of Authors, said: "Authors are proud of Britain’s Public Lending Right scheme, which is internationally admired and very tightly run. It provides them with modest payments when their books are borrowed. The funding has already been cut back. Authors are anxious that it should not be reduced still further."
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A letter from Baroness James, president of the Society of Authors, was delivered to Hunt today informing him that there is "great anxiety" among writers about the funding of the Public Lending Right scheme, which gives authors 6p per loan up to a cap of £6,600 when their books are borrowed from a library. "Authors greatly value the modest income they receive when their books are read by library users free of charge," she wrote. "Many writers whose books are no longer in print rely on their annual PLR payments, which they see as a form of pension." PLR Ebooks
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