Philip Pullman leads challenge to publishers over e-book library lending

Authors led by Philip Pullman are demanding higher payments from publishers for their works to be lent by libraries as e-books, as part of a battle over how revenues from digital reading will be carved up.

Philip Pullman is spearheading a campaign for higher payments to authors from e-book lending Photo: Clara Molden

By Christopher Williams, Technology, Media and telecoms Editor

The Telegraph -  12 Jun 2013

The Society of Authors, of which Mr Pullman is president, has this week written to major publishers including Bloomsbury and Random House to insist on higher payments whenever an e-book is sold to libraries.

“New media and new forms of buying and lending are all very interesting, for all kinds of reasons, but one principle remains unchanged: authors must be paid fairly for their work,” said Mr Pullman, author of the bestselling children’s fantasy series His Dark Materials.

“Any arrangement that doesn’t acknowledge that principle is a bad one, and needs to be changed. That is our whole argument.”

According to the Society of Authors, publishers are wrongly treating revenues from online libraries as one-off sales rather than licences.

The dispute highlights the complications for the publishing industry around copyright law as digital sales increase and is part of a wider campaign by authors who fear their incomes will be threatened by the shift. According to the Publishers Association, consumer e-book sales were up 134pc to £216m last year.

The question of how authors are paid for physical book lending has been settled for decades. They get ongoing royalties from every library loan via a Government scheme called the Public Lending Right. It is estimated to account for a total of £6m in authors’ income annually. The initial sales of physical books to libraries meanwhile deliver around £3m to authors per year.
There is currently no equivalent of the Public Lending Right for e-books borrowed on library premises or remotely via increasingly-popular, web-based services such as OverDrive. It handles the technical side of e-book lending for many public libraries and in the first ten months of 2012 made more than 576,000 e-book loans.

Based on the sales and lending split for physical books, the Society of Authors claims the without any Public Lending Right for e-books, its members lose out on two thirds of equivalent digital library income.
In absence of a Government scheme it is now arguing that, under their contracts, publishers are in fact selling OverDrive and others a licence to lend e-books, rather than making a simple sale. This would mean the authors’ share of revenue would rise from typically 25pc to typically 50pc.

“It seem that you have been using the wrong basis for remunerating authors on licences of e-books for library use,” wrote Nicola Solomon, chief executive of the Society of Authors, in a letter to publishers.
She said authors aimed to work with publishers to find a mutually acceptable solution without the need for court action.
Bloomsbury and Random House representatives were not available for comment.