Simon Whaley’s Business of Writing: February 2024 - Every Penny Counts

Welcome to my February 2024 newsletter. I hope you’re making the most of this extra leap day! 

When I was a child, you’d find me at the library first thing on a Saturday morning. I would be returning last week’s batch of eight books and looking for another eight books to borrow for the week ahead.

When I was eight years old, something happened in libraries that would affect my life (for the better) as a writer. For it was in 1979 that the UK Government passed the PLR Act.

PLR, or Public Lending Right, began as an idea in Denmark in 1941. It was a scheme to recompense authors for the loss of income every time their book was borrowed from a library. Clearly, the author benefitted from a royalty sale when the library bought a copy of their book, but each subsequent borrowing by a library user was potentially a lost sale. 

Clearly, it’s a little more complicated than that, because as readers don’t have to pay to borrow your book they’re more likely to ‘take a risk’ and read it, rather than spend their hard-earned cash first to buy a copy to read it. There’s also an argument that library users who borrow books by authors they’ve not read before are more likely to buy their books in the future, if they enjoyed the one they borrowed.

Here in the UK, the PLR scheme monitors books borrowed from a sample of libraries across the country between 1st July and 30th June. (The sample changes each year.) I’ve just received my PLR statement for the period from 1st July 2022 to 30th June 2023.

For that period, every time one of my books was borrowed, I earned thirteen pence. To be paid under the scheme, authors need a minimum of eight borrowings. (The minimum payment is one pound.) Payments are capped at £6,000 to ensure that the big name writers don’t walk off with all the cash.

Thirteen pence might not sound a lot, but they add up. And over time, the payment from PLR can have a huge impact on the profitability of a book.

Take, for example, my The Positively Productive Writer. The first edition sold just over a thousand copies. Wahay! I have a thousand readers, you might think. But that first edition has been borrowed from UK libraries over four thousand times. (I like to think four thousand people have borrowed it, rather than one person borrowing the same copy four thousand times 😁.)

And while the PLR rate per borrow (thirteen pence) is not as high as the royalty rate the publisher paid me, all those borrowings mount up over the years. In fact, the PLR income for this first edition now makes up 35% of the total income from this edition.

PLR has other benefits, too. Some of you may know that I wrote a couple of The Bluffer’s Guides (The Bluffer’s Guide to Hiking, The Bluffer’s Guide to Dogs, and I co-wrote The Bluffer’s Guide to Banking.) Contractually, The Bluffer’s Guides take copyright in the text. However, I don’t need to be the copyright holder to apply for PLR. I only have to be the author named inside the front cover. So while I received a good payment for writing these (and it should be good, if you’re signing away copyright), I’m still entitled to claim the PLR money every time these books are borrowed.

Not only that, but The Bluffer’s Guide to Dogs was also released as an audiobook. Because I’m not the copyright holder, I wasn’t entitled to any more payment for that. However, as the author of the text, I’m allowed to claim a PLR payment every time someone borrows the audiobook from their library.

All these payments add up and, over time, product an extremely useful income stream.

Register Your Publication

As soon as your book is published, you should register the title and the ISBN with the PLR service. (Here in the UK, the service is now run by the British Library, which recently suffered a cyber attack. That means registering new titles is a little more difficult at the moment, but you can, and should, still do it.)

“But I’m self-published!” I hear you cry.

My Meet The Author stall at Telford Library in 2023!

Doesn’t matter. You still need to register your title. Both of my self-published novels were borrowed from UK libraries during the 2022-2023 period. If you use a service like IngramSpark to fulfil print-on-demand requests and you also use their distribution service, they will update the catalogues that libraries use to acquire books.

Getting Your Book Into Libraries

Libraries don’t buy copies of every book (more’s the pity). I bet they wish they had the funding to do so. Budget restrictions mean they’re careful as to which books they buy, not whether it’s traditionally published or self-published.

The best way of getting your books into libraries (whether you’re traditionally published or self-published) is to ask readers to borrow it from their library. This will trigger the request to the library to purchase a copy.

Another way is to donate copies to your local library. Over the years, I’ve been to many Meet The Author events in my local library, and I’ve always offered them a free copy of my books. (Obviously, this only counts if the PLR system is recording the borrowings from your local authority library, but over time, every local authority area is sampled.)

PLR around the World

Currently, there are PLR systems in the following countries:

• The UK

• Republic of Ireland

• Canada

• Noway

• Sweden

• Finland

• Germany

• Austria

• Belgium

• The Netherlands

• Israel

• Australia

• Malta

• and New Zealand.

In 2019, the US Authors Guild began lobbying for a PLR system of sorts for their libraries.

PLR money can’t be backdated, so the sooner you register your books, the sooner you’ll be eligible to be paid.

And if you borrowed one, or more, of my books from a library, then thank you! You helped my writing business, even though it didn’t cost you a penny directly (the UK scheme is funded by taxpayers).

South Warwickshire Literary Festival

Just a reminder that on September 21st 2024, I shall be running a travel-writing workshop at the South Warwickshire Literary Festival (in Leamington Spa). Spaces are limited to ten (tickets £18, but give access to other festival events too). In the afternoon, I shall also be appearing on an Author Q&A panel alongside Sophie Hannah, Alison May, Billy Ivory, and James Catchpole. For more details, visit: 

https://www.southwarwickshireliteraryfestival.com/

Until next month, keeeeeeeeeep writing!

Best wishes,

Simon