Public Lending Right at 30

The PLR Act, which came into force 30 years ago on 22 March 1979, stands as a landmark in the history of authors’ rights in this country. It took years of tough campaigning by authors to convince government of their case that they should have a legal right to payment for the free lending of their books by public libraries.

Many authors contributed to the campaign but it was the Writers Action Group (WAG) led by Maureen Duffy and Brigid Brophy that finally achieved success in the final weeks of the Labour government in 1979. In addition to recognising PLR as a legal right separate from copyright, the Act created the new position of Registrar to manage PLR.

The Act laid down that payment would be determined by how often an author’s books were lent. And funding would come from central government – nowadays via the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – and not from library budgets as once feared by the library community.

Three years later, in 1982, the rules by which the new system would be administered were incorporated in secondary legislation – the PLR Scheme.

Looking back over the last 30 years we can see that the basic principles of the British PLR system remain unchanged. The Scheme’s coverage has expanded, however. It is not only writers who may apply for PLR now – illustrators, translators, editors and photographers who have contributed to books lent out by public libraries also qualify for payment.

And improved technology makes it feasible for us to collect loans data from a much wider and more representative sample of library authorities than the 16 branch libraries that provided the data on which the first payments in 1984 were based.

Predictions that the numbers of authors registering for PLR would hit a peak and tail off have been proved wrong. If anything, the number of first-time applicants each year has increased, with 1,400 new authors registering last year in time for the February 2009 payments. Over 40,000 authors have registered since the Scheme’s inception.

In the month before the annual PLR payments go out, registered authors are sent a statement detailing how often each of their titles has been borrowed and how much they will receive in payment. For many authors the book loans data is fascinating, providing feedback on the popularity of their books with library users across the country, and a welcome morale booster in the depths of winter. This loans data is now also available electronically for users of PLR’s online registration service.

Internationally there are now 28 countries with PLR systems, some of which – Germany, France, Austria and the Netherlands – make payments to UK authors via ALCS. Other countries are committed to following suit in the coming years. We have actively encouraged these developments and are happy to make our know-how available to countries setting up PLR systems for the first time.

Looking to the future we are thinking about how the PLR legislation might be adapted to reflect the changing ways in which libraries now operate and the varying formats in which authors’ works are made available to the public.

Currently, payment can only be made for loans of printed books. So loans of “talking books”, the audio versions of the printed word, do not qualify for payment. Also excluded are e-books, the use of authors’ works in electronic format, which are now appearing in libraries. The PLR Scheme provides a trusted model, which could be adapted to monitoring the use of these alternative formats and remunerating authors.

Another facet of the legislation that we would like to look at is the level of detail it goes into in dictating how we manage the day-to-day operation of the Scheme. Its prescriptiveness was seen as necessary in the early days of setting up the operation but has become burdensome as we seek to adopt more efficient ways of operation to keep costs down and take advantage of new technologies.

The same technologies also offer opportunities for us to cooperate more closely with ALCS colleagues in the services we provide to authors. In areas such as online registration we are keen to explore the potential for providing a single internet gateway to simplify the process for authors keen to sign up to both our organisations.

The next 30 years of PLR promise to be as busy as the last!

How do writers register for PLR?

You can apply by asking the PLR office (01642 604699) for a form or you can visit the website and apply online. Registration is open to authors living in the UK or in any other European Economic Area country (European Union Member States, plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein).

The annual cut-off date for registrations is 30 June, with payments being made in the following February.

The current rate per loan is 5.98p.

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