Public Lending Right loans - 2006/2007

Once a year I, like other registered authors, receive a statement from the kind people at PLR (Public Lending Right) informing me of how many people have borrowed my books from libraries over the past year. For each loan I earn a few pence which, at the end of the day, add up to a fair few pounds (now that I have established a bit of a back catalogue of publications).

The idea behind the PLR is to reimburse authors for what are effectively lost earnings from people borrowing books rather than actually buying them. There is a limit to how much an author can receive from the PLR and this year some 242 writers are being paid the maximum amount of £6600 (and I hasten to add that I am not one of them).

PLR is one of those things I always forget about and which comes as a pleasant surprise after the inevitable financial excesses of Christmas. What was pleasing for me this year was that I have had more loans of my books than ever before and so have earned more than in previous years.

It also pleases me to see that books like the Sonic the Hedgehog gamebooks (which I co-wrote with Marc Gascoigne twelve years ago) are still popular and being borrowed alongside my newer publications. My most borrowed title was 'Conquest of Armageddon' with 1394 loans while three publications failed to register any loans this year.

And things should only get better from here on in as by the time my next PLR statement comes round in January 2009 (gulp!) there should be another four or five titles listed.

So, until next time...