Help us lobby Government
The ALCS, in partnership with the Society of Authors (SoA) and the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), is calling on the Government to maintain funding for the Public Lending Right (PLR) scheme.
PLR, under which authors receive 6p when a book is borrowed from a public library, is funded by the Department for Culture Media and Sport. Over the last three years, while public spending has been buoyant, PLR’s allocation has fallen by 3%: over 10% in real terms.
While accepting that DCMS has been instructed to reduce its budget, we ask the Secretary of State to recognise that the £7.5m spent on PLR gives effect to a legal right and is not a subsidy, providing working writers with a modest income when their books are read by library users free of charge. PLR is particularly important to authors whose books are sold mainly to libraries and to those whose books are no longer in print but are still being used.
The PLR Office has already cut its running costs substantially. Any further reduction in PLR will have an immediate and detrimental effect on ‘front line’ payments to authors.
This petition will be shared with both the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt as well as with Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture at the end of the summer. Ed, a former Secretary of the All Party Writers Group, is a keen supporter of PLR. So we are asking writers to act quickly and sign your names to this statement now.