What makes authors think they’re exempt?

toby forward

I propose that every time a writer gets to the £6,000 mark then that share should be halved, with half going back into the pot and the other half being lopped off the total paid through PLR. That way the biggest earners would get nothing and the smallest earners would not lose anything.

Fergus Pickering

I wouldn't feel too ashamed, Susan. Authors are no wiser than the rest of the people. It is not wisdom and goodness that marks out writers, but an ability to write. People in the 'creative industries' tend to luvviehood, that is many of them, most of them are socialists, champagne socialists, beer socialists, cuppa tea socialists. But being a socialist does NOT mean giving to the poor, far from it. Being a socialist means compelling somebody else to give to the poor. And writers, as a class, are rather ignorant of the world; they don't live in it; they live in a world of their own. My favourite 20th century author, P.G. Wodehouse (though no socialist) would be a case in point. Edmund Wilson, who paid no income tax for years because he didn't think he had to, is another. You are a writer and you are also interested in the political world. But I rather think thst most writers are not like that.

Ronnie

Susan.

Authors are not public servants. They do not produce work under commission to the local authorities who offer libraries to the reading public.

Authors write and publish their work through agents and publishers, they are private producers of a product that remains much in demand and they are perfectly entitled to the royalty payments that justly accrue. The cap on payments is a cheap deal that permits breach of copyright at minimal cost.

It's awfully nice having your books borrowed across the land but as a business model, it sucks. We need to talk...

wrinkled weasel

Unless you are interested in publishing it, Susan, mine is going straight to ePub, DRM free.

Everything has changed. All artistic material is now de facto free of charge. Authors, rock stars and artists must now find alternative ways to make money. Sorry, but you can only demolish a finite number of Spinning Jennys. The internet has no limits.

I have bought about half a dozen works of fiction, that are post 19th Century, in the last two years. The rest are either, very cheap, or free.

There is no going back. Unless your book is optioned by Warner, you are stuffed.

Fred Taylor

PLR is an extremely modest recompense for the fact that one book (often a paperback), bought by a publicly owned library, generally at a discount, can be circulated among many dozens or hundreds of readers without charge, thus effectively robbing the author of large amounts in royalties. Seems reasonable to me. The actual amount per book has been declining for years anyway, and the overall total is tiny, in the low millions. I think Susan, sensible as she generally is, has been too rich for too long.

SUSAN HILL

FRED TAYLOR. Non sequitur. As I said above, I know that I am lucky but authors are still just justified in asking for special exception to be made.
Secondly.. define rich.. and I mean RICH, as you say, not just 'comfortably off.' Define it by giving me your idea of how much p.a. I would be earning (after tax) for you to class me as rich and also how much capital I should have in the bank ditto. Then I will tell you if, under your criteria, I am rich.

SUSAN HILL

Above should of course read 'authors are still NOT justified..'

PixieMum

Authors do not benefit from sales of books from secondhand bookshops or from charity shops.

We buy books, both new and secondhand, partly because I cannot race through a book like Bill Bryson's At home in 3 weeks. (renewal of loan is possible only if there is no waiting list), partly because we like to have books on our shelves and refer back to them time and time again.

I am pleased to see that "Howard's End is on the landing" is available in paperback so now I will buy it from my local independent bookseller. I have read it in hardback, borrowed from the public library, read quickly and returned but it is a book that one should own and read slowly and savour.

Many of our secondhand bookshop/charity buys are long out of copyright so it is win win for the shop or charity. Does anyone else's husband collect really old maths. books?

Regards, PixieMum

hadrian

Many of us must confess to being bibliomaniacs, never mind bibliophiles!
As one on holiday at the moment, I have spent hours on end trawling charity shops, rummage sales and second hand book shops, more often than not acquiring stuff I doubt I'll ever get the time to do more than glance through but just occasionally swooping upon some definite gems that make the little show all worthwhile- and the combined ire/despair of one's spouse!
Whilst I wholly agree with your take on our current economic woes I am not convinced it follows that authors should be deprived of at least some, very paltry remuneration for all the pleasure they have toiled to afford to their fellows. The labourer is worthy of his hire! The internet should not alter that very fair and basic principle. ( And fabulous though it be for locating otherwise elusive gems, it is no real substitute for the joy of jumbled bookshop browsing!) Euphoria inducing finds thus far are old Armada Malcolm Savilles..anyone remember the the Lone Pine Club and the Jillies series?! Also a very nice first of Mrs De Winter by one S.Hill!!

Ronnie

'I write for pleasure and publish for money.'

Vladimir Nabokov

toby forward

I have signed the petition, with no shame or guilt at all, and I have passed it on to others for them to sign. Writers are paid the least of all in the industry for their work. Agents don't have to sit for a year tapping out the words. Publishers take the lion's share. Booksellers make the money in a matter of seconds for the transaction. Amazon - well, they just haul it in. Librarians get regular money for their work. Every penny of PLR should be safeguarded, except that which goes to the already-highest-earners. I refer readers to my post at the beginning of this blog.

Fred Taylor

What is a non sequitur? The question of income? Sorry to touch the English money nerve, but you are clearly very well off by any definition, and I suspect this affects your attitude in such matters, consciously or not. I'm not interested in your actual numbers -- I also hate the way the Guardian refers to anyone with an above average income in that hideous envious way as "rich". The fact is, however, that the money you might get from PLR is clearly not important to you. It is to others.
By the way, Susan, however much you earn, you deserve it for your talent and industry. That is not the point at issue. But when we get comfortable ... you know, high mindedness of the sort you propose is altogether easier.

As for the general argument about PLR, Ronnie put it perfectly. No further comment needed.

SUSAN HILL

Fred. My point though was not that some authors did not find the PLR payment extremely welcome - not to say needed. So do most people on low pensions (public or private), benefits, low income jobs etc. They are going to feel the pain, everyone is, so authors are simply not a special case. And as PLR is only 6K tops, not many people are going to be living on that - most authors have day-jobs - they have to, just as most actors do.
The thing that escapes most people's notice is always that the more you earn the more tax you pay so the more you are contributing to the public finances already.

Ronnie

Susan.

With a huge amount of respect. What do your agent and publisher think of your revolutionary 'writing for free' notion?

Fred Taylor

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. PLR is not a hand-out or a wage, it is -- as Ronnie points out -- a (rather inadequate) compensation for loss of income due to the government lending your books around for free to anyone who asks. And no, I suppose anyone who is really hanging out for a few quid come the beginning of February should have a day job, but all I can say is, after the cheques to HMRC we have to write on 31 January, the little that rolls in through BACS from those nice folks in Stockton-on-Tees is very welcome.

They'll probably freeze PLR, and OK, but the danger is they'll get rid of it altogether and present it as a populist measure.

You know, it just occurred to me that under current circumstances the most certain way to continue earning a living as a writer would be to take up playwrighting. Old-fashioned
live performance, you see. People pay their money at the door. No pirating, no illicit recording, no photocopying, no free library loans. You either pay to see it or you don't see it at all. Genius!

SUSAN HILL

Ronnie... writing for free ? Of course I don`t. When people buy my books I get royalties. I get an advance on royalties. PLR makes up a tiny proportion of my income because libraries now buy so few books. Why do you think I was proposing I write for free ?

KB

Perhaps authors could kill two birds with one stone and organise a petition to close all public libraries.

Ronnie

Because, Susan, you are being awfully romantic about books being borrowed and read without any real payment being made. I return to my point that authors are not public servants, to be bound by civil services conditions.

Apart from the money aspects of this, I'm not comfortable with any notion that writers are in the service of the state and should buckle down.

SUSAN HILL

Ronnie.. I don`t understand any part of what you say.Whoever thought authors were part of the state ? I didn't.

SUSAN HILL

FRED. Problem with playwriting is the number of people it takes to get the manuscript onto the stage. If I write a book, the people who get money are the publisher and the bookseller - and me (oh, the printer too.) You would be amazed how many people get money out of a play - the actors, for example, get far far more than I do per week for The Woman in Black, and then there is the producer, the director, the theatre-owners, the agent...it's even worse in films. The writer on those really is at the bottom of the food chain.
But nobody has taken my original point. In an ideal world, when the country is not in such dire financial straits and when everything is rosy and we are not in such debt, of course authors should get PLR. the more the better. But we are not in ideal times and my point simply was that given the present cuts everywhere else, cuts in real terms to the standard of living of everyone, authors have no reason to plead special exemption. That is what I was saying.

hadrian

I know it's slightly perverse, non writers telling an author how authors should act in their professional capacity. However, I think the point some of us are trying to make is that the writer is worthy of his hire and if people wish to borrow items he has provided then there is no reason we should expect to get that service provided entirely free of charge!
I know one authoress who, with some forty odd titles under her belt, told me ruefully that she gets about an annual income of £3,000 from Library lending.
I quite take your point about no section of society having the right to expect exemption from the economic hardships upon us, however I know of few trades or professions where that translates into actual CUTS in charges- not just freezes- for the same services rendered. I suspect few fair minded people would regard authors as demanding special treatment or something undeserved by this action.

toby.forward

Susan, with respect, I HAVE taken your original point and I have outlined a scheme where cuts would be made but only to the very highest earners, not across the board.

David Bouvier

Re the PLR itself it is very simple - either current law makes it entirely proper to lend a book to another person having bought it - in which case authors are receiving PLR as a gratuity, or the current law would allow publishers to refuse to allow libraries to buy to lend and their choice is whether they license the book for libraries or not. In which case any publisher can choose to negotiate individually with libraries for more money or hope that the increased individual sales will compensate for any loss of readership and reputation. Which would make the PLR an institution trying to do this efficiently for the majority of low-paid authors.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if e.g. Mills and Boon decided to demand direct library lending license payments.

But as to Susan's question: no - there is absolutely no reason to ring-fence the PLR from freezes or cuts.

presumably a publisher could choose to refuse to sell to libraries

Ronnie

Susan, I think Hadrian has expressed my point better than I did.

In effect, PLR is a part of the market in which authors operate. If PLR is reduced or frozen unilaterally, I see no reason why authors, as suppliers, are obliged to accept it gracefully.

Fred Taylor

SUSAN. Well, there's the hoary old Hollywood joke about the starlet who was so dumb she slept with the writer. And isn't the scribbler always somewhere near the foot of the food chain? Anyway, long may The Woman in Black run. And if the government freezes PLR for a year or two, I don't think most of us will scream too loudly.

Judy Astley

It seems you have already given us a PLR cut, Susan. The maximum PLR payout is currently £6,600; not £6,000.
I think the library system is getting amazing value out of us for the money. I can see no case for the amount being reduced.

SUSAN HILL

JUDY. Sorry, my error. OF COURSE PLR is amazing value, of COURSE I think we should get it and more. I am not disagreeing with any of that. I am saying that at the present time, when Cameron's new baby will be 18 before the country is out of debt, when everyone is going to suffer thanks to our desperate need to balance our books again and repay ludicrous borrowings, authors cannot expect to be exempt from the pain or have any more right to special consideration than any other group. That is all I am saying. People - not only you - somehow see what they think I wrote not what I actually did write.

toby forward

I'm beginning to think that I'm invisible. I've posted three comments on this thread, including a suggestion about how PLR could be adapted to current circumstances, yet my posts have been ignored. Am I wearing too little deodorant?

SUSAN HILL

TOBY FORWARD. In other words, bring down the top rate by half. Good idea. The trouble is that not many earn the top rate... so it would only add up to a few thou, divided into the masses who earn between £5 and £500... thousands of them, so they'd only get a few pence.

toby forward

Susan, thank you for repyling. But perhaps I wasn't clear in what I said. My suggestion is to lop off the top earners, split the money - half back into the pot and half slashed from the fund. Then, the top earners get no PLR, everyone else gets more and the goverment gets its cut.

Michael Jecks

Toby and Susan - I think you guys are missing the point. I'm a moderately successful author, but many others aren't so lucky. There are all too many authors who now depend on the PLR payments to keep them solvent. You, Susan, may be able to live on your earnings and not worry about finances. That puts you in a tiny minority of writers. Most of us don't have that luxury. Not because our books don't sell - with second hand bookshops, ebay and all the other outlets, often our books are selling many times - but we don't get paid for them.

There are many authors who have to hope for good PLR to be able to keep working. Often the top PLR payments will go to authors who aren't even moderately well off.

We will not be exempt from any of the pain in years to come. Publishing is going to become tougher, and for authors forced to accept falling incomes due to retailers demanding massive discounts when the authors' royalties are dependent on 'net receipts' to the publisher, PLR is not a luxury, it's a lifeline.

JohnAnt

I wonder if we need to rethink the whole moral premiss of the Public Lending Right. I can easily understand how PLR came into being: books were expensive (RPM saw to that) and not easily available; wages were generally low; large numbers of the poorer-off needed free public libraries, particularly the baby-boomer generation of avid young readers. So it was like a socialized benefit, and in a post-war world in which reading was seen to be a good in itself, it looked a noble cause, so authors accepted the deal - although it was a contentious issue even in the 1950s.
Now everything has changed. If there is to be a public lending right, it really should be freely negotiated between the publishers and authors and the government, not assumed as of right. It seems to me that the moral benefit is now outweighed by the authors' disadvantage. Why should the right to read the latest airport bonkbuster be tax-subsidized in any case? And why should the author of a vital reference work be paid a pittance for the free and probably uncredited use of his/her work? We wouldn't expect a composer to donate his work to the masses for free use.
I agree that we all have to share the burden of deficit reduction, but why share this particular burden, whose social usefulness is virtually extinct?
It comes down to the law of property - it's an author's right to decide what to do with his/her property.

James Hawk

I think the top earners must be lop-off thus the half will go back into the pot and half slashed from the fund.Then the top earners get no PLR,everybody would get his right share and the government will also get its cut.Thanks

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James Hawk

Ebooks

randr

Author does not a public servant. He is a messenger for society.