My yearly report of my UK library book loans is happening earlier this year, thanks to some reorganization courtesy of the British Library, with the Public Lending Right figures for 2020-2021 releasing this month.
I strongly believe that libraries are the lifeblood of many communities and a vital resource that builds lifetime readers, and as always, I want to show my appreciation to everyone working hard in our libraries across the UK and Ireland, and to all the people working to keep them running.
If you’re not familiar with how the PLR pays back writers (and also editors, illustrators and translators), here’s my annual explanation:
If you are a writer/editor/illustrator and a resident of the UK or Ireland and you ever need a reason for donating your books to the library – on top of all the obvious ones like promoting reading and supporting this valuable and increasingly undermined public service – this is it.
The PLR is a system where people who’ve worked on books that are in public libraries get a little revenue each time somebody borrows them. It’s a way to repay writers who won’t be earning a royalty from a sale in a bookstore.
The PLR pays a nominal fee from a communal ‘pot’ of money based on how borrowed you were (around 11p each time) and in the interests of fairness, you can’t earn more than around £6000, so the big name authors out there don’t get to hog all the money.
The PLR and our libraries are constantly under threat from government cutbacks, so if you are a writer or a reader, please do your bit to help support both as best you can.
Here’s my Top Ten Library Loans of my novels for 2021 (with 2020’s position in brackets)
1 (-) Rogue
2 (1) Shadow
3 (2) Ghost
4 (3) Exile
5 (4) Nomad
6 (8) Garro: Weapon of Fate
7 (5) The Buried Dagger
8 (-) Fear Itself
9 (6) Ghost in the Shell
10 (-) The Dark Veil
Rogue, the 5th in my Marc Dane thriller series, was number one with a bullet this year, joined the other books to cover the top half of the chart with just under 29,000 combined loans across all titles and formats!
Also new in this year were two of my Star Trek titles, the Star Trek Discovery novel Fear Itself and the Star Trek Picard novel The Dark Veil and #8 and #10 respectively, while my a couple of my Horus Heresy novels held the mid-chart and my co-written novelization of the Ghost in the Shell movie doggedly clings on at #9!
Thank you once again to the PLR team at the British Library, and to everyone who supports their local libraries and borrowed my books in 2021!
