I love libraries; I mean, it’s a place full of books you can read for free. Just that sentence alone makes me smile. Libraries have always been a fixture of my life since I was a little kid, and now I’m older and actually writing books that get put in them, I feel even more indebted to them. Books are something everyone should have access to, and and I’ll fly that flag every day.
Of course, libraries also help out jobbing authors in more ways than just getting their books in front of people. There’s this thing called the Public Lending Right; the gift that keeps on giving to writers, editors, illustrators and other folks involved in making books happen.
Here’s my annual public service announcement on the subject:
If you are a writer/editor/illustrator/etc, 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 authors who’ve written books that are in public libraries get a little revenue each time somebody borrows their works. It’s a way to repay writers who won’t be earning a royalty from a sale in a bookstore.
The hardworking folks at the PLR office pay a nominal fee based on how borrowed you were – and in the interests of fairness, you can’t earn more than around £6000, so the big names don’t get to hog all the money.
The PLR and our libraries are under threat from government, so if you are a writer or a reader, please do your bit to help support both as best you can.
Meanwhile, I would like to thank everyone who supported their local libraries and borrowed my books. Here’s my Top Ten Library Loans of my novels for 2017 (with 2016’s position in brackets)
1 (5) Nomad (paperback, hardcover and audiobook editions)
2 (-) Exile
3 (-) Fear to Tread
4 (3) Peacemaker
5 (1) Deadline
6 (4) The Poisoned Chalice
7 (-) The Latter Fire
8 (-) Black Light
9 (-) Icarus Effect
10 (6) Cast No Shadow
It was great to see my Marc Dane novels placing highly (3 editions of Nomad at the front, with Exile close behind for over 14,000 combined reader loans!) My Horus Heresy story Fear to Tread and Doctor Who tale Peacemaker both slipped one slot to 3rd and 4th places, and after 2 years at the top, my 24 novel Deadline got bounced out down to 5th place. My Star Trek books got some love, dominating the bottom end of the Top Ten, and there was an unexpected reappearance of my Deus Ex tie-ins too. I was also very pleased to see that although they were at the bottom of the list, 17 years on from when I wrote them my Sundowners YA steampunk westerns are still being read!
