PLR in the UK

united kingdom


Background	Registration of Authors & Books	Sample Book Loans
Rate Per Loan

Background

PLR was established by the Public Lending Right Act 1979 which conferred on authors a right `to receive from time to time out of a Central Fund payments in respect of such of their books as are lent out to the public by local library authorities in the United Kingdom'. The Act followed a thirty-year campaign by authors to receive payment for the free use of their books in libraries. Under the Act funding is provided by Central Government and payments are made to eligible authors by reference to the number of occasions on which their books are lent out from a selected sample of UK public libraries. To qualify for payment authors must apply to the Registrar of PLR who maintains a register of eligible authors and books, and supervises the administration of PLR. The Act established PLR as an intellectual property right, entirely separate from copyright.

Having thus established the principles of PLR in the primary legislation, the Government then produced the PLR Scheme, which passed through Parliament in 1982. The Scheme sets out more detailed rules for the operation of PLR in the UK and covers such areas as author and book eligibility, selection of libraries and payment calculations.

In October 2010 the government announced its intention to abolish the PLR body and to transfer responsibility for management of the PLR Scheme to another existing public body. The decision was taken as part of the government’s wider review of public bodies. No announcement has been made yet on which body will be taking over responsibility for PLR.

The Registrar is responsible to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport for the administration of PLR and the Scheme is funded through this department. The Registrar is advised by a Management Board. The Board consists of an author, a publishing specialist and a senior manager from a government-funded body in the DCMS sector. The Board advises the Registrar on all aspects of the operation of the PLR Scheme and on future developments such as the potential impact of including new media like ebooks in PLR.

Registration of Authors and Books

PLR is open to any author living in a European Economic Area country (ie EU States, plus Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland).

The original 1982 Scheme made provision only for authors. Since then, however, the Scheme has been extended and contributors such as compilers and abridgers, illustrators, photographers, editors and translators may apply. Editors and translators are eligible for basic 20% and 30% shares respectively in a book's PLR. This share can be increased in line with the extent of an individual's contribution.

Under the PLR Act only books are eligible for PLR. The Scheme further defines eligible books as `printed and bound' publications. These are deemed to include paperbacks.

Since registrations began in September 1982 about 1,500 new authors have been added to the Register each year, and an average of 15,000 shares in books registered. There are no signs of this annual increase in numbers diminishing. We now have over 34,000 authors registered, of whom around 24,000 qualify for a payment.

Since 2003 authors have been able to apply using our online registration system and in May 2007 we launched our new and improved online registration service. In addition to providing a more streamlined system for registering books, the new service allows users to view and amend previously registered titles. Users can also access and update personal or payment information, view their annual payment statements and communicate with the PLR office in a secure and confidential environment. Online registration has proved very popular with our authors with 78% of book registrations being made online and 73% of new applicants applying online.

Sample Book Loans

Under the 1979 Act payments are determined on the basis of book loans from UK public libraries. School, college and other publicly funded libraries are not covered by PLR. Computerised loans data is collected from a sample of libraries located in each region of the UK. A minimum of 30 local government library authorities participate, providing data on around 17% of book loans nationally. To ensure fairness and accuracy at least seven of the authorities are replaced each year.

Rate Per Loan

Registered authors are paid once a year - in February - for the loans of their books during the previous PLR loans year which runs from 1 July to 30 June. For a book to be eligible for payment it must be registered by the close of the loans year. At the end of the year the PLR computer arrives at an estimated number of national loans for each registered book by first establishing a regional estimate of loans, and then adding together the regional figures. For this purpose library authorities are grouped as follows: English counties; English metropolitan authorities; Greater London; Wales; Scotland; N Ireland. The process works as follows:

(i) add together the book loans from the sample libraries in a region;

(ii) establish from the published library statistics the total book loans for all the libraries in the region.

(iii) calculate what percentage of (ii) is represented by (i) and apply this factor to give a regional estimate for each sampled book loan.

For example, in the case of Wales, book loans from PLR sample libraries represent about 5% of all Welsh loans. To arrive at a regional estimate, sample loans therefore need to be multiplied by a factor of 20. Once this formula is applied in proportion to each region, the regional estimates for every book are combined to give a national estimate. The total number of estimated loans of registered books is divided into the PLR fund after the deduction of PLR's running costs to give a Rate Per Loan. In 2011 this was 6. 25 pence per loan.

On average 10% of the Fund has been required each year for operational costs. It is important to keep running costs to a minimum to free as much as possible of the Fund for authors' payments.

The payment made to an individual author becomes a simple calculation once the Rate Per Loan and author's total estimated loans are established. An author whose books have been borrowed 50,000 times will receive 50,000 x 6. 25 pence = £3,125. Any author earning less than £1 from loans of all his or her books does not qualify for a PLR payment. Regardless of the size of their payments authors have found endless fascination in the details of the loans of their books that are provided by the PLR office each January in advance of payment. This has been an important, and probably unanticipated, benefit of the PLR system in the form of feedback to writers on the popularity of their books in libraries.

To ensure that the most successful authors are not allowed to `scoop the pool' the Scheme provides for a maximum payment. This was set at £5,000 in the original Scheme but was raised to £6,000 in 1989 to take account of inflation and again in 2007 to £6,600. In 2011, some 230 authors qualified for the maximum payment. The maximum payment threshold frees around £1 million for redistribution to other authors.

(updated JUNE 2011)