Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the remuneration rate paid to authors under the Public Lending Right as a result of the impact of the covid-19 outbreak on (a) authors' incomes and (b) publishing industries supply chains.
Public Lending Right (PLR) is a legal right to authors for payment from a central fund for eligible book contributors when their books are borrowed from public libraries. It applies to physical books, e-books, and e-audiobooks. Illustrators, photographers, translators and editors are also compensated for the loan of their books from public libraries.
The British Library administers the PLR Scheme and recommends annually to the department the revised PLR rate per loan. The recommended PLR rate per loan is determined by the annual registered loans figure for the relevant year and the available PLR central fund.
The PLR rate per loan was increased in January 2021 from 9.03 pence per loan to 9.55 pence per loan and the department will shortly consult on a revised PLR rate per loan for the PLR Scheme year 2020/21, to be introduced in January 2022.