Public Lending Remuneration Introduced in Irish Libraries

I highlighted this story on the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild‘s blog today. I’m re-posting it here to ensure there is a wide dissemination of this information.

Finally, Ireland has established a Public Lending Remuneration (PLR) Scheme in its Libraries. The crucial piece of information is that writers (in the EU only) must register with An Chomhairle Leabharlanna (The Library Council) if they wish to receive remuneration for their novels/texts being loaned in libraries in Ireland.

Here’s the skinny:

The Galway Library blog reported yesterday that Mr. Michael Kitt T.D. — Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government — recently signed Regulations which provide for a Public Lending Remuneration (PLR) Scheme in respect of the public library service.

The Scheme, which will be administered by An Chomhairle Leabharlanna with the co-operation of the local authority library service, will provide that qualifying authors, whose books are loaned by public libraries, will receive remuneration in respect of such loans.

Under PLR, a payment will be made to registered authors, resident in the European Economic Area (EEA), in respect of books registered with the PLR and loaned by public library authorities.

Authors are required to register with An Chomhairle Leabharlanna, providing an address and bank details, etc. Details of books registered will be entered into an author/title database and checked against bibliographic databases for accuracy. Authors are required to register each title and each edition of each title for which they are claiming payment.

Public library authorities will provide An Chomhairle Leabharlanna with loans data, giving details of the number of times each book in their collections is issued during a specified period.

At the end of the PLR period, the loans data from each authority will be matched to the author/title data and a list of authors whose books have been loaned, and the number of issues of each, will be produced. Authors will then be notified of the amount they are to receive and payments will be made.

Payment will be made to authors in respect of their contribution to the work for which the payment is due. The scheme will allow for the percentage of the payment to be made for various levels of contribution, which include, inter alia, contributions such as sole author, joint author, editor, translator, and illustrator.

The rate of payment will be set each year and will be the product of the total number of loans for which a payment is due, divided by the total amount available. Illustrators, photographers, editors and translators may all register for PLR (providing they are named on the title page of a book).

Edited to add: Looking at our Minister’s Press Release on the matter it appears that UK authors may not have to register:

As the majority of books issued by Irish public libraries are also issued in U.K. libraries, an agreement on exchange of author and title data on authors who are registered with both schemes has been agreed in principle with the U.K. authorities.

However, it remains in the interests of authors – especially those living in Europe, but outside the UK – to ensure they are properly registered.

Here are the links to the Application Form, as well as the Information Leaflet, which detail who is eligible and the mechanism for remuneration.