Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Plus, of course, in most western countries, an author gets paid every time a book is borrowed from a library - the "public lending right". It's a strange anomaly that the US does not have a PLR.
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The problem with instituting PLR in the US is that it would benefit bestselling authors while causing libraries not to carry less popular authors (because the PLR payments would come from the same funds used to buy books). This is not the result anyone wants - and as my library alone purchased over 300 hardbacks of the new Tom Clancy, I don't think that many people feel that he's hurting so badly from library lending that we should pay him more and not buy, say, 20 books from lesser known authors.
In all but a few countries with PLR, the payment doesn't go to *any* author whose book is borrowed, but only to those authors with the correct nationality or who write the appropriate language. PLR payments in Canada only go to Canadian authors; PLR payments in Australia only to Australians. (This is understandable politically, of course, as these countries would otherwise send most of their PLR payments to Tom Clancy and other US bestselling authors.)
PLR payments in Scandanavia only go to authors who write in the relevant national language...although an American who writes in Danish, for example, would be eligible. UK PLR payments used to be limited only to UK authors, but have been expanded somewhat to EU authors in countries that pay UK authors a PLR in that country.
So in the vast majority of cases, PLR is really an additional form of state support for the national literature.
But not everywhere - Germany is one of the few PLR countries that actually pays *all* authors a PLR payment.