Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The PLR is a form of compensation for authors for the fact that people can borrow their books from the library, rather than having to buy a copy themselves. It was introduced, in the UK, when changes to copyright law removed an author's right to refuse to have their book in the library system.
It's not a vast sum of money; an author receives about 6p (about US 10c) per loan, with a maximum payment to any one author of about £3000 in any given year (about $5000).
PLR payments go directly to the author; it's not paid to the publisher of the book.
I believe that most people would regard the PLR as a good thing. It exists in most western nations.
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I certainly like the idea of leaving out the publisher but I still think this is fundamentally wrong overall. Why not just purchase the book outright and loan it to whoever wants to read it until it wears out and has to be repurchased? I just don't see any reason to pay a "fee" if the book is purchased outright, you should be free to do anything you want with it other than make copies. If people like the book they can purchase their own copy.