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Old 03-31-2009, 04:52 AM   #32
Moejoe
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Posts: 5,100
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: South of the Border
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
With the greatest respect, you asked "how does borrowing from a library differ" and I answered you. The payment under the "Public Lending Right" scheme is, to be specific, 5.98p every time a book is borrowed, up to a maximum of £6,600 a year. An author receives the payment if their payment is £1 or more - ie corresponding to a minimum of 17 check-outs across the entire UK library system in a year; this payment forms an extremely important element of income for many authors, because it goes directly to them, not to their publisher or agents. I repeat the question: you claim that "there is no difference" between illegally downloading a book and borrowing it from a library. How does the author get their 5.98p if you illegally download a book?

They don't, but then they wouldn't get a payment if said downloader loaned the book from a friend, bought it second hand, or found it left behind on a train. They're even less likely to get a payment if they live in a country where the library system is in a shambles and they can't get hold of the books any other place than downloading.

Here's some more statistics:

http://www.plr.uk.com/registrationse...s.htm#collsocs

Of the 32,000 plus who were eligible for payments from the PLR, the vast majority made between £1-99, with only 352 reaching the £5-6,000 limit. Of course those 352 are already multi-million dollar sellers for the most part and the money would be a drop in the ocean for them. It might buy JK Rowling a clue about the digital age, but not much more. If you're seriously arguing that £1-99 makes a difference in a writer's income per year, then I really don't know what to say. Even at the threshold of >£500 which is the next biggest tally, the actual benefit of the payment is negligible, and probably wouldn't bring most authors up to the national minimum-living wage.

We've seriously got to stop thinking about monetary recompense when it comes to writing. Our culture has been in a straight-jacket for far too long, and now we have people doing something about it. From Feedbooks to indie publishers, to the P2P communities, there are people, without any thought of profit, who just want to share what they love with others. Writers don't exist without readers, yet over and over again we see these arguments against filehsaring, against the generation of readers who are growing up now. A generation and a culture, I might add, that buy a lot more products than any other.

If a writer wants to make gobs of cash, then he's in the wrong business. Writing is an act of love, of passion and commitment. You can make more money doing almost anything else. McDonalds pays more than most writers earn per year. Probably less stressful too, and you get free food.
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