Letter: High price of public lending rights

Sir: Although I sympathise to an extent with Michael De-la-Noy's comments on the Public Lending Rights scheme and the apparently minuscule royalties paid to authors per lending (letter, 13 January), I would have to question his idea of a charge of 10p per book borrowed from a public library.

As the mother of three children, each with a library ticket enabling them to borrow six books, every visit to the library would cost me pounds 3 (including books for two adults), a total of pounds 78 per annum. While this may not be a great amount to many people, it may well be a deterrent in the present economic climate to those families whose children can benefit most from a free library service. Surely Mr De-la-Noy would not wish to reduce his royalties even further by restricting his readership to those people who can afford to pay to borrow his books.

What he fails to mention is that he receives a royalty each time a library buys one of his books for lending out, as well as a further royalty every time the book is borrowed. If I buy his book and lend it to friends, he receives no lending royalty from me. Perhaps I should send him 10p?

Yours faithfully,

B. R. SHEARD

Bradford, West Yorkshire

13 January