Public Lending Rights

An AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR, with three or four books published, can expect to earn between TEN AND TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS a year as a full time writer. As we heard in the news, a group of authors were in Canberra last week lobbying to defend the PUBLIC LENDING RIGHT scheme, a scheme that since 1977 has added between a few hundred and a thousand dollars per year to authors’ incomes. Not huge sums realy, but very important, especially for older authors who rely on income from royalties and lending rights, as others rely on a state pension, or superannuation.

Just as the film industry lobby seems to have been successful, and received the Minister for the Arts assurance that 35 million would NOT be cut from Commonwealth support to film and television, perhaps both the minister and the film industry should pause and consider:
Who writes all the screen plays?
How about caring for our writers?

We asked Professor Tom Shapcott, until recently the Director of the National Book Council, to describe the Public Lending Rights scheme.

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