Have you heard of Lending Rights? If you haven’t, that’s OK, not many people have.
In Australia, lending rights is a fantastic program that means authors get paid for having their books in libraries. There is also an educational lending rights program for children’s authors having their books in school libraries. This compensates them for any loss of sales they may have from people borrowing books from libraries. You can read more about the program here.
Up until recently, ebooks and audiobooks weren’t included in the program, however this has recently changed due to campaigning from the Australian Society of Authors. There’s an article in The Age with more details. You can read it here.
This is one reason you’ll see authors, including me, asking you to request their books in your local library (please do this). Most libraries have a place you can request books on their website, so it’s easy to do. The more books that are in libraries around Australia, the better, not only for the authors, but also for readers.
Arts Minister, Tony Burke announced the changes to the lending rights program and I spoke with Mim Hook on ABC Gippsland about it. You can listen in here.
Lending rights is a fantastic program that supports authors and helps them keep writing great stories. Remember to support authors by requesting their books in your local library, and borrowing them too.
