Sunday, January 21, 2018

My PLR top ten titles for July 2016 - June 2017

Every year the Public Lending Right sends registered authors a statement estimating how many times their books were borrowed from UK libraries. To compensate for lost sales, the PLR pays 8.2 pence per loan. There's a maximum payment threshold [£6600] to prevent bestselling authors from draining the PLR's precious coffers.

About 22,000 authors get payments for the most recent PLR period [July 2016 - June 2017], with 195 on the maximum of £6600. The fate of the PLR is in flux, as cash-strapped councils close libraries and eBooks alter reading habits. But authors still welcome this new year bonus.

It is free to register your books for PLR - just go here. Even if you only wrote [or drew, in the case of comics artist] part of a collection, you can still register your bit. I represent a tiny 3% of the Heavy Metal Dredd graphic novel, but it makes me a few pennies. Like a fool, I forgot to complete registration for the only new book I had published in the most recent PLR period - tsk!

This year's top ten for my titles features several 2000AD-related tomes, two  editions of the same Doctor Who novel, a Warhammer tie-in, and a hugely unsuccessful non-fiction book about the films of Michael Caine. That last book sold so badly, I think more people have read library copies over the past 15 years than ever bought the damned thing when it first came out in 2003.

It's a nice surprise to the Heroes Reborn tie-in to which I contributed appear on this list. I wrote an ebook novella and didn't expect anything to come of that, but it was reprinted by Titan with two other novellas from the series as a wee omnibus. Anyway, here are my top ten titles in librares for July 2016 - June 2017 (with previous year's placing in brackets).

1. (2) Heavy Metal Dredd (graphic novel, published 2009)
2. (1) Fiends of the Eastern Front: Stalingrad (graphic novel, 2010)
3. (-) The Complete Inspector Morse (2006)
4. (6) Doctor Who: Amorality Tale (2002)
5. (-) Thrill-Power Overload (2007)
6. (-) Judge Dredd: Kingdom of the Blind (200?)
7. (5) Starring Michael Caine (2003)
8. (-) Heroes Reborn (2016)
9. (8) A Massacre in Marienburg (2008)
10. (4) Doctor Who: Amorality Tale (new edition, 2015) )

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