My PLR top ten titles for July 2015 - June 2016

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 nearly eight pence per loan. There's a maximum payment threshold [£6600] to prevent bestselling authors from draining the PLR's precious coffers of cash.

About 22,000 authors will get payments for the most recent PLR period [July 2015 - June 2016], with about 200 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.

I’m a minnow for PLR payments, never getting more than £500 in any given year. After years of declining PLR payments while I focused on screenwriting, a gradual return to prose and publishing is seeing a gentle rise in the amount I am getting.

This year's top ten for my titles is a mixture 2000AD-related tomes, two different editions of the same Doctor Who novel, a Warhammer tie-in tome, and a long forgotten 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 13 years than ever bought the damned thing when it first came out in 2003.

It's a nice surprise to the Fiends of the Eastern Front graphic novel to which I contributed finally hit the top of my PLR list, after years of being the bridesmaid. The new hardback edition of Thrill-Power Overload might overtake it in future, andnd one day I might have a new novel on this list. Anyway, here are my top ten tomes for July 2015 - June 2016 (with previous year's placing in brackets).

1. (2) Fiends of the Eastern Front: Stalingrad (graphic novel, 2010)
2. (1) Heavy Metal Dredd (graphic novel, published 2009)
3. (-) Judge Dredd: Bad Moon Rising (2004)
4. (5) Doctor Who: Amorality Tale (new edition, 2015)
5. (-) Starring Michael Caine (2003)
6. (-) Doctor Who: Amorality Tale (2002)
7. (8) I Am The Law: Judge Dredd Omnibus (2006)
8. (3) A Massacre in Marienburg (2008)
9. (9) Fiends of the Eastern Front: Twilight of the Dead (2006)
10. (7) Fiends of the Eastern Front: The Blood Red Army (2006)  (2004)

Bubbling under - Judge Dredd: Kingdom of the Blind; A Nightmare on Elm Street: Suffer The Children; Thrill-Power Overload (hardback).