WritersServices Factsheet 18 by Michael Legat
PLR, Contracts and Miscellaneous Matters
Public Lending Right in the UK
PLR is the scheme under which authors receive a sum of
money each time any one their books is borrowed from a public library. It
pays, therefore, as soon as a book of yours has been published to send details
about it to the Public Lending Right Office, Richard House, Sorbonne Close,
Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland TS17 6DA. Ask for a form, and it will be sent to
you.
The PLR scheme is funded by the Government. The
payments go straight to the registered author, and the moneys are not shared
with the publisher, nor with an agent.
Moral Rights
Under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988,
the author’s moral rights are protected. There are four such rights, two of
which have more applications than the others:
The Right of Paternity. This ensures that your name
will appear on your work in any edition and establishes protection against
your work being attributed to someone else. It is necessary to ‘assert’
this right. If you look in the first pages of books published in the last
decade or so, you will see the notice asserting this right.
The Right of Integrity. This establishes protection
against your work being mutilated or distorted in any form in which it may
appear.
Terms of Contracts
The Minimum Terms Agreement has been signed by the UK Society of Authors and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain on the one hand,
and individual publishers on the other. By signing it, the publisher
guarantees that contracts with authors who are members of the Society and the
Guild will not offer less than the terms set out in the MTA. These cover not
only advances, royalties and the split between the publisher and the author of
income from the sale of subsidiary rights, but also the entitlement of the
author to be consulted on such matters as the design of the jacket or cover
and the blurb.
The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain has negotiated
agreements with theatre managements and
television and film producers to protect their authors’ rights and to
guarantee minimum payments.
The Society of Authors and the Writers’ Guild
negotiate with the BBC on the moneys which will be paid to authors for
broadcast material.
More
Further information on all the items in this Factsheet is available in
An Author’s Guide to Publishing and also in Writing
for a Living, both by Michael Legat
© Michael Legat 2001
