Living in a Digital World

On Friday, 30th April, I spoke at the Australian Digital Alliance conference in a forum on why Digital Lending Rights matter and why Australian authors need them now. You can watch a recording of the event on the ADA website.

Australian authors and illustrators receive compensation from the Australian government for copies of print books held in public libraries. The scheme is called Public Lending Rights (PLR) and it makes it possible for me, and many other authors, to dedicate time to our writing. But we don’t receive any PLR for ebook or audio book holdings.

Over the years, I’ve watched the real value of PLR begin to dwindle. In a recent tally of six of my novels held in four library networks, I discovered that 29 copies of those novels were in ebook format and only 11 were print books. So I receive no public lending rights (compensation) for over 75% of copies of my novels held in those public collections. In the ADA forum, you’ll hear Olivia Lanchester, CEO at the Australian Society of Authors and Trish Hepworth, Director of Policy and Education at the Australian Library and Information Association - and ME - discuss why we need the government to update the lending rights schemes for the benefit of all Australian writers and illustrators.