Books by JK Rowling were among the most borrowed in Ireland — but even the Harry Potter author’s pay was capped at €1,000Authors received an average payment of €32 last year for having their books borrowed from public libraries in Ireland, under a state-funded scheme criticised as “derisory” by the Irish Writers’ Union. While eight authors received the maximum possible payment of €1,000, the majority received between €10 and €50 for public lending of their work. Irish writers received only €21,700 from the €200,000 scheme, with British authors getting the lion’s share. SponsoredThe government paid 4.39c to writers each time one of their titles was borrowed in 2020, up from 4.12c in 2019. Total funding under the Public Lending Remuneration Scheme is capped at €200,000 per year, with payments to individual authors capped at €1,000.

Source: The Times July 25, 2021 22:52 UTC