Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Public Lending Right Program Canada

We are now more than halfway through April. If you are a Canadian author and haven't registered for Canada's Public Lending Right Program you're missing out on an opportunity. (And the deadline is coming fast!)



Public Lending Right is the right of authors to receive payment for free public use of their works in libraries. PLR payments are determined based on the presence of an eligible title in the collections of selected library systems.

This particular program supports Canadian authors being stocked in Canadian libraries.

A random sampling is conducted, the totals are tallied, and eligible authors are paid usually in February of each year for the previous year's results.

Elgible titles include print, eBook, and audiobook.

You have to first register. And you can add titles that go back five years.

But the submission period, each year, is between Feb and May. You have to register by May 1st.

If you've already previously registered, you can (for example), add 2018 published titles in 2019.

You can download the forms from the PLR Canada website.


This year, the PLR Canada cheque I received covered the cost of an all inclusive tropical beach vacation we booked in March.

Apart from various print titles, I also have my ebooks and audiobooks listed in multiple library systems (such as OverDrive) through Kobo Writing Life and Draft2Digital for eBooks and through Findaway Voices for audiobooks.

Here's a short video of me mentioning this recently during a recent London Book Fair Self-Publishing Advice Conference #SelfPubCon2019.

And here is a longer, more detailed one about how the program works. (More of a presentation).

More than 30 countries around the world participate in a similar program. (Sorry US authors, it's not available there yet). Other countries include Australia, the UK, New Zealand.

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