If small things amuse small minds, you'd be amazed at the minuscule size of the events that amuse small-press authors.
Sam Jordison, although a writer with much bigger fish to fry than I do, has already posted on this blog about the secret, guilty pleasure of constantly checking and re-checking the Amazon ranking of your freshly minted book, and how the buying of a single copy can cause your position to catapult upwards, bringing unalloyed joy.
Another major event in the calendar of the author desperate for public validation is the annual Public Lending Right award.
PLR is the right to get cash every time someone borrows a book from a public library, a bit like the money that Roy Wood gets every time someone hums I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day in the street.
Whether you're Stephen King, author of countless doorstep-sized bestsellers, or Steven King, author of PublishAmerica-released volume Why Are We Here?, you'll get the same PLR payment: 5.98p per borrowing.
If you're a famous author you're probably getting the maximum PLR payment possible, currently £6,600 – enough to buy a few ermine-covered yellow legal pads and a couple of gold-nibbed fountain pens for the writing of your next opus. I know a couple of mid-list writers who have occasionally earned the maximum: not a bad little earner that will pay the mortgage for a few months.
PLR is traditionally paid out in February for book borrowings in the 12 months up to the previous July. The statement of what you are about to receive is issued by the nice PLR people in Stockton-on-Tees in January, and I've just opened up mine with nervous anticipation and glee.
My PLR payment this time round? A grand £8.79. Titter ye not – although that wouldn't buy a brand-new copy of either of my novels, it fills me with an almost heady sense of satisfaction.
Being – currently, this is the year it's going to happen, fingers crossed, onward and upward! – not even a mid-list, not even a bottom-feeding author (as the writer of two novels, Hinterland and Angelglass, published by an independent press with no resources for advances, marketing or getting books into the major bookstores, which demand horrendous discounts), the value of the PLR isn't in the money but in the information it provides about book borrowings.
Over the period one of my books was borrowed 69 times, while the other had 78 outings. Not figures to exercise the great men and women of letters, but good enough for me. That's nearly 150 borrowings over a year. That means, on average, three people a week borrowed one of my novels. They might not have enjoyed them; they might not even have read them. But however tiny and unimportant to other people, the fact that someone bothered to pluck my work off a shelf, take it out and lug it home, is good enough for me.
Whoever you mysterious people are, me and my £8.79 thank you most heartily. And the best thing of all? PLR is always followed, within a week or two, by the twice-yearly royalty statement from my publishers. I think I might have to sit down.
