"A word after a word after a word is power" - Margaret Atwood

BRIDGET WHELAN

A blog for readers and writers

A blog about the stories we tell each other and how we tell them...

Sunday 14 February 2010

The Magic of Libraries

February is the month that Public Lending Rights are paid and this is the first year I will be getting a cheque.  Although I already know how much it is - they email a month earlier with the total - it is still pretty exciting. The rate per loan is 6.29 pence and the minimum payment amount is £1 and the maximum £6,600 (the top figure is capped because otherwise all the money in the fund would go to the top ten authors and the rest of us -- especially newbies like me - wouldn't get a look in).  
It's a thrill to see my novel in bookshops, of course it is.  But there is something special about knowing A Good Confession is on library shelves up and down the country.  There are copies in Ballymoney, Ballymena, Magherafelt and other libraries in Northern Irealnd, it is in Tatto Heath in St Helens and Ince in Wigan. There are five copies in Cornwall and someone right now has borrowed the audio version in Deal and Tunbridge Wells and in  the Orkney Islands library. Just before Christmas I was told by a student that the hardback edition had been stolen from Hornsey library in North London. Just couldn't bear to give it back....

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