On Royalties for Library Books: A Fantasy

I browse the website for The Guardian quite a bit and am struck by how many articles there are on reading trends in the U.K. These sorts of stories about reading pop up occasionally in the United States. The news is usually gloomy. No one reads literary fiction or poetry. No one reads for pleasure. There are too many other ways people can be entertained and informed. Why bother reading a book?

What’s interesting is that many of the Guardian stories are based on what people borrow from the library, not what they buy. The latest of these stories appeared in January. There are no real surprises in the names of the people whose books are checked out most often: James Patterson, Dan Brown, Lee Childs, Harlen Coben. Mark Billingham, a writer probably better known in Britain than in the States, was also on the list. So we have the usual suspects or the usual creators of suspects. (Years ago I visited a book shop in Edinburgh and said to the bookseller, “Your bestseller list doesn’t look any different than the one in the States.” “How depressing,” she replied)

The good news for writers in the United Kingdom (and Canada and Scandinavia) is that royalties are paid when a writer’s books are checked out of the library. It’s known in the UK as the Public Lending Right. The most recent figures I could find indicated that a writer got about 8 cents per checkout and there was an annual cap of about $!0,000. Imagine the boost this gives writers. A perfectly wonderful, out-of-print book could continue to make money for its author.

I have been to many mystery conferences where enthusiastic, literate people come up to a mystery writer and say, “I just love your books; I always check them out of the library.” It’s always great to have readers and writers inevitably respond positively to people to love their work. But I’m guessing most of us would rather hear: “I just love your books. I buy them immediately in hard cover. And I give copies for my 50 closest friends, too.”

Of course, these programs in the UK and elsewhere are government sponsored. Alas, we know how people feel about government sponsored programs in this country (unless it’s Social Security or Medicare. Believe it or not some people are unaware that Medicare is a government program). But I digress.

And all is not skittles and beer in the UK. Libraries there are suffering from budget cuts. Some communities have established alternative libraries where it turns out the royalty arrangement does not apply.

It’s a shame that in the United States, people (or at least many people who pursue politics) think of books, plays, art and music as “frills.” I think a lot of the folks making policy in cities, towns, state capitals and Washington D.C. would find that their lives and their minds improved if they decked themselves out in more frills.

© 2015 Stephanie Patterson

****My information about Public Lending Right came from The Guardian, Wikipedia and the blog, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Support Your Local Library

This is going up on Christmas Day, but frequent readers of this blog know that for my last blog of the year, every year, I rerun this post with an appeal for support of the most benign and democratic institutions in the United States: Free Public Libraries.

This year I have a new story to add.  Since I wrote the post below two years ago, I have had the opportunity to research at the British Library.  I want to tell you what that took.

The libraries of the world line up like this. One: The Library of Congress in Washington.  Two: The British Library in London.  Three: The New York Public Library, where I get to go four five times a week.

Here is the drill if you want to research at The British Library.  First, you have to go on their website, which is dense with long paragraphs of information spread over many pages.  The information is arranged in the most arcane way: like books stored by the Dewey Decimal system--according to rules understood only by licensed librarians.  If you are really determined, you will be able to find and fill out the application form.  Once you have submitted a properly completed form, you see the list of acceptable forms of identification and are told you will need to present two of them when you arrive at the library.  Also displayed for you is your personal applicant ID number.

The British Library

On the day you arrive for the first time, you are directed to a special room, where you enter your ID number in the computer system and then wait.  Eventually you are called by that ID number to be interviewed.  A very friendly, in my case, person will ask you to explain what of their collection you want to see and why.  I have no idea of the criteria they use to judge your worthiness.  All I know is that I passed muster to read in their Africa and Asia Room.  They give me a special British Library photo ID.

If you survive the above, you go to the cloak room in the basement, where you give up all your wordily possessions except for your computer, pencils (NO PENS), and your notebook.  You put those three things, and nothing else in a clear plastic bag.  You then can take the elevator to the reading room you have designated.  There a guard will check your ID and your clear plastic bag.  Then and only then you can read a book.

I don't resent this.  It is a privilege to be able to read their books, and they have a right to require whatever they want of the people they allow in.

But in the NYPL, in public libraries all over the the USA, if you want to read a book, all you have to do is ask for it.

Trotsky said the New York Public Library was the most democratic place on earth.  Just saying'.

Here is my annual appeal for your support.  And your admiration.  For places I consider sacred.

The "Liberry"

My Brother and Me

The Paterson (NJ) Public Library saved my life. I would have grown up somehow if I could not have read its books as a child, but I would not have grown up to be me. Even before my brother and I learned to pronounce it, we loved to go. We went at least once a week in the summer. Our mother took us to our local branch, about a twenty minute walk from home, a simple storefront filled with hundreds of books and staffed by two of the nicest ladies ever. Mommy got books for herself and my brother and I chose from the children’s section. He had a weird taste for books about snakes, guns, and tanks—a bother since we were allowed only three books at a time. When I finished reading mine, I was stuck with his questionable selections until the next trip. As long as we were still in elementary school, the rules allowed us only children’s books, but since I was voracious, there was soon nothing left for children that I hadn’t read. So as a seventh grader, the librarians allowed me to select biographies (but never fiction) from the adult section.

Paterson Public Library

During the summer, between grades seven and eight, I took to going with my friend Dolores to the main branch, a bus ride away. It was much grander than our local storefront. Here is a picture of it—a building designed by Henry Bacon, who subsequently designed the Lincoln Memorial. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places.

It was one of the most elegant places we had ever seen. Only churches and the Paterson City Hall compared with it. Even in the big library, however, we were not allowed grown-up books, except for biographies. Why the librarians thought that the lives of real people would be more edifying than those of fictional characters is beyond me now, but in those days we just took what we could get. Consequently, I read the lives of Fred Allen, William Randolph Hearst, and Lunt and Fontaine, among many others—lives of people who lived large, an idea one could hardly get a whiff of in our working class neighborhood.

New York Public Library

Now I am privileged to do my research at the Main Branch—the Stephen Schwarzman Building—of the New York Public Library, a marble temple of knowledge that can tell you anything you want to know and will tell it to you no matter who you are. That’s the thing about free public libraries—we have them here in US, but they do not exist everywhere.

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
di Firennze

 An Italian friend who was living here in New York was amazed when she found out how egalitarian our library is. We went together to do research one day. She is from Florence, home to one of great libraries of the world: The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. It is massive and beautiful. And like libraries everywhere has on staff some of the most devoted employees anywhere. When the floodwaters were rising in 1966, one of them, a woman, stayed until the last possible moment, moving priceless treasures from the lower floors to the upper ones. When it was too late to continue, she escaped over the rooftops, carrying Galileo’s telescope. That library is fabulous, but unlike ours, you can’t just walk in. You have to have credentials to get through the door.

Map Division

Not so at the New York Public Library. My friend and I walked into the Main Branch one day along with scores of others seeking all kinds of information. She wanted to know the New York City and New York State laws governing the manufacture of foods containing dairy products. I wanted a map of Paraguay in 1868. We both found what we wanted: she in the main reading room, and I in the Map Division. Where else in the world can you do that? And get the help of kind and knowledgeable people to do it efficiently. It’s amazing.

Main Reading Room

And it is gorgeous, is it not?



Your library needs you. You may not even go there yourself, but the library deserves your support. PLEASE, give a donation to your local public library. You can probably give online in a couple of minutes. There are kids in your town who need the library, for whom it will open vistas that will change their lives.

—Annamaria Alfieri

I Love Librarians

Our guest blogger today is Jane K. Cleland, hands down one of the warmest, most generous colleagues anywhere. Jane is the author of the IMBA bestselling and Agatha- and Anthony-nominated Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery series. Set on the rugged coast of New Hampshire, the books are often reviewed as an Antiques Roadshow for mystery fans.

The eighth in the series, Lethal Treasure, will be published in June 2013. The first in the series, Consigned to Death, was named by Library Journal as one of only 22 “core titles” recommended for librarians seeking to build a cozy mystery collection, alongside novels by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Publishers Weekly said of The Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries, "Ingenious ... engaging!"

Jane also hosts the TV interview program, The Writers Room, and is on the faculty of Lehman College, part of the City University of New York. She is a past president of the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America and a fellow lover of libraries. You can visit Jane at www.janecleland.net.

---

Seventy-five percent of my nieces are librarians. Isn’t that odd? Any family can have a librarian in it... heck... I bet some families have two... but all? Okay... we’re a small family... I only have four nieces... but still... three of them are librarians (and the fourth is a Ph.D. in social psychology, a highly analytical field). Lucky me. Librarians (and social psychologists) are a remarkable breed of people. They’re curious, knowledgeable, smart, and helpful. No wonder I love librarians. One of my nieces is a communications expert, researching ways and means of framing and disseminating her clients’ messages. Another is a cognitive expert, assisting scientists in researching issues surrounding thinking and assimilating information. My third niece is an elementary education expert, working with youngins to instill a love of reading and learning. The fourth is a researcher at a major university. I’m in awe of all four.

I come by my attitude of respect and appreciation honestly; my mother loved librarians, too. When I was a mere slip of a girl she taught me that if you wanted to know something you could always consult a librarian because they either know everything or they know where to find out everything.

When I was in sixth grade, I consulted a librarian as to whether Paul Revere’s horse was a mare. (I needed it as a rhyme in a poem, and being an honest girl, I couldn’t just say it was a mare if it was, in fact, a stallion. Note of interest: She found a contemporary reference stating that Paul Revere’s horse was a mare; I thought you’d want to know.) When I was in eighth grade, a librarian held me enraptured as she discussed the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. (Yes, you read that right. Twenty-one people died a gruesome death, asphyxiated by molasses.)

To this day, I love working with librarians as I work to introduce readers to my protagonist, antiques appraiser, Josie Prescott. As an author, I’m in the enviable position of getting to do just that—a lot. As many of you know, I tour extensively [http://www.janecleland.net/htm/appearances/schedule.htm ] as I work to introduce readers to Josie.

I love the buildings. I love the books. I love the reverence implicit in the hushed conversations. But mostly, I love the librarians.

The Kansas City Public Library

Jane Cleland

www.janecleland.net

Old Silent Movies

The library in Sparta, New Jersey, had to cancel The Birth of the Movies, the show I was going to do there on Sunday afternoon, because not enough people signed up to go and see it. While I'm sorry I won't be seeing Sparta, and sad not to be meeting the librarian and the readers there and entertaining them with antique movies, I must confess that I wasn't looking forward to the two-hour drive.

It's been canceled a couple of other times because people didn't sign up to come. I don't do the show very often, mostly because people don't ask me to do it very often, and partly because it always seems like a drag to leave Lambertville. I don't even market it anymore. Still, it's fun. Every time I do it I see different things in the movies I show and their interrelationships, and I tinker with it between times. It starts out with Thomas Edison and his merry men, the film studio they called the Black Maria, and three of the films they made for the Kinetoscope peep-show machines, including the boxing cats and Eugen Sandow, that incredible hunk of beefcake, flexing his muscles in a state of near-nakedness.

After that, some of the movies they showed to audiences in the nickelodeons, including The Great Train Robbery and D. W. Griffith's A Corner in Wheat. Finally I show them the last half of The Cheat, an early film of C. B. DeMille that still fascinates today. Since the last time I gave the show I've added a little movie directed by Alice Guy Blache, who became such a force in the movie industry in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Here it is, for your enjoyment. You will notice that it is full of French people, for when Madame Blache made this movie she was still in France.

Kate Gallison

"Liberry" Redux

For my last entry of the year, I am rerunning my post from last January on my lifelong love affair with Free Public Libraries. There are only a few days left of 2011 in which to heed my plea in the last paragraph. You will end your year with a great feeling if you do. Happy New Year! Drink a toast to free knowledge and entertainment for all!

My Brother and Me

The Paterson (NJ) Public Library saved my life. I would have grown up somehow if I could not have read its books as a child, but I would not have grown up to be me. Even before my brother and I learned to pronounce it, we loved to go. We went at least once a week in the summer. Our mother took us to our local branch, about a twenty minute walk from home, a simple storefront filled with hundreds of books and staffed by two of the nicest ladies ever. Mommy got books for herself and my brother and I chose from the children’s section. He had a weird taste for books about snakes, guns, and tanks—a bother since we were allowed only three books at a time. When I finished reading mine, I was stuck with his questionable selections until the next trip. As long as we were still in elementary school, the rules allowed us only children’s books, but since I was voracious, there was soon nothing left for children that I hadn’t read. So as a seventh grader, the librarians allowed me to select biographies (but never fiction) from the adult section.

Paterson Public Library

During the summer, between grades seven and eight, I took to going with my friend Dolores to the main branch, a bus ride away. It was much grander than our local storefront. Here is a picture of it—a building designed by Henry Bacon, who subsequently designed the Lincoln Memorial. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places.

It was one of the most elegant places we ever saw. Only churches and the Paterson City Hall compared with it. Even in the big library, however, we were not allowed grown-up books, except for biographies. Why the librarians thought that the lives of real people would be more edifying than those of fictional characters is beyond me now, but in those days we just took what we could get. Consequently, I read the lives of Fred Allen, William Randolph Hearst, and Lunt and Fontaine, among many others—lives of people who lived large, an idea one could hardly get a whiff of in our working class neighborhood.

New York Public Library

Now I am privileged to do my research at the Main Branch—the Stephen Schwarzman Building—of the New York Public Library, a marble temple of knowledge that can tell you anything you want to know and will tell it to you no matter who you are. That’s the thing about free public libraries—we have them here in US, but they do not exist everywhere.

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
di Firennze

 An Italian friend who was living here in New York was amazed when she found out how egalitarian our library is. We went together to do research one day. She is from Florence, home to one of great libraries of the world: The Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. It is massive and beautiful. And like libraries everywhere has on staff some of the most devoted employees anywhere. When the floodwaters were rising in 1966, one of them, a woman, stayed until the last possible moment, moving priceless treasures from the lower floors to the upper ones. When it was too late to continue, she escaped over the rooftops, carrying Galileo’s telescope. That library is fabulous, but unlike ours, you can’t just walk in. You have to have credentials to get through the door.

Map Division

Not so at the New York Public Library. My friend and I walked into the Main Branch one day along with scores of others seeking all kinds of information. She wanted to know the New York City and New York State laws governing the manufacture of foods containing dairy products. I wanted a map of Paraguay in 1868. We both found what we wanted: she in the main reading room, and I in the Map Division. Where else in the world can you do that? And get the help of kind and knowledgeable people to do it efficiently. It’s amazing.

Main Reading Room

And it is gorgeous, is it not?



Your library needs you. You may not even go there yourself, but the library deserves your support. PLEASE, give a donation to your local public library. You can probably give online in a couple of minutes. There are kids in your town who need the library, for whom it will open vistas that will change their lives.

—Annamaria Alfieri

Library Memories

Recently I confided to a friend that I was stumped for a topic for my next blog. She came up with a magic word. “Libraries. Why don’t you write about your library experiences?” Needless to say, I started musing on this subject and was amazed at how much I remembered.

I have no memory of my first library card. This was because when I was six my parents bought a house that came complete with a library. The old doctor who had lived there with his wife had left their library intact, complete with most of the Harvard Classics and an enormous encyclopedia (which I still have). Also, my mother was a great reader. Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope were her favorites, but she usually managed to get her hands on the latest fiction, too. So you see, I had no need to go to a library.

However, there were two libraries at my school: The Children’s Library, where I discovered The Boxcar Children, the first and best of that series. It had a battered orange cover and was illustrated with black silhouettes. The Friend's Free Library, also connected to the school, was strictly non-fiction, and where my friends and I used to gather down in the basement and read The Kinsey Report. Hot stuff in 1945!

The next library I remember was the Morgan Library where I had my first glimpse of a Jane Austen manuscript. Mansfield Park, I believe it was. Her neat, cursive handwriting inscribed in a lined copybook was a marvel. Did she never cross anything out or make a mistake? It seemed not.

Then there was the 3rd floor room in the New York Public Library and an exhibit of original manuscripts and first editions of the works of romantic British poets. The most thrilling was a first edition of “The Ancient Mariner” in which Coleridge had made a correction in ink in his own hand. In the line, “The horned Moon, with one bright star within the nether tip,“ he had changed “the” to “its,” and the black ink, because of its iron content, had turned a glossy copper. Oh, my!

Once my husband and I did a tour of towns with old libraries. The one I remember best was at Milford, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River. The building was stone, solid, and gray on the outside, but inside the sun slanted through the windows, catching the dust motes, filling the interior with a golden, gossamer haze. I headed for the Children’s section because I love old children’s books. The stacks were open, and what a treasure trove I found. Copies of St. Nicholas, Chatterbox, fairy-tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham, A Child’s Garden of Verses illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith, and Treasure Island, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. I could have browsed all day, reliving my childhood, dreaming old dreams.

Robin Hathaway