I’m doing what I choose to do – writing, campaigning and enjoying life. And I am enjoying life very much (it’s probably much better than the alternative).
And the money keeps pouring in!
Here is the 6-month royalty statement for my three books with Pelagic Publishing: Fighting for Birds (2012), Behind the Binoculars (with Keith Betton, 2015) and Behind More Binoculars (also with Keith Betton 2017):
So £60 – woohoo! Maybe a new car? I’m chuffed to bits that Fighting for Birds, which was my first book after leaving the RSPB, is still earning money for me some 7 years after I finished writing it. And I dip into it now and again to check a fact and find that I end up reading a few pages with pleasure. I hope some of you do the same.
Just a word for Pelagic – all my publishers are wonderful, but Pelagic, being a small outfit, is the friendliest and most approachable. They also pay royalties every 6 months and pretty sharply after the relevant period which is nice of them.
And I’ve recently received my Public Lending Right payment for the year ending 30 June 2018 too. If you borrowed one of my books on 1 July 2017 I’ve just received 8p because of that – thank you! Here’s the list including ebook editions (I get nothing) and both paperback and hardbacks;
That’s a little under half as much as each of the previous two years but there you go! I guess some of my books have fallen apart and been retired or charity-shopped by libraries. I wonder how many ‘borrows’ the average library book can take before it is knackered. And I guess that libraries are buying fewer books these days (and there are fewer libraries open fewer hours if our experience here in east Northants is concerned).
I’m rather thrilled that Inglorious is still being borrowed, and presumably read, after getting on for four years (the hardback) and three years (the paperback).
I wonder how much James Patterson (most borrowed author) gets in PLR payments each year? Hilary Mantel is at #500 and I’m pretty sure her books would be borrowed at least 100 times as frequently as mine (at least!), I wonder whether I am in the top 10,000 authors by PLR payment? I wouldn’t bet on it. Nice to see Ann Cleeves at #29 (see my interview with her in
Behind More Binoculars).
But still, the PLR is a jolly good thing in my view – what author wouldn’t think so?
Time to write a new book or two – obviously! I’m working on it (rather slowly).
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