2023-11-10 09:00:17
BarcelonaNews arrive immediately in libraries. A few months ago, Pere Antoni Pons made a tweet lamenting the harm this would mean for sales, and the world was jumping on him: it is important that the novelties reach libraries soon to guarantee equal access to culture and not encourage class biases, etc. This made me think about other areas where we are not so concerned about access to culture. For example, audiovisual. Throughout life there have been temporary windows for the journey of films; in the nineties: first cinemas, then video clubs, then pay TV, then open TV. The sector understood that this had to be the route of the commercial exploitation of a film in order to squeeze as much as possible out of all channels. Now things have changed a bit, and these windows have become more flexible or even disappeared. But the triple strip of cinemas, pay platforms and free TV continues to exist. If you want to see something new, you have to pay a little bit, but it doesn’t seem that anyone is too bothered by this inequality in access to culture.
In the case of literature and for national authors, the situation is aggravated because our figures are tragically derisory. Many books, too many books, do not sell a thousand copies. Selling, say, 4,000 is pretty exceptional. So the Catalan author sees his books read for free and thinks that part of the library loans are books he won’t sell.
I would say that the problem with all of this is not so much the lack of time windows (although that doesn’t help either and maybe a little less hunger for novelty wouldn’t hurt us) as the fact that the authors are not remunerated for the readings of library books. With a single book purchased, dozens, hundreds of readings can occur. And let’s remember that for each book bought the author takes less than two euros. Remuneration for public loans is quite justified and there are many ways to implement it (if you are interested, you can read this article:
A poorly made law that brings insulting retribution
The fact is that in 2006 a European directive was published that established that authors had to charge for the loans of their works. The Spanish state did not transpose it until after 8 years with the royal decree that regulates it (624/2014). So, do authors charge for library loans? yes and no Especially not
First, the rights are paid by CEDRO. I think there are many authors who do not even know that the rights are paid or are registered with CEDRO (spoiler: it’s not worth it). With which, they have never charged a single duro. What does CEDRO do with this money that it does not distribute?
Secondly, the fees that are paid are laughable. Or anger. The gentlemen (surely they were gentlemen) who got involved in the drafting of the royal decree were more concerned with saying that the State was complying with the European directive than with satisfying a legitimate claim of the authors to avoid the infringement of their rights. The royal decree establishes that libraries pay an amount based on the number of works they have borrowed (€0.004 per work) and an amount based on the users who have used the loan service (€0.05 per user) . Therefore, CEDRO collects these semi-fixed fees regardless of the specific works loaned or the amount of loans for each work. CEDRO then distributes the amounts with a criterion that “It must be, in any case, objective, proportional and public». Well, I haven’t found the criterion. On the CEDRO website they explain that the libraries must communicate the works borrowed (with ISBN) and it is understood that CEDRO makes the calculation based on this. But it’s a lie.
Curious about it all, I decided to consult the details of the annual settlements that CEDRO gives me. We will ride all night (2020) it has NEVER generated me any remuneration for public borrowing, that is to say, it is assumed that it has never been borrowed from any library in the State. Ahem. The same goes for Sola in Catalan (2021), although curiously today there are more than a hundred copies on loan from libraries in Catalonia. with Sola in Spanish I have earned an exorbitant €0.11 thanks to public loans. 50 years from now I might have saved enough to buy a bottle of cava to celebrate.
Not only is the law poorly made and carries insulting retribution, it is not even enforced. How do you have the indecency to tell us that we are paid for public loans?
In short, that we authors are very happy to be in libraries, but either we put in some temporary windows so as not to harm the sale of books or, even better, we implement a system of remuneration for loans that is not a scandalous and humiliating hair-pulling.
#Royal #Decree #pisses #face