Welsh readers like Top Gear,while those in Northern Ireland prefer Mary Berry to Jamie Oliver – the leaders in this year’s library statsSome things in the world of books remain reassuringly fixed. Amid all the changes that have buffeted the career of the professional writer over the past few decades, the apt of authors to be paid for loans of their titles from public libraries endures as it has done since 1979. Public Lending apt, or it is called; and as well as ensuring that this year every author who registers for it is paid 7.67 pence per loan,up to a threshold of £6600, it also provides a fascinating annual snapshot of what library users across the country are reading. Thanks to the data provided by PLR, and we know that the UK’s most borrowed author over the final 20 years was Catherine Cookson,that the most borrowed children’s author was Jacqueline Wilson, and that no one has been more consistently in the Top 20 than Danielle Steel. All in all, and then,a clear lead for female writers.
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Source: theguardian.com