SCISConnections

Educational Lending Right

Lending Rights encourage the growth of Australian writing and publishing.

ELR 2006-07 School Library Survey a success

Thanks to the schools who responded to the request to participate, the ELR 2006-07 School Library Survey has been successfully completed. The collated survey data has been passed on to the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) for processing, and payments to Australian authors, illustrators, translators, compilers and editors will be made around April this year.

Importance of Lending Rights

The Public Lending Rights and Educational Rights schemes are significant cultural programs supported by the Australian Government. They play an essential role in encouraging the growth of Australian writing and publishing. Statements from authors on the SCIS website ELR page - follow the link to positive comments from authors - reinforce the importance of the Lending Rights payments to their work.

Australian publishers also benefit from the annual Rights payment, which in turn has a significant impact on Australian writing. The following article by Clive Newman, managing director of Fremantle Arts Centre Press, explains.

Renate Beilharz
ELR Project Officer

Fremantle Arts Centre Press

The invitation to write this article suggested that I outline the benefits to the smaller publishing houses of the Lending Rights schemes. I cannot stress too highly how significant the annual payment is to Fremantle Arts Centre Press.

We celebrated thirty years of publishing in 2006, during which time the publishing environment has changed dramatically. Our foundation charter commits us to nurturing and developing talented writers and artists from Western Australia and publishing and promoting their works to the widest possible audience.

In our early years our list comprised mainly literary titles (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) and we were able to maintain an economically viable program. As the market for such publications has become more and more challenging, we have broadened our list to include a number of titles designed to attract a more general readership and thus increase our earned income. However, the core component of our program remains the literary titles, many of which come to us from unsolicited manuscripts. In 2005 we received more than 650 of them, each of which was assessed for publishing potential.

It has been well documented in recent years how the larger publishers no longer accept unsolicited material because of the costs involved in assessing it. Those costs are no less significant for the smaller houses. Yet, in our case, the biggest sellers and some of the most critically acclaimed titles have come from unsolicited submissions. While our charter remains unchanged and our program is built from the works of new and emerging writers, we cannot afford to ignore these submissions or manuscripts.

We noted with interest that Fremantle Arts Centre Press ranked in the top twenty or so of one hundred and fifty publishers receiving PLR/ELR payments earlier this year, demonstrating the value placed on our publications by the library and education sectors. We have chosen to use those funds to contribute towards the costs of maintaining the position of Manuscript Assessor, to meet our aim of identifying new and emerging writers, and (we hope) to find another Australian classic in the process!

Clive Newman
Fremantle Arts Centre Press
http://www.facp.iinet.net.au/