To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of the consequences for the Public Lending Right scheme of the conclusion of the report What are words worth now? A survey of authors' earnings, published by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, in July 2014, that there has been a 28 per cent reduction in the last decade in the number of professional authors who earned income from writing.
Answered on
24 March 2015
The Department has considered the findings of the report with interest. The Department continues to work closely with Arts Council England (ACE) to support authors through the different stages of their careers. ACE funding enables a diverse range of individuals to develop as writers, including those less able to access mainstream opportunities, and supports a broad range of free, concessionary and targeted opportunities for writers, including Arvon’s bursaries, Writing West Midlands ‘Room 204’, Ideas Tap ‘Inspires’, and the Creative Future Literary Awards (promoting marginalised and disabled writers).
ACE also fund individual writers through the Artists' International Development programme, a £750,000 fund which offers early stage development opportunities for individual artists to build links in another country. Around 7 per cent of applications funded to date were from literature individuals. In addition, through ACE’s National Portfolio over 2015-18, print and e-publishing will be supported with a total investment of £1,565,370 to support writers to create new work.